After an hour or so on the road, I start feeling…weird. It’s that particular light-chested feeling I remember from my high school days. From my kissy slut days. And I know what it means.
I'm hyper-aware of my arms around Evan;s hard, warm waist. Of the way his upper body tenses when we hit bumps. I can imagine that at this low speed, it's hard to keep us balanced, especially with that contraption he has for his left arm.
I shut my eyes and remind myself that I'm not supposed to worry about him. It's his fault we're in this mess. This was not my plan.
But aren't you grateful for it? a little voice inside me asks. Aren't you glad you didn't have to go back to the cartel?
I wonder what it means for me that Jesus is dead. It doesn't mean more safety right now, but it might eventually. If Jesus was as humiliated as I think he was by my running away, he might have kept coming after me, even if I made it to America. If he’s dead, it all depends on Christina. Does she want to waste the resources?
She was one of the select few who knew he was gay. I think she hated me because she hated that he felt he had to hide behind a mistress.
Despite what happened before I ran off, I feel a sort of sadness that he’s dead. For all he turned out to be a total sociopath, he wanted to be a school teacher when he was a kid. He was a monster, but in many ways he was good to me—at least for most of the time I was with him. I was one of the few people he could ask for advice about his boyfriends. I remember the last time he bought new cologne. “Which one makes me smell like salvation?”
It just seems impossible that he's dead.
But Evan is right; he shouldn't be sorry for killing Jesus. Jesus was one of the bad guys, and the main thing I feel about his death is relief.
I lay my cheek against Evan’s back and shut my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts.
I don't want to go back to my old life in the States. Maybe that's part of why I'm feeling angry at him—Evan. I don't even know if I can go back. As long as Priscilla and Jim Gunn are around, I'll never be safe. And then there’s Drake. The honorable governor from the state of California. Who thinks I wanted to blackmail him, to ruin him, and who, I assume, didn’t mind one bit when Priscilla and Jim Gunn sold me as a sex slave. I have to assume he’d try to get rid of me again.
I tighten my grip a little on the man in front of me. Evan told me his company would protect me, but I have no reason to believe him. Jesus told me once that he would fly me back to America in one of his own helicopters if I stayed with him for five years. But I finally ran away because his actions said otherwise.
The bike hits a bump in the craggy farm road and I head-butt Evan. For half a second, as my butt flies off the warm, leather seat, my hands loosen their grip on his waist. When I grab him again, I realize one of my hands is on his crotch.
I scramble to move it, but not before a pleasant burst of warmth kindles in my stomach. I turn my head so I'm looking out at fields and not at Evan, and I inhale deeply a few times, reminding myself that I don't want a man again. Not really. I'm like one of the Sisters. The physical attraction is there, of course, when the guy is hot like this one is, but my heart isn’t available.
Even so, I wonder, as we cut through a field at the edge of a trash dump site, what this man thinks of me.
Does he think that I'm a whore? That I had sex with the whole cartel? Does he think that I deserved what I got? He doesn't seem to know about the governor, so that's a point in my favor. I was a married man's mistress. Even though I was young and stupid and broke…it's not something I'm proud of. Not at all.
We're getting near the outskirts of Parral now. I know this area. The police in Parral could never be bought, and Jesus had some childish delight in travelling into their territory. Sometimes just to get an ice-cream cone.
If we can take little country roads around Parral and get to Camargo, we could stop for the night somewhere safe.
The sun is directly overhead now, meaning it’s taken us at least an hour or two longer than normal to travel the distance that we’ve traveled. Between the music and my rambling thoughts, it doesn’t feel like a long time, but I’ve gotten sunburned. I can feel it on my scalp and my forearms. Evan seems to be feeling the strain of our rough terrain and slow speed, too. His torso will twitch occasionally, the way muscles do when they’re about to give out, and I can feel him breathing hard sometimes. When we reach a small grove at the edge of our current field, I rub his back and lean close to his ear.