“To tell you the other reason we need your help.” Adriana drives her knee into the seat behind me. I push on. “Do you want to know?”
Curiosity covers his face. His mouth opens slightly, and he takes a long in-breath. He leans forward a little. “Yes. Why else do you need my help?”
The son of a bitch wants whatever we can give him to feed his hero complex.I force a look of doubt and hesitation onto my face, and I waver. Pause. I give the motherfucker everything he wants, and I don’t need to look down to see that he’s hard — I just fucking know it.
Adriana needs the seat again, pressing right against my spine. “Don’t you fucking do it…”
“Dr. Lin, there’s something more you should know about what your help is going to let us do. See, she’s going to kill me. All this work you’re doing — driving us out here, helping us — it’s going to end up with her murdering me.”
The car comes to an abrupt stop next to a red semi-truck with an attached trailer bearing advertisements for a diaper company.
“What the fuck did you just say?” He says, his voice rising in pitch with every syllable until it could scrape the sky. “I swore an oath to do no harm. I take it seriously. I can’t facilitate a murder.”
The look of existential horror on his face is more delicious than anything Tank or I have ever baked. But before I can finish savoring it and say something to drive the knife deeper into his heart, Adriana smacks the back of my head. Bright pain explodes behind my eyelids, filling my vision with a starburst of colors, and I lean forward in the seat, trying to get out of the reach of her vicious slaps. Sure, she can fucking kill me as soon as it’s time, but does she have to be a fucking dick in the meantime? Especially when all I’m doing is trying to teach a lesson to Dr. Smugly Hardcock.
“Ow,” I say, rubbing my head. Somehow, she hits harder than any of those Russians. Even the one who knifed me. “What the hell was that for?”
“He’s lying, Dr. Lin,” she says. “I’m not going to kill him. He’s not going to kill me. All we want to do is get away from those Russian assholes and figure out a way to stop them from harming us or anyone else. That’s it. Your helping us makes you a hero or whatever. You’re saving lives.”
“You swear?” He says. “Both of you?”
“I swear,” Adriana replies. Then she smacks me again.
My eyes go from Adriana, to Lin and then down — yes, he’s definitely fucking hard thinking about saving all these lives.
“Swear,” I say. “I was just fucking with you.”
“Good. Now get out of my car.”
We exit, and he peels away fast enough that he leaves the scent of burned rubber and arrogance wafting in the air. It mixes with the aroma of terrible food, old coffee, and shattered dreams that drifts from the rest stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I seea lot lizard warily scouting us. I shake my head, and they scurry away.
“You’re no fun,” I say.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
“And you’re a liar. Unless you really meant what you said back there about not killing me when this is through. In which case, you and I need to have a serious fucking conversation,” I say.
“I said what I had to.”
“And?”
She crosses her arms, accentuating her tits beneath her V-neck shirt featuring the many faces of some Korean boy band. I’ve never been so turned on by the sight of a bunch of young Asian men. She snaps her fingers in front of her face and then skewers me with a look. “My eyes are up here. And I wasn’t lying, you dick. When this is over, I’m still going to kill you. I hate your fucking guts, and I can’t wait for you to die.”
Adriana turns and stalks toward the truck stop’s building, leaving her words hanging in the air. Even distracted as I am by the lingering image of the Korean boy band decorating her sumptuous tits, and her curvy ass as it sways toward that little truck stop cafe from which emanates smells not meant for human noses, I can still detect the doubt that shakes her declaration of murder and hatred.
I follow.
Chapter Thirteen
Adriana
My heart’s in my throat, pulsing like it wants to tear through the skin and disappear into the woods. I lied back there. I lied to the smug, horny doctor, and I lied to the piece of shit who killed my sister — Ricky fucking DeMarco. With that lie, I’ve disgraced my dead sister — her plaintive, outraged screams still echo in my ears over that fucking lie — and I’ve just thrown everything that I’ve dedicated myself to, everything I’ve sacrificed in this quest for revenge, like my job, my mental health, my friends, into the fucking dumpster.
I’m lying to myself, too. Lying if I think I can go through with your plan. Lying if I think I can spend more time with Ricky and want to kill him at the end of this. Even now, I feel my resolve slipping. And that time back in the car, where he needled that dickish doctor, with that heart-rending grin on his face, I could feel myself slipping. Every second that passes with him, whether he’s saving his life, putting his cock in my face, or just fucking smiling, he wears me down as relentlessly as the ocean against the coastline. It doesn’t matter how strong I am; it doesn’t matter what I fear that the more time I spend with him, the less I’ll want to kill him.
