He wished he’d come up with a way other than prison of getting away from Preston, but for a while, he’d been safe. Now that he was outside the prison, Preston was bound to figure it out and track Cal down.
How long would that take? Preston was smart, so probably not very long. Cal had a short window in which to figure out what to do.
Maybe he’d sell the boots and the hat and get a bus ticket to anywhere, far, far away. What were they worth? Maybe three hundred bucks. He was wearing the cowboy boots now, and they were so comfortable and looked so cool, he knew he didn’t want to sell them.
“Hey, Cal.”
Cal looked up. Zeke loomed over him, his features limned in flickering firelight. He wore his cowboy hat and held a flashlight in his hand.
“Mind if I sit?”
Cal wasn’t about to say no because Zeke was his boss. He couldn’t really trust Zeke, or anyone. Prison had taught him to move slowly, make friends even more slowly. You didn’t want to get in with the wrong crowd.
And yet.
Zeke also moved slowly. He didn’t sit down as though he had a right to, being Cal’s boss and all. He was waiting for permission, all handsome and tall and patient.
“Sure.”
Zeke settled on the hay bale beside Cal, and it was strange, but now Cal felt a little warmer. Maybe Zeke’s broad shoulders were blocking the wind. Maybe it was just the close presence of another human being. Maybe it was the stillness that Zeke brought with him that wrapped around Cal like a warm blanket.
Cal knew he shouldn’t trust that stillness either, because it could explode into rage at a moment’s notice. Or even without notice, but it felt so good it was hard to keep resisting it.
“You ever have s’mores?” asked Zeke.
“When I was a kid,” said Cal. His voice came out rusty, like he’d not talked to another human being for centuries. And he was not a kid. He was an old man at twenty-four, or at least it felt like it.
Zeke held his hand out, and someone came by and handed him a bunch of things: a bag of marshmallows, a chocolate bar, a nicely pointed wooden stick.
“We need graham crackers,” said Zeke.
Cal looked up at him, at that face, the expression shadowed by the brim of the cowboy hat. Did Zeke expect him to have some in his pockets?
He wasn’t sure what to do, and it made him freeze in place, though it was ridiculous for him to be wired like there was danger abounding. There wasn’t, right? There wasn’t. He took a long, slow breath, trying to make himself calm down.
“I think Blaze has them,” said Zeke, now.
Cal had met a lot of guys at dinner, but which one was Blaze? Oh, the tall one, with dark hair and a sassy grin that he was aiming at Gabe, one of the other team leads, like he simply didn’t care that Gabe was his boss. Like he wasn’t afraid of Gabe at all.
“Can you get them?”
“Sure.”
Cal leaped to his feet and went over to Blaze, who was standing on the other side of the campfire. From this position,as Cal waited while Blaze handed out a stack of squares to someone, Cal realized he was near the lake. That he could hear the lake water lapping against the shore. That he was, really, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.
He shook off the sense of panic as hard as he could, took the four squares of graham cracker, and hurried back to the hay bale where Zeke waited.
As he sat down next to Zeke, his sensation of disconnect turned into something else, something more like familiarity. Zeke was still an unknown, but so far, nothing bad had happened. Maybe nothing would.
“Here you go,” said Cal. He held out the four squares to Zeke. Would he ever get the hang of normal life?
He sat down and focused on making a s’more, keeping his motions slow, the way Zeke’s were. It was comforting to follow Zeke’s lead.
Laughter came from the other side of the fire as Cal roasted his marshmallow. He watched Zeke look up to see where the sound came from. Watched Zeke’s slow gaze and the shift of his shoulders as if he was removing himself from the noise and into his own silence again.
That was kind of interesting. In prison, when the laughter started up, it was raucous and loud. Other prisoners would go over to the sound, as if with the intent to build it up, make it explode. But Zeke, he simply observed and stayed where he was, in his own world. Which was very peaceful to be near.
Cal knew he couldn’t count on the peace, but for the moment, he sank into it, and ate his s’more, and checked with sideways glances as Zeke ate his.
