“It was just Adrian,” he said, rubbing a soapy loofah on my back. “He was coming by to tell us we had to leave.”
“Where to?”
“Somewhere quiet, safe, and preferably not too far away.” He turned me around to wash the suds away. “The people whoare looking for us, they’re going to get close. They’re going to take shots. I need you to know that you won’t be harmed. The worst I fear is a little hearing loss from being too close to my gun when I shoot.”
I stared into his eyes. They were warmer than they had been when we first met. That first time, I wanted to go explore, but now, I wanted to build a home and settle. It reminded me of seeing an image in space where galaxies and the cosmos were almost hypnotizing.
“You can choose,” he continued. “I think you should decide.”
“I thought you had your friend.”
He sighed and nodded. “I do, but she isn’t on the other end of the comms. I’ll try her again later.”
“Okay,” I said as he got all my bits soapy, and it tickled, especially with the way he went to town on my balls. I giggled. “There was that place close by.”
He nodded. “We’ll look at a map when you’re all clean.”
“You need to get clean too.” I splashed him with the water dripping down my arms.
He laughed. “I’ll do a quick full-body wash once you’re out,” he said. “I might get sidetracked and go for a second round if I shower with you.”
It was a fair assumption. I think sex would’ve healed the part of me that had seized when I’d thought someone was coming into the house to kill me. I knew it would come, someone had tried already, but I hadn’t made peace with it. In fact, my body was still in flight mode about the whole thing—and if possible, I was about to fly myself underground where they wouldn’t be able to find me ever. I was all full of ideas about becoming invisible, or just accepting the fate of being a mole man who lived beneath the surface of the earth and would oneday be part of life’s great mysteries... like, where did Ezra Cross go?
***
Looking at the map of all the places Jacques owned, I could really answer the question ofwhere did Ezra Cross gobecause I was picking it out. There were places in South America and Europe, but we were sticking to New England at least, and he had three—well, two not including this one—to pick from.
“Sugar Bay in Vermont, or Boston,” he said. “The place in Boston is a building I own with an abandoned bakery on the ground floor and a loft space where we can stay.”
I gritted my teeth. I really didn’t want to make the decision after all. I pointed at the one closest. “Sugar Bay sounds fun.”
Jacques pulled me inside his warm, rugged arms, squeezing as if I was a Twinkiewith cream that hadn’t come out yet. “It’s all going to be okay,” he said.
“I know, because you’re with me.”
“That’s right, because I’m with you.” He kissed my forehead. “Let’s head out after something to eat. I’m not letting you travel without a full belly.” He brushed his scruffy stubble against my cheek and kissed me again. “Mhm, you smell delicious.”
I stayed in front of the monitors as he went off to cook. It was a lot to take in, and with a couple of clicks, I could see the house. It was similar to this one. Right in front of the water. If I hadn’t looked at a map and seen it was impossible, I would’ve said we couldboatour way to it. In fact, my fingers traced the length of the St. Lawrence River all the way up the map on the screen right into Montreal, and then followed it back down another river into Vermont and right to where Sugar Baywas. I snorted a giggle to myself for even doing it. But when I had something in my head, I had to see it through—almost a compulsion.
At the dining table we had fried pork sandwiches and a bag of chips. It was delicious, and almost reminded me of my childhood—all that was missing was some cartoons. Jacques made me feel so safe, it was almost like I could slip back into the feeling of being a kid again, except without all the parental pressures to be perfect and straight. Jacques was healing me.
“What’s got you smiling?” he asked, reaching over to wipe crumbs from my mouth.
I swallowed. “You,” I said, heat flushing my face. “You got me smiling.”
“Why?”
Gesturing to everything with a shrug, I didn’t know how to explain it. “It’s just a feeling,” I said.
“Aw, okay, well I’m glad I’ve got you feeling some type of way,” he said, pulling my ankle to him with both feet under the table. “Because you’ve got me feeling some type of way. You have since the first day we met.”
We were sitting across from each other like that first time when we were in the cafe. “I do,” I said, my fingers sinking into the bread and my toes curling, but not fighting back against the pull of his feet.
As we finished our sandwiches, there was something that caught Jacques’s attention. I hadn’t heard it, or seen anything, but it put him on alert, and he told me to hide beneath the table. If his face hadn’t turned stern, I might’ve thought he was just asking me under the table for some fun before we left, but this wasn’t fun.
The floorboards creaked upstairs.
Jacques dipped down to me, a finger to his lips. He grabbed a gun that had been concealed on a shelf tucked tightinto the border of the table. It almost looked like he’d taken it from the darkness.
