“It’s me, baby.” With his hands pressed to the table, Dusty slowly rises. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“W-what’s my name?” she stammers, sniffling and wiping her nose. “Can you tell me my name?”
Already, his plan unravels. “Uh… It’s Jane. Like on the news.” He swings his eyes to Ramone. “She’s Jane.”
“We’re done.” I pull Rose away from the window and look at Billy. “He might be the dumbest son of a bitch I ever saw in my life.”
“Thanks for coming down.” He steps forward, making room for us to pass. “Appreciate your time, even though we all know it was wasted.”
“Appreciate you calling, even when you knew it wasn’t gonna pan out.”
ROUND TWENTY-NINE
ROSE
Liam acts as my lookout, hovering by the chip stand in a small-town convenience store while I stuff food into my coat and jerky sticks into my pockets. He selects a bag of chips, noisily crinkling the packet to cover the sound of me opening a package of mixed nuts and pouring the contents into my mouth.
My stomach aches with the distinct pang of hunger, which only grows worse for the thirty seconds it takes to chew the nuts and swallow them down.
“Ma’am?”
I startle and spin and come face-to-face with a kid. He can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen, and carries a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.
“You can’t eat the stuff till you pay for it.” His voice squeaks. “That’s stealing.”
“Run, Rose!” Liam knocks the whole chip display over and explodes toward me, grabbing my hand and jerking me out of my stillness. He catches me when I stumble. Saves me when a peanut stops in my throat. Then we’re running through the automatic doors and into the night. I cry out when a second packet of nuts tumbles from my jacket and skids across the blacktop, my hunger desperate to be satiated. But when the store clerk—the adult, not the teen—comes out and racks a shotgun, I say goodbye to my dinner and bolt to the left, into a small parking lot lined with smelly dumpsters and the screech of feral cats fighting for whatever they found inside.
My heart pounds in my throat, making it difficult to get a full breath, and my hunger brings tears to my eyes. I’m so friggin’ hungry. So ridiculously desperate for the first proper meal I’ve had in days. But I still have the jerky sticks. God, please let me still have the jerky sticks.
“Around here!” Liam ducks through a gap in a chain-link fence, tugging me down to follow. Then he straightens again and drags me into a messy yard overflowing with broken-down cars and random engine parts on the lawn. Cigarette butts litter every square inch of walking space, and the loud, furious bark of a dog tied up nearby makes me jump and scream.
Lights flicker on in the house, but Liam tows me into the next yard, then the next one after that, until finally, the yards stop coming, and instead, trees, more than I could hope to count, provide us shelter.
We run for an eternity, around tree trunks and under low-hanging branches. Frost already turns the ground white, but the snow hasn’t come yet. Thank God, the snow is still a week or so away.
“Here.” He pants, slowing our run to a walk and glancing around at a world too terrifying to wander alone. To run blindly through trees… alone? I just couldn’t. I wouldn’t. But I trust him to show me the way. To stay with me until we find civilization again.
Shivering, he coughs and sends white fog rushing into the air in front of his face. Stopping under a massive spruce, he spins back until light reflects off the cracked lens of his wire-frame glasses. “This is a good spot, don’t you think? We can rest here for a bit. Eat something before you pass out.”
“What are we gonna do when winter really hits?” I tremble under my coat, my fingers aching as I grab the zipper and peel it down. Opening the thick fabric wide, I look down and hope for a bounty of things to fall to the ground.
But the only thing left is a Little Debbie donut, a salted caramel protein bar, and a packet of peanut M&Ms.
“Hey, that ain’t bad.” Eternally happy, Liam scoops up our dinner. “You’re going for the higher protein now. That’s good.”
I groan. “Liam…”
He presses the protein bar to my belly, forcing me to take it, then he slides the others into my pockets to join the jerky. “You have some money left over, which means you can grab a hotel or something. Hole up for the worst of winter. You just have to get through.” He stops in front of me, the toes of his boots touching my sneakers. And because my fingers ache too damn much to peel the packaging open on my dinner, he takes it and opens it for me.
“Come, sit with me.” He lowers against a thick tree trunk and tugs me down beside him, tucking me under his arm and pulling me around until Icurl against his side. He pushes the opened protein bar back into my hand and rubs my arm for warmth, and because I’m too cold to think, he nudges the salted caramel bar up to my lips. “You’re mixing all this up, ya know that?”
My breath hitches, bouncing through my chest and out on white puffs of air. “Mixing what up?”
“Your dreams. Your memories.” He slides his hand up the side of my neck and over my forehead. Sweetly, he tilts my head back and searches my eyes. “Me.”
“Why do you keep hurting Ollie?” I tug my legs up, squeezing them into the gap between us. “He’s a good person, and you keep hurting him.”
“Well… why do you want to hurt me?” His eyes flicker down to the gun fisted in my hand, right where my protein bar was a moment ago. “Why, Rosaline? After all these years?”
