Bullet snaps at him.
“Protective dog, I see,” he grunts, completely unamused.
“Yeah.” I don’t apologize. I sign the paper, hand it back to him, and take my stupid fucking speeding ticket from him.
“Slow down and have a good evening,” the trooper says, and then gives me a nod, and then slips off back to his vehicle. Before I even shove the ticket in the console, his lights are off, and he’s crossing the bar ditch to head back in the opposite direction.
“Well, this sucks.” I put the car in drive and ease back out onto the road, Noah still hidden in the cargo space.
“How much?” Noah’s voice carries up to the front.
“Doesn’t matter,” I shrug. “I’m not paying it.”
“Oh, cool,” he snorts. “So, you really do want to go to prison, then. Why not throw in a warrant for your arrest, too?”
“I mean, by the time the court date comes around, I think we’ll be in a different country.”
“Not necessarily,” Noah hums. “We have no idea how long this is going to take. I’ve heard of guys having to sit and wait for weeks down at the border.” There’s a casualness to his voice that sets off an alarm in my brain.
“And how do we wait that out?”
“I don’t know,” he answers, plopping back down into the backseat and my view again. “I can’t guarantee we even have the funds to get across.”
“I only have four hundred dollars. I took off work when I went to Mom’s,” I say quietly. “I plan to use my credit card for everything that’s directly west—you know, toward LA.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything else. “What did you do?”
“Huh?” I furrow my brow as I meet his gaze in the rearview. “What do you mean?”
“What’d you do in California?”
“Oh,” I shake my head. “Um, I just worked as a content writer for a marketing company. It was pretty low pay.”
“You drive a nice car.”
“With a payment,” I shoot back. “I lived in a tiny studio apartment.”
“In Los Angeles.”
“Yeah.” I eye him again, not sure where he’s going with it.
“Hmm.” Noah’s face is pointed toward the window, and I can’t read the expression on his face.
My stomach knots up. “Did you ever go to California?”
“Once, but I don’t really remember it all that well.” He hesitates and then pulls his eyes from the window, back to me. “I didn’t get a lot of time to do anything before I got locked up. I’m thirty-four, and I spent almost eleven years behind bars. I don’t know what the fuck is out there in the world anymore.”
And that’s my fault.
“What did you do after you moved?” The question slips from my lips in a jumbled mess, and I realize he’sright.There’s so much about him I don’t know.
“My dad got hung up in the Club,” Noah’s voice is monotone as he begins, letting out a light sigh. “So, I got stuck with mymom and her new husband. She moved us closer to the city, to a suburb, living with the doctor.”
“The doctor?”
“Yeah, my stepdad.” His voice stays unreadable. “He adopted me when I was fifteen. I thought it was a big deal. My dad had long stopped calling. I thought about you a lot.” He pauses and then frowns. “But I was pretty happy. We had a big ass house, and my mom had all the pills she could ever want to pop with the doctor feeding her addiction. But it washigh-classaddiction.”
“I see.”
