He smiled and sighed and held me close. He knew I was trying to take his mind off of things and he didn’t care. “Well, if we could I’d still like to go to Gualala. Though in reality we’d probably end up in Canada or something, because Sophia and her brothers will not take this lying down.”
“It’s a dream life, Camden. Gualala it is.”
“Okay then. Gualala. I don’t know if I’d be doing tattoos, maybe I’d try my hand at painting or sculpture. I’ve always loved carving things out of driftwood. I could have an art shop. We’d have Ben and a boy or girl of our own, four years younger. Gus would be there too with some lady love of his.”
“And what am I doing?”
“You?” he eyed me appreciatively. “You’d just stand around and look pretty.”
“And?”
“Give me blow jobs.”
I punched him in the arm.
“What?” he laughed. “I know you love the cock.”
“Shut up.”
“Well then, you tell me,” he said, looking serious and wiping a strand of hair from my face. “What do you want to be doing? If you could do anything.”
The thing was, I’d never really thought about that. I was always just trying to survive and keep going, from one place to the next. I never had goals. I never had dreams. Not really.
I thought back to something I did enjoy once. Something that had put a rift between Camden and I all those years ago.
“I think I’d be a photographer,” I told him. He raised his brows and I continued, “Of course you were always better at that than I was.” He bit his lip sheepishly and I knew he remembered the photos he had taken of me back in art class, for a project he called “Justification.” It had humiliated me at the time, but now I realized that he was only telling the truth. And sometimes the truth fucking hurt.
“I think you would be good at that,” he said. “You have a way of seeing people.”
I traced my fingers across his chest, making swirls and waves. “I like the idea of giving hope. That you can capture the world in such a way that even the ugly things look beautiful.”
The beauty in what was real.
He kissed my head and cleared his throat. “Now. About that blow job?”
I punched him again.
Then I gave him one.
Of course.
I woke up in the middle of the night with a light headache and my stomach grumbling. I hadn’t really eaten anything for the last few days. I had been basically fasting when I was in the jungle, only eating when I had the chance and coasting by on adrenaline the rest of the time, so now that I was back in California and still a pile of nerves, my appetite was slow to come back.
But when it did come back, it was back with a vengeance. As I rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Camden who was snoring lightly, I put my hand to my rumbling stomach and had a silly yet hopeful thought that perhaps I was already pregnant and this was my body telling me so.
I grabbed my robe and slipped it on, a cool, ocean breeze coming in through the open windows smelling of night-blooming Jasmine, and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I popped two pieces of toast in the toaster, poured myself a glass of water and opened the drawer where I had stashed a bottle of Ibuprofen earlier in the day.
I shook two orange pills into my hand and raised it up to my mouth.
My eyes went to the kitchen window.
There was a man in the reflection.
Grinning.
Behind me.
Javier.
I opened my mouth to scream but he was fast and he grabbed me around the waist with one arm, his hand going over my mouth with the other. I dropped the pills to the floor where they clattered, praying that Camden could hear that but I didn’t think he could from where our bedroom was.
Javier pressed his hand hard into me and started bringing me backward, his hot breath at my neck. There was only one second where I felt a slice of relief that he was still alive. But that quickly vanished. Now I wanted him dead. I wanted Travis to have finished him off. I wanted my gun to have had one more bullet in it. Because, no matter what I thought of Javier before, I knew now that he was here for a terrible reason.
All bets were off.
No more promises.
I struggled, trying to kick out with my legs, to knock over a jar full of cooking spoons, hoping to cause more noise but it was impossible. Javier pulled me out of the kitchen, practically dragging me into the next room, the one-car garage we had.
Dark.
Small.
Practically soundproof.
Not good.
He managed to quietly close the door behind him, shutting us in the garage together, the smell of oil and dust assaulting me, as well as Javier’s distinctive musk which made the whole thing that much more terrifying. I breathed hard against his hand and he leaned back against the door, his arm around my stomach and legs growing tighter and tighter.
“Shhh,” he whispered in my ear, lips touching my lobe. “Shhhh, angel. Keep quiet. Calm down. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
That meant nothing anymore.