Zelda
Sawyer’s face is bright with anger and relief and so many other things that it’s hard to put a finger on exactly what he’s feeling, and I’m not sure I want to know.
He shoves his phone back into his pocket. His mouth curves up into a smile that flickers away and then returns.
“You’re dressed.”
“It—” I don’t know what to say. My heart pounds against my ribs. At first, I thought he might be getting a call from someone in his family. But no. That wasn’t it at all. “It seemed like a serious call, like I should—I should be ready to go.”
“Good call.” Sawyer runs a hand through his hair. “Where did you want to go? Out? Where?” He laughs, and the sound reverberates through my core. “We can go anywhere. I don’t have anywhere to be. Do you have anywhere to be?”
“Did you quit your job?” That’s what it sounded like, a person quitting his job—an unhappy person quitting his job.
But Sawyer’s job isn’t like everyone else’s.
There are consequences to this kind of thing.
There has to be. Even I know that, and I work at a library, where Mrs. Sanders frowning deeply at me would probably be the worst-case scenario if I was to quit.
“Yeah.” He crosses the room again and sweeps me up into his arms, kissing me hard and fast and deep. When he pulls back, he’s got a big smile on his face, a reckless grin. “Let’s go to the movies. Is there anything you want to see?”
“I don’t—” I laugh out loud. “I don’t know! I haven’t been to the movies in forever.”
“Grab your purse. I’m going to buy you all the popcorn you can possibly eat.”
He turns around, heading for the back door. Where is my purse? Abandoned somewhere by my desk. I scoop it up and drop my phone into it.
“You ready?” He’s smiling by the door, but something about his expression sends a chill down my spine. Can this really be the end of his work in the city? Does he have a plan for what comes next?
And what is his boss going to do to him? Sawyer isn’t a pushover, but a man who hires people to beat other people into submission can definitely hire more.
“More than ready.” My chest goes tight with the fact that Sawyer took that call inside my parents’ house.
It’s not like I think he was being tracked, but can you ever really be sure?
Cell phones today aren’t the plastic pieces of junk they were when I was in school.
If Sawyer’s boss had anything to do with his phone…
I feel like I’m back on the edge of that ravine, teetering drunk, laughing too loud because I know this is a bad idea, I know that something bad could happen, but I’m doing it anyway.
And Sawyer is the man who’s tempting me closer and closer to the edge, to plummeting off, even if he thinks it’ll be all right.
I want to get out of here.
“More than ready.”
He leads the way out.
We sit in a movie theater and I hardly see the film, but at least the popcorn is salty and hot and good. I eat it compulsively, by the handful, trying to slow down but failing.
“Wow,” Sawyer whispers when the bucket is gone. “You love popcorn.”
“I really do.” I also love staying safe. I don’t know what I was thinking, hoping for something to shake up my life, hoping to leave all this behind.
For what, anyway? A life where I never knew what was going to happen?
My hands tremble around the empty popcorn container. What’s wrong with me? I wanted to be with Sawyer. I couldn’t keep my hands off of him. And he’s not—he’s not a criminal. He’s always been a gentlemen. To me.
But he is a criminal. There’s no way that his work all these years was inside the bounds of the law.
It’s over now. I take in a deep breath and let it out. It’s over now, and he’s going to—
Well, I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and we didn’t talk about it.
We came to the theater and chose a movie.
It’s the big theater, halfway between Greenville and the city, and they have twenty screens.
The moment the lights dimmed, I felt my shoulders relax.
Even if his boss is coming for us now, he’s never going to find us in this movie theater.
Is that really what might happen? Could his drug dealer boss come after Sawyer for retribution? Could I be caught in the crossfire? Is this actually a reality I’m willing to live in?
Do I have any other choice?
The door at the back of the theater bangs open, letting a burst of light in, and I whip my head around, gasping out loud.
The sound is mostly covered by the laughter of everyone else in the theater—the movie is a cross between a romantic comedy and a post-apocalypse thing that I haven’t really been following—but Sawyer notices.
“Zelda.” He reaches over and takes the popcorn bucket from my hands, putting it carefully into the seat beside him. “Are you okay?”
“What are you going to do?” I try to keep my voice at a level whisper, but it’s an effort.
“About what?”
There’s nobody sitting right behind us, thank God.
“Your job. Your boss—isn’t he angry? Is he going to—?”
Understanding flies across his face, and in one steady movement he flips up the armrest divided between us and wraps his muscular arm around me, pulling me in, squeezing me tight for a long set of heartbeats.
He might represent the biggest danger of my life—bigger than Eric, bigger than that ravine—but my body responds, the tension going out of my muscles in spite of myself. My heart starts to slow, settle in.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Sawyer says softly into my ear, leaning back against his chair, his arm still firmly around me. “I’ll deal with him the next time I go back into the city. In the meantime—” Another squeeze. “We should talk about what we could do if I stay.”
“If you stay?”
I can feel him smiling, his cheeks tensing on the crown of my head. “When I stay.”
For a few minutes, it’s all right.
But then my heart picks up again.
What if it’s not?