Chapter 10
10
Karma
Why is everyone in such a hurry to leave me? That question echoes in my mind the way thunder echoes across mountain ranges, with nothing to stop the sound. Must be my own karma catching up with me. I’ve taken lives, I’ve lived mine with no regard for anyone else’s… why should I get what I want? What I need.
We’re pushing it on another day’s marathon ride. It’s dark again, and the desert all around this lonely stretch of highway we’re on is like a soft blanket trying to wrap itself around me. Complete with all the dreams that have been mixing with the real world in front of my eyes for hours now. We should stop and rest. But when we do, it’s goodbye.
Every time I focus on his form on the bike in front of me, reality comes crashing back. Last night I dozed off with my back to him, but woke up with his arms around me. But we didn’t make sweet slow love this morning, we didn’t make angry fast love either. We didn’t even kiss. Or talk much.
We just showered, ate the rest of our food, gulped down the coffee I made then hit the road again. I wish I could just erase the last two days from my brain, stay at the cabin, happy in his arms, in my mind forever. But this brutal ride is making even the memory of the magical week we spent in the green, lush forest seem like just a figment of my imagination.
Lights ahead materialize into a small town. He stops in front of a bar. Music is blaring, people are laughing and singing inside and the smell of barbecue is thick in the air, making my mouth water.
This is it. One last dinner. Then he goes north and I go south and the next time we see each other we’ll just be two people who fucked once. Or more like a hundred times. Made love, not fucked. That’s too dirty a word for what we shared.
The way he pursued me for so long, I figured he’d want to hold on to me once he got me. And the way he made love to me, made me sure he’d hold onto me forever.
But I now see that kind of thinking was just grief rearing its ugly head in yet another weird, unexpected, devastating way.
I’ll be fine. I’m always fine. And who knows when I’ll follow Reaper over the rainbow bridge? Maybe sooner rather than later.
I park beside him, take off my helmet and shake out my hair, glad to be rid of that weight off my shoulders. The orange and white lights from the bar are making shadows play across his face, making it look like he’s smiling.
“That’s it,” he says and my heart sinks a few inches lower.
“You don’t want to have dinner first?”
“I thought it’d be a good idea, yeah,” he says.
“But now you don’t anymore?”
There’s a fair-sized town up ahead and a motel across the road and it actually looks like the kind that has clean sheets and a clean bathroom. Maybe even a TV. If I could get a room without having to show ID I could just stay here for a couple of days and work on forgetting him. But nice places like that always want ID and I don’t know if my fake one will work. But maybe I can risk it for one night.
“No,” he says, drawing out the word like he doesn’t know what’s going on. “I still do.”
Maybe he can get me the room before he leaves. I can just get some candy and chips from the vending machine there while he eats his steak or whatever here. But I don’t know if I want to ask him for any more favors now that it’s so clear he wants nothing to do with me.
“Are you as tired as me?” he asks.
It’s not just the shadows making it look like he’s smiling. He is. Kinda shyly. Like that first night at the cabin.
“I’ll live,” I say. If he thinks he’s getting a sweet goodbye from me, he has another thing coming.
“I might not,” he says.
I don’t know what to say to that so I say nothing, working on pretending the sentiment didn’t slash me right across the heart.
He clears his throat and runs his hand thorough his hair. “Without you, I mean. Whatever else happens, I don’t want to just have the memories. I want you.”
He’s speaking so quietly I’m not sure I heard him right. I’m also not sure those words weren’t something my tired, already half-dreaming mind is trying to force on me.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he adds.
I’m fully aware I’m just staring at him with a totally blank expression on my face, but I can’t stop doing it. I’m still trying to decide if I’m just dreaming. Is he even sitting on his bike in front of me? Or is he long gone and I’m standing here having this conversation with no one?
“You don’t feel the same way,” he says and even though it should be a question it’s just a very cold statement.
Cold enough to wake me from my weird mental limbo.
Because he is here, and he is saying exactly what I wanted to hear. And I may not have full control over my mind yet, but I know enough to leap off my bike and wrap my arms around his neck as I climb into his lap.
For a few breathtaking moments his bike wobbles beneath us like it’s about to topple over. But he steadies it and then his strong arms are holding me tight and we’re kissing and everything is once again perfect in my world. The dream one and the real one.
He tastes like the long road we’ve traveled to get here, and the long road ahead of us. The one I hope will never run out. Just like I hope this kiss will never end.
“So I’ll come with you to LA,” he says as we break apart and are just holding each other. “And then you can come up north with me.”
“OK, I’ll go to war with you,” I say and wrap my arms even tighter around his neck.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says. “Then again, Grim might kill me long before we get that far.”
He chuckles and it’s a nervous kind of laugh.
“He won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?” he says. “He looks like he has it in him to become quite the berserker. What with that Nordic hugeness and temper of his.”
I laugh. “He does. But I won’t let him hurt you.”
“OK, my life is in your hands then.” He chuckles again and then kisses me, his laugh entering me like a butterfly with glowing wings, reaching all the places that have filled with darkness since he told me we have no future. And even lighting some of the places that have been dark long before that.
We might not have a lot of future, but what we do have I’m spending with him. Grim’ll just have to get used to it.
Besides, given how much I like Scorpio, Grim might like him too. Maybe that’s a dream, maybe it’s reality, I don’t really care to try and figure out the difference right now. There was only darkness before and now there’s light. And that’s all that really matters.