Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
The speedometer on Trent’s Dodge Ram climbed steadily upward in a rhythm that matched the pulse in his temples.
All he thought about was that red ’Cuda. So bright and loud and impossible to miss. He wouldn't need a tracker to find it. Dante was an idiot—he might as well have painted a target on the hood.
He took the turn toward the Blue Water Highway, cutting away from the heavier traffic and onto the slower coastal road. The Gulf air rolled in through the vents, thick with salt, the sky ahead darkening under a bank of storm clouds.
The landscape flattened even further, the road running parallel to the water in long, exposed stretches. There was nowhere to hide out here.
Good.
He crossed onto the island through San Luis Pass, the truck rocking slightly as the wind caught it. Below, the water churned in slow, muddy swells, the tide pulling hard against the pylons.
Trent didn’t slow down.
By the time he hit Galveston proper, his focus had sharpened even more. He drove the waterfront once, slow enough to look without drawing attention. Marinas, bars, restaurants, clusters of tourists drifting between them. But there were too many cars and too many places to disappear.
He kept going, making a slow second pass. This time he paid attention to the edges, the places people tucked things away. Parking structures. Side streets. The kinds of spots that didn’t advertise themselves.
Trent turned down a narrow access road and found the garage almost by accident—a concrete structure tucked just far enough back from the marina to be overlooked.
He slowed as he pulled in, the engine dropping to a low rumble. It was cooler inside and dimmer. His eyes adjusted quickly.
He didn’t rush it and drive straight through. Instead, he circled once, then again.
On the second loop, he saw it. A flash of red behind a concrete pillar.
Trent’s breath caught, sharp and sudden. The ’Cuda. Even half-hidden, it stood out. He rolled past without stopping, forcing himself not to look too long. His pulse surged, adrenaline snapping into place like a switch being flipped.
“Got you,” he murmured.
Miller slid out of the booth. “I need half an hour. Stay here. Eat something. Look like you belong.”
Dante frowned. “Half an hour's a long time to sit still.”
“Then don't sit still. Just don't do anything stupid.” Miller tipped his hat and disappeared into the crowd.
Dante didn't let go of her hand.
His grip tightened slightly, thumb resting over the ring like he'd forgotten it was there. He was staring at the table, tracking the wet outline left by Miller's glass, and Jessica could see him retreating into himself.
She watched him for a moment. “He's right.”
Dante didn't look up. “About what?”
“We can't sit here like two strangers sharing a booth. If anyone's paying attention, they'll see it.”
He let out a short breath. “So what, we start holding hands and smiling?”
“We're already holding hands,” she said.
His eyes dropped to their fingers, like he'd only just noticed. He didn't pull away.
Jessica shifted closer.
“We don't have to fake everything,” she said. “We just have to stop pretending we don't know each other.”
He leaned back, studying her, and whatever he was holding behind his expression was braced against something—not her, exactly, but what letting her in again would cost him.
“We knew each other two years ago,” he said. “That's not the same thing.”
She felt the words strike somewhere behind her ribs. “No,” she said. “It's not.”
The noise of the bar filled the silence between them—glasses, laughter, someone's kid shrieking on the deck outside. Normal sounds that had nothing to do with them.
“Then you left,” Dante said. “Not because you had to. Because you decided you were done.”
Jessica frowned. “That's not what happened.”
“It is.” His gaze was steady, unflinching. “You just made it sound better in your head.”
She felt the old anger flare—familiar, almost comforting in its sharpness. “I wanted a life, Dante. Not whatever that was. Not waking up every morning wondering which version of you I was going to get.”
Something shifted in his expression. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means for three months after I arrived, things were good. You were there. You were present. I thought we were building something real.” Her fingers tightened in his.
“And then you disappeared. Not physically.
You were still in the house, still next to me in bed.
But you stopped sleeping. You started checking the windows, the doors, the street.
You'd go quiet in the middle of a sentence like you were listening for something I couldn't hear.”
He looked away, and the fact that he couldn't hold her gaze told her more than any answer would have.
“I wasn't asking you to be someone else,” she said, quieter now. “I just needed you to stay. To be in the room with me. And you couldn't.”
His jaw tightened. “I was there.”
“No. You were waiting for something to come through the door. Every day. And I couldn't build a life next to someone who was already halfway out of it.”
He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was rougher, stripped of the control he'd been holding onto.
“You think that was easy? Watching you pack?”
“You didn't stop me.”
A short, humorless breath. “You were already gone, Jessica.”
“I wasn't.” She shook her head. “I was waiting for you to give me a reason to stay. One reason. And you just stood there.”
He didn't answer. His thumb moved against the ring—the same motion she'd felt in the dark at the motel—and she watched his gaze drop to her mouth for a fraction of a second before pulling back to her eyes.
“If we survive this,” she said, “if we actually get across that water, you don’t get to vanish again. You stay. Or you leave for good right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.
“Careful,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because that doesn't sound like pretending.”
The air between them compressed. She could feel the heat of him, could feel the distance they'd been maintaining all day thinning. It didn’t feel like they could survive much more of this honesty.
“And that's a problem,” she went on. “Because if this stops being pretend, I don't know how to survive it when it ends again.”
Dante leaned back against the cracked vinyl of the booth, stretching along the top. To anyone watching, he hoped the gesture would make him feel relaxed. In reality, nothing in him was relaxed.
“Hold up. Someone's looking at us,” Jessica murmured.
Dante didn't turn his head. He let his gaze shift just enough to catch the warped reflection in the chrome napkin holder.
“The guy in the flowered shirt?” he said quietly. “He's watching the game. You're the one who looks like she doesn't belong.”
“I'm not doing anything.”
“You are,” he said, softer now, leaning closer. “You keep scanning the room like you're waiting for something to happen.”
A pause.
“Well, I am.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Look at me.”
She did.
“Just stay here,” he said. “Not out there. Here.”
Jessica shifted closer, her knee brushing his beneath the table, her body angling toward him in a way that would read, to anyone watching, as easy and familiar.
“So what do normal married people talk about in bars?” she asked.
“Mortgages. School districts. Which neighbor's dog keeps shitting on their lawn.”
She almost smiled. “We don't have a lawn.”
“We don't have a mortgage either.” His thumb kept moving on her knuckles. “But we've got a classic ‘Cuda and two borrowed toothbrushes, so we're basically living the dream.”
Her almost-smile became something closer to real.
“So tell me something,” she said. “Something I don't know about you.”
He raised an eyebrow slightly. “You know everything about me.”
“I know everything about the version of you from two years ago. What about after?” She tilted her head. “What did you do with your life?”
He was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping to their hands. “Same as ever. Fixed cars. Didn't talk to anyone. Didn't go anywhere.”
“For two years?”
“For two years.”
“Were you okay?” she asked.
He looked at her, and she saw him consider lying about it. “No,” he said.
She squeezed his hand.
The burner phone in his pocket buzzed.
Dante pulled back immediately, the shift instant, his focus snapping into place as he checked the message.
WEST END. MILE MARKER 14. BLUE STILT HOUSE. KEY UNDER THE COOLER.
“Time to go,” he said.
Jessica slid out of the booth with him, and they moved through the bar, trying to appear like just another couple leaving after a drink, hands still loosely linked.
Outside, the sky had darkened toward something that promised rain.
They walked in silence for a block, then another, the noise of the waterfront fading as they cut back toward the garage. Jessica felt the change in Dante, a tightening in his posture, his gaze lingering on passing cars, on reflections in darkened windows, on anything that didn't sit right.
By the time they stepped into the garage, his unease had hardened into something solid.
The air inside was cooler but stale, their footsteps echoing between rows of parked cars.
“Stay close,” Dante said.
Jessica glanced at him. “What is it?”
He didn't answer right away. His attention was moving across the level, car to car, without settling on any one thing.
Then he stopped.
A police cruiser sat two rows over, angled slightly off-center in its space, Texas plates catching what little light filtered in from the open sides of the structure.
Jessica watched Dante's face go still in a way that made her stomach drop.
“Dante?” she said quietly.
He didn't look at her.
Her hand tightened on his arm. “Is it Ferrera?”
He shook his head once, already shifting so that he stood slightly in front of her. “Worse,” he said. “I think it's your boyfriend.”
Dante kept his hand at the small of Jessica's back as they moved toward the 'Cuda, guiding her, his eyes sweeping the rows of parked cars.
A car door slammed somewhere to their left.
“In the car,” Dante said. “Now.”
“Dante, wait—”
“Get in.”