87. Chapter 87
The wagon, bullet holes and all, started up after a few cranks.
Graham and Helen loaded it with extra jugs of coolant and cold drinks from the vending machine and Jase wheeled the motorcycle out the back door. Lindsey set matching helmets on the seat in anticipation of her first ride. It was really happening.
“You got a jacket?” Jase asked her.
“In the car,” she said. She’d already changed into jeans at Jase’s suggestion, but she was perpetually shaking. It might’ve been the steadily cooling air as the sun sank or the memory of gunfire popping in her veins.
It definitely wasn’t the graze of Jase’s lips underneath the desk or how he hadn’t left her side since they survived. On the bike she wouldn’t be able to distract herself with her phone. She’d literally be touching him for the rest of the drive.
She dug through her suitcase in the back of the wagon for the spring coat at the bottom. A pair of hands on her shoulders almost sent her head through the plaid ceiling. Again.
“Still jumpy, huh?” Jase asked. “It’s the gunfire. You’ll probably be on edge for a while.”
“Gunfire. Sure.”
He rubbed her arms as if to soothe her nerves. His touch had the opposite effect.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked.
“What? Ride with you?”
“It’s a lot different than a car, Linds. If you’re feeling unsteady—”
“I’m good. Are you?” she asked. “Can you drive?”
He looked genuinely shocked by the question. “Riding’s the only thing I’m good at.”
“Not the only thing.”
She meant it exactly how it sounded—even if she kicked herself for saying it out loud—and that seemed to surprise him too.
“We closed the place up.” Graham appeared around the side of the shop with Helen. Only two cars needing gas had stopped after Saul was hauled away. “Turned all the lights off. At least it looks closed.”
Jase didn’t answer. He was watching Lindsey with the look she recognized from under the desk. The heat of his stare was at odds with the chill in the air. Lindsey shivered and he tested the fabric of her jacket between his fingers.
“Is this all you’ve got?” he asked. “It’s too thin.”
“It’s summer,” Lindsey said. “I didn’t pack anything heavier.”
“It’s not just for warmth,” he said. “It’s to protect your skin.”
He reached around her to grab his own leather jacket from the back of the car and handed it to her.
“What about you?” she asked.
Jase dug around a little more and came up with one of Graham’s discarded sweatshirts. “This’ll work.”
“He’ll be pissed.”
“Not our problem.”
Jase closed the tailgate and eyed the three bullet holes in it. There were two others in the driver’s side door that Saul suggested they fish out for souvenirs. Graham climbed in behind the wheel, saying, “It’s three hours to Santa Barbara without traffic.”
“Call us when you get there.” Jase turned back with a parting jab, “Actually, call me. Someone smashed Lindsey’s phone on the ground and busted the screen.”
Lindsey put her arms through the sleeves of his leather jacket and Jase set one of the helmets on her head.
“You want it nice and snug,” he said.
She held her breath as he secured the clasp under her chin. It was the final preparation to enter his world.
“Stick close in case we break down!” Graham hollered out the car window.
Jase shouted back, “You’ll be fine.” He swung his leg over the bike, pushed the ignition button, and looked over his shoulder for Lindsey.
“Hang on to me and do what I did,” he said.
Her feet found the pegs behind his legs, and she settled onto the seat.
“Now what?” she asked through the helmet.
“Now you hold on.”
“To what?”
He took a moment to answer.
“Me,” Jase said.
Me. Easy enough, except there was a lot of Jase to choose from in that position.
She started with her hands on his shoulders, then locked them around his waist when the bike started forward with a small lurch.
As they followed the wagon and picked up speed, there was no way not to lean the entire front of her body into the entire back of his, no avoiding holding on tight enough to feel the planes of his stomach underneath his clothes.
Planes her fingers remembered tracing in the dark hotel room in breaks between orgasms.
Her clit throbbed uncomfortably against her zipper that was pressed into the back of Jase’s jeans. It was going to be a long three hours to Santa Barbara if she couldn’t get her brain out of her pants and onto, what? Puppies, kittens, mowing lawn, hammering nails…
Getting hammered by Jase on this motorcycle seat.
She needed a better list of distractions. Immediately. They hadn’t worked in Austin either.
Lindsey breathed through the understanding that her first motorcycle ride wasn’t going to end riding Jase through another series of orgasms, and watched the last of the sun’s red streaks sink below dirt mountains.
They followed the wagon until Jase must’ve been satisfied that Nadine would make it to the coast and gunned it around her.
The cool desert evening grew gradually warmer as they headed west. Deep in California, civilization popped up between the mounds.
Stucco towns, industrial parks, semi-trucks entering and exiting the interstate.
The map skirted around L.A. near the Angeles National Forest, through more mountains and the patchy lights of small towns she’d never recognize in the daytime.
Lindsey didn’t know how Jase remembered the route’s details.
Like everything else he did, Jase drove forward with unwavering confidence, unfazed by sharp turns or upticks in traffic or the woman behind him who had moved her fingers to his waistband, hoping for a sign that he was also tortured by this drive.
In the miles between Saul’s and the ocean, this glimpse into Jase’s world only made her want to sink deeper in it. She’d challenge any woman to hold on to his body for hours, to be wrapped in his jacket and clinging to his back and not wonder what a life on his bike might look like.
They hit the coast in Ventura and followed black ocean waves to the beach in Santa Barbara at the end of the second-to-last map. Jase helped her stand on tingly legs and unhooked her helmet strap. She shook her hair out and took a deep, sweet breath of salty air.
“My butt’s numb,” she said, which was seriously downplaying the tingling discomfort between her legs.
He chuckled, setting a hand on her shoulder. “That’ll happen.” Jase pried his cell phone from his pocket, thumbed a message, and flipped it shut. “They know we’re here.”
The coast, this map, meant Graham and Helen were one step closer to freedom. Whereas Lindsey suddenly found it hard to look at Jase without feeling his loss.
One envelope left.
They were quite literally running out of road.