Chapter 30
RUE
Three hundred yards has never felt like such an impossible freaking distance.
My legs feel like lead, trembling from exhaustion and the lingering effects of the concussion, but I force myself to keep moving. I stick close to Noah’s right side, my eyes darting frantically toward the farmhouse.
What if Bill’s looking out the window? What if he sees us running?
The yellow porch light casts long, menacing shadows across the dirt, and every time the wind howls, I expect to hear the frantic, deep bark of the farm dog erupting again.
Noah’s breathing is heavy and labored beside me. He has the duffle bag slung awkwardly over his shoulder, and he’s carrying Bullet tightly against his chest with his good arm to keep the dog from making a single sound. I know he’s in agony, but his pace is relentless.
We reach the sliding metal door of the massive, corrugated steel equipment shed.
Noah doesn’t set Bullet down. He shifts his weight and uses his hip and his injured left arm to shove against the heavy door. It protests with a piercing, angry squeal that sounds like a siren in the dead of the night.
I look to him, our eyes meet. We both freeze, our bodies rigid, waiting for the farmhouse door to fly open.
But nothing happens.
Noah shoves it again, just enough to create a gap wide enough for us to slip through. I dart inside first, the smell of diesel fuel, dry dirt, and old hay immediately hitting my senses. Noah slips in right behind me, using his boot to pull the heavy door shut, plunging us into the darkness.
It’s fine. We’re fine.
The only light comes from the moonlight bleeding through the cracks in the corrugated steel and a single, dirty skylight high above.
“Is there a truck, maybe?” I whisper, my voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space. My heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s breaking out of my chest. “Please tell me there's a farm truck or something. We could take that.”
Oh my God. Listen to myself.
Noah carefully sets Bullet down on the dirt floor and drops the heavy duffel bag. He steps further into the moonlight, his silhouette tense as he scans the shed. His expression falls, and he lets out a long, ragged sigh that completely deflates whatever hope I was clinging to.
“Just a tractor,” he mutters. “But even if there was, I don’t know that we should try it right now.” He sounds breathless as he speaks. “If anything, maybe we should lay low and figure out what the fuck is going on.”
I step up beside him, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. The massive green and yellow shape of a John Deere tractor takes up the center of the barn, flanked by heavy, rusted plowing attachments and who knows what else.
“And we’re stuck here anyway,” I breathe out, the reality crashing down on me in a panic. I grab for his arm, squeezing it. “When the sun comes up, Bill or his farmhands or dogs or something are going to come in here. We’re completely trapped.”
“Well, we just make sure they don’t see us,” Noah says, his tone flat. He grabs the bags again, pulling away from me. “We need to get off the ground level. Over there. Bullet is going to be an attractant, but we can manage.”
“It’ll be okay,” I reach out and pat Bullet’s head. “We can figure it out.”
“Right there.” Noah points to the far back corner of the barn. Stacked nearly to the ceiling are massive, round bales of hay. They form a towering wall, but near the top, right under the slope of the roof, there’s a gap between the bales and the rafters—a perfect, hidden alcove.
This is insane.
Still, I follow him. Noah tosses the bags up the makeshift staircase of uneven bales and then helps me hoist Bullet up. The climb burns the bruised muscles in my back, but the adrenaline masks the worst of it.
“Just go slow, honey,” Noah helps me up first, his hand resting gently on the small of my back. When we both finally reach the top, we crawl into the gap. It’s tight, cramped, and smells overwhelmingly of dry grass, but it’s completely concealed from the floor below.
Noah collapses back against the hay, his chest heaving as he lets out a quiet groan of pain. He rests his head back, his eyes closing.
“Noah,” I whisper, crawling closer to him in the dark. Bullet sniffs around in the hay, and I sit close to him, breathing in the scent of him.
“We’re okay,” he rasps, his eyes still closed. “We need to rest here for a while, and then… Then we’ll figure it out.”
“You need to take your antibiotics,” I say, my voice trembling as my eyes adjust to the shadows. “How’s your arm feel right now?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” he dismisses, his jaw tight.
“It matters to me.”
Without thinking, I close the remaining distance between us. My knees straddle his thigh as I reach out, my trembling fingers gently touching his jaw. His skin is warm, rough with stubble, and damp with sweat.
His eyes snap open. The pale blue of his irises catches the faint moonlight filtering through the roof.
The heavy, terrified energy of our escape suddenly shifts, thickening the air between us into something dangerous and suffocating. The fear of getting caught, the adrenaline of the sprint, the sheer desperation of our survival—it all pools into a sudden, undeniable gravity.
“Rue,” he warns, his voice a low, gravelly scrape that sends a shiver down my spine. “What’re you doing?”
“I want you,” I whisper, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
His chest rises sharply against my own. The cold, detached mask he’s been using to push me away is completely gone, replaced by a dark, feral hunger that mirrors the frantic beating of my own heart.
“It does you no good to want me,” he breathes, his good hand coming up to wrap around my waist. His grip is possessive, his fingers digging into my hips. “I have nothing to give you but this fucking nightmare.”
“I don’t care.” I lean down and press my lips to his, desperate for the relief he brings me.
Noah groans in a raw guttural way. His hand tangles in my messy hair, pulling me down harder as he kisses me back with a brutal, bruising desperation. I press myself against him, careful of his bad arm.
I whimper as his tongue slides against mine. I shift my weight, straddling his hips in the narrow space between the hay bales, the rough twine of the hay scratching at my jeans.
“Fuck,” he curses against my mouth, his good hand sliding under the hem of my white T-shirt. His warm, calloused palm sears against the bare skin of my stomach, trailing upward until his thumb brushes the underside of my breast.
My breath hitches, my entire body igniting. Out here, hiding in the rafters of a stranger’s barn with the law hunting us, everything feels amplified. Every touch is electric. Every ragged breath feels like a rebellion.
“You're going to make me lose my goddamn mind,” Noah rasps, his lips trailing down my jaw to the sensitive skin of my neck. He bites down lightly on my collarbone, and I bite my lip to keep from crying out.
“Noah,” I challenge him softly, my hands sliding under his hoodie to feel the hard, bruised planes of his chest. “I don’t want anyone to walk in on us…”
He blinks, and then with a sudden, effortless surge of strength, he rolls, pinning my back against the scratchy hay. His large frame hovers over me, blocking out the moonlight. He stares down at me, his chest heaving, his eyes entirely consumed by a dark, possessive fire.
“If anyone comes through those doors today,” he whispers, his face inches from mine, “I’ll kill them before I let them touch you.”
The dark, twisted romance of his words sends a fresh wave of arousal straight between my thighs. I reach up, wrapping my arms around his neck, and pull him back down to me.