Chapter Three #4
The denim was still warm from him. The key ring sat deep in the pocket. I moved slowly, pinching the metal ring between my fingertips and easing it upward without letting it scrape the zipper teeth.
Dex inhaled.
I froze with the keys half-free.
His hand moved across the mattress, searching for the heat I’d left behind. His fingers closed on empty sheet. For one terrible breath, I thought his eyes would open.
They didn’t.
His breathing settled again.
I eased the keys free and closed my fist around the ring before it could jingle.
My boots were by the foot of the bed. I pushed my feet into them without tugging the backs straight. The burner phone pressed against my arch, still there, still hidden. I pulled it free and shoved it into my shorts pocket.
The restraints stayed on the nightstand.
So did Dex’s phone.
I left both.
The room key didn’t matter. The door opened from inside.
At the door, I looked back.
Dex lay in the dark, one hand open on the sheet, the crucifix resting against his bare chest. I could still feel his mouth behind my ear. I could still hear the way he’d said trouble like it was a name he meant to keep.
For one breath, staying almost made sense.
Not because it was safe.
Because Dex had taken the metal off before touching me. Because he’d asked for yes. Because he’d found the tiny ink drop and kissed it like it mattered.
Then Crystal’s face rose behind my eyes, pale and scared and too much like mine.
I opened the door and stepped into the pre-dawn.
Cool mountain air hit my overheated skin.
Pine Shadow’s parking lot lay under humming green and orange neon, empty except for Dex’s pickup, my shadow, and a moth battering itself against the office light.
Far down the row, someone snored behind a thin wall.
The mountains beyond the motel were black against the first gray edge of morning.
I shut the door behind me without letting the latch click too hard.
The pickup waited directly in front of room twelve.
A laugh climbed my throat and died there.
Dex had parked it there so he could keep me contained. He’d also left my getaway vehicle close enough that I barely had to cross the blacktop.
I slid the key into the lock. The pickup gave a soft electronic chirp.
Too loud.
I flinched and looked at the motel door.
Nothing.
I climbed in, shut the door, and shoved the key into the ignition with shaking hands. The engine turned over low and deep.
Still nothing from room twelve.
I pulled out before luck changed its mind.
The motel disappeared in the rearview mirror one bright stripe at a time.
I kept the headlights low until I cleared the lot, then took the first county road that climbed back toward the timber.
The pickup was too big, too smooth, too full of Dex.
His map was still shoved beside the console.
His water bottle sat in the cup holder. His jacket lay over the back of the passenger seat, and the cab smelled like leather, dust, and the man I’d just left sleeping in an empty bed.
My hands tightened on the wheel.
The road blurred for a breath.
I blinked hard and kept driving.
Regret was a luxury. I had maybe fifteen minutes before Dex woke, maybe less if the missing heat beside him worked faster than exhaustion.
He’d come after me angry. He’d come after me smart.
He’d look at the empty restraints on the nightstand and the keys gone from his jeans, and every bit of warmth in that room would turn into a problem with my name on it.
Not my name.
Not yet.
A sign flashed past in the headlights.
BEARCLAW MOUNTAIN PASS
The road narrowed as it climbed. Dawn thinned the sky behind the ridge, turning the trees into black cutouts. Fog sat low in the dips, silver where the headlights touched it. Gravel appeared at the shoulder where a service road broke off behind an old wooden sign for a closed trailhead.
Good enough.
I turned the pickup down the service road, drove until the motel was a lifetime behind me, and parked under the thickest stand of trees I could find.
I wiped the steering wheel with the hem of my overshirt because panic made people ridiculous, then stopped because Dex already knew exactly who had taken his truck.
He just didn’t know who.
I left the keys on the front tire where he’d find them if he tracked the pickup before some idiot hiker did.
Generosity looked strange at four in the morning.
So did guilt.
I walked back to the main road with my boots half-laced and my thighs still unsteady from him. The burner phone felt tiny in my hand when I pulled it from my pocket.
One bar.
I typed fast.
JADE:
Need pickup. Closed trailhead off Bearclaw. No headlights until the turn.
For three breaths, nothing happened.
Then the phone buzzed.
CRYSTAL:
Ten minutes. Stay off the road.
I looked down the empty road, then back toward the trees hiding Dex’s truck.
JADE:
Hurry.
I deleted the thread because habit was stronger than exhaustion, then shoved the phone back into my pocket and waited in the ditch grass while morning crept over the mountain.
The mountain cool finally got through.
It found the sweat drying on my back, the bare skin at my wrists, the places Dex’s stubble had scraped my throat, and the deep ache between my thighs. I pulled the overshirt on and wrapped it around myself, but the fabric only made me notice the missing weight of his hand.
Headlights appeared low through the fog ten minutes later.
They cut off before the turn.
A small silver car rolled onto the shoulder and stopped with the engine running.
The driver’s door opened.
“Jade.”
My name sounded cracked in her voice.
I looked at the woman standing on the other side of the car and felt my knees loosen.
Crystal had my face.
Same pale hair. Same blue eyes. Same mouth. Same bones under softer fear and a different life. My twin stared back at me with tears shining under the first gray wash of morning.
I crossed the road.
Crystal grabbed me before I reached the passenger door. Her arms came around me hard, and I let her hold on because she was shaking.
Then I pulled back. “We have to go.”
Her eyes moved over my face, my throat, my wrists. “What happened?”
“I bought you time.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one we have time for.”
Crystal pressed her mouth tight. She looked past me toward the dark road, then unlocked the passenger door. “Get in.”
I slid into the seat.
Crystal got behind the wheel and pulled away without turning on the headlights until the road curved between the trees. Her hands were white on the steering wheel. I buckled in, still feeling his weight, his mouth, and his careful hands in places I had no right to miss.
For a mile, neither of us spoke.
Then Crystal glanced at me, and her voice came out small. “Did he hurt you?”
I looked through the rear window.
No headlights followed.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
That was supposed to make this easier.
Instead, I sat beside my twin with Dex still on my skin, his taste still in my mouth, and one stupid, impossible wish lodged under my ribs.
I wished I’d met him under any name but hers.