The Six’o clock bus

Chapter 17:

I wake up with his arm around me.

For one second — one stupid, sleepy second — I don't remember anything. I'm warm and I'm safe and there's a heavy arm across my waist and breath in my hair, and it's the best I've felt since I can remember.

Then I remember everything.

I open my eyes.

Gray light. Rain on the window. Kael's chest against my back, bare, warm, rising and falling slow.

Both of us still dressed. That's the first thing I notice. My t-shirt's still on. His jeans are still on. He's got one arm under my head and one across my waist and there's a blanket over both of us that wasn't there when we started.

I lie very still.

And then it comes back to me. All of it. His mouth. His hands. The way he picked me up off the floor. The way he laid me down.

And then the way he stopped.

"Not like this," he said. Right against my shoulder. And then he rolled off me and lay on his back staring at the ceiling with his chest heaving, and I said what's wrong, and he said nothing's wrong, I just ain't gonna be the second man who ever took something from you.

And I argued. God, I argued. And he listened to every word and then he said, in the morning, if you still want it, I'm yours. But not tonight. Tonight you're gonna sleep.

And then he pulled the blanket up.

And I slept.

I actually slept.

"You're awake," he says.

His voice is rough with sleep. He hasn't moved his arm.

"How do you know?"

"Your breathing changed."

"That's creepy."

"That's observant." He stretches. His arm tightens around my waist and pulls me back against him and I feel all of him and my whole body goes hot. "It's twenty to six."

I sit up.

"Twenty to six?"

"Bus leaves at six."

I'm out of the bed. My feet hit the floor and my ribs complain and I don't care.

"Where are my boots? Where's my bag? Kael, where are my boots—"

"They're by the door." He hasn't moved. He's lying there with one arm behind his head watching me. "Elara."

"I need — I have to —" I'm grabbing things. My bag. The picture of my mama. The twenty-dollar bill. The gray t-shirt. "I have to get dressed, I have to get downstairs—"

"Elara."

"What."

"You don't have to get on that bus."

I stop.

He's sitting up now. Slow. His hair's a mess and his eyes are still half-lidded and he's got the blanket across his lap and a bruise going yellow on his shoulder from something I don't remember.

"I'm not gonna ask you to stay," he says. "That's not what this is. I said three days and I meant it. But I'm gonna say something and then I'm gonna shut up and let you decide."

"Kael—"

"Twenty to six. The bus is at six. Dave's gonna be in the lot at quarter till. And if you get on that bus, you're gone, and I'll never see you again, and I'll live with it because that's what I said I'd do." He looks at me. "But if you get on that bus, you're gonna be somewhere I can't protect you when your husband's got two hundred fifty thousand dollars on your head and a detective in his pocket."

"I know."

"Across the state line don't mean safe. It just means farther."

"I know."

"And there ain't a thing that happens to you after that that I can fix."

"I know, Kael."

He's quiet for a second.

Then he says, "So what do you want?"

And I stand there in the middle of that little dusty room with a bag in my hands and I don't know what to say.

Because what do you want is a question nobody's asked me in two years, and the last time I answered it, it was with a yes to a man in a white dress.

"Kael," I say. "If I stay —"

"You stay because you want to. Not because I want you to. Not because you're scared. Because you want to."

"And if he comes?"

"Then he comes."

"And if he hurts you?"

"Then he hurts me."

"And if he hurts you because of me, I have to live with that for the rest of my life." My voice cracks. "You don't get it. You don't get what it is to have somebody get hurt because of you. To have your mama die in a fire—"

And I stop.

Kael doesn't move.

"What," he says.

"Nothing."

"Elara."

"Nothing. Forget it."

"Your mama died in a fire."

"She died in a fire." The words come out flat and dry. "They said it was the wiring. It was an old house. It happens."

And Kael says, very quietly, "And a man took a picture of that house six months before you ran."

Silence.

I look at him.

"Don't," I say.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

"I was thinking it." He swings his legs off the bed. "And you were thinking it too, or you wouldn't have said don't so fast."

The clock on the dresser says five forty-four.

"Get dressed," Kael says. "Bus is at six."

I get dressed.

Not in the t-shirt. In the jeans and the boots and the shirt Miss Ada picked out and the cut on my shoulders, and Kael doesn't say a word the whole time. He pulls his own boots on. Pulls his own shirt on. Doesn't look at me.

Downstairs the bar's cold and dark and Jax is already there, standing by the back door with a duffel bag.

"Prez."

"Jax."

"You want me to ride up with Dave?"

"No. I want you to stay here and watch the bar and not let anybody in it who ain't from this town."

"Prez—"

"Jax."

Jax goes quiet.

The back door opens onto the lot. The gravel's wet. The sky's the color of old dishwater. And there's a bus idling behind the bar with a man in a flat cap leaning out the window.

"Morning," Dave says. He looks at me. "You're the passenger."

"I'm the passenger."

"Alright then. Bag goes under. You sit up front with me. And if any fella in a gray hat gets on before the state line, you lay down in the aisle."

"Okay."

"Okay." Dave grins at Kael. "You owe me."

"I know I owe you."

"You owe me big."

"I know I owe you big, Dave."

Dave ducks back inside.

And it's just me and Kael in the lot in the gray morning with the bus idling and the rain coming down thin.

"Alright," he says.

"Alright."

And he doesn't move toward me. Doesn't reach. Doesn't do the thing where a man grabs your arm at the last second.

He just stands there. Hands at his sides.

And that's what does it. That's what actually does it.

Because Marcus would have grabbed me. Marcus would have said something soft and gentle and then put his hand on my wrist and squeezed just hard enough to remind me. Marcus would have made the choice for me.

Kael just stands there.

"I have to go," I say.

"You have to go."

I get on the bus.

Dave's got a picture of a kid taped to his dashboard and a coffee cup in the holder and a rosary hanging off the mirror. I sit up front like he said. I put my bag on my lap.

I look out the window.

Kael's still standing in the lot. Hands at his sides. Not moving.

And then I see him.

There's a car parked at the town line. I can just see it through the trees. Not the black one. Not the blue one. A third car, silver, low to the ground, parked off the shoulder with its lights off.

It's been there since dawn, maybe.

Somebody's watching the lot.

Somebody's watching the bus.

And the bus starts to pull out, and I turn around, and Kael's still standing there, and he hasn't seen it yet.

"Dave," I say.

"Mm?"

"Dave, stop the bus."

"Can't stop the bus, we're on a schedule—"

"Dave."

He looks at me. Whatever's on my face makes him hit the brake.

The bus stops. The doors open.

I get off.

Kael's head comes up.

"Elara—"

I walk across the lot. I walk right up to him in the rain and I don't stop walking until I've got both hands on his chest and I'm looking up at him.

"There's a silver car at the town line," I say. "It's been there since dawn and it's watching the bus."

His head turns. His eyes go to the trees.

"Where," he says.

"Right of the sign. Past the —"

"I see it."

He steps in front of me. Puts me behind his back. And Jax is already moving, already reaching inside his jacket, already calling across the lot.

And the bus idles behind me with its doors open and Dave's watching in the mirror.

Chapter 17 Ends.