Nobody but Us (22 page)

I pick up Will’s cell phone.

“Smile for me,” I demand, aiming the camera in his direction.

He startles and looks at me curiously. “What are you doing?”

“I miss your smile so much.” My voice cracks. I clear my throat. “Smile for me now and I’ll take your picture so I can look at it when things are tough.”

“I can’t think of nothing to smile about right now.”

“Not even me?”

The tension in his shoulders deflates a little and he puts one hand on my knee. “Yeah, for you I think I can come up with something.”

He tries.

“That. Is pitiful. Come on, Will. Pucker up. Work the camera.”

His mouth twitches, but I want more. I kiss him.

“Not enough.” I take on a sleazy Hollywood voice. “Baby, don’t you want to smile for me? Say … ‘Zoe makes me hot and bothered.’”

“It’s true. You do.”

“Yeah, but say it!”

“Zoe makes me hot and bothered.”

“Ugh.”

“What?”

“If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t believe you.”

He laughs a little and I snap his photo. “Pathetic. But it’ll have to do for now.”

His hand’s on my cheek. “I know. I’m sorry. It’ll get better. Believe me?”

I can’t answer him. I look down to avoid his eyes and slip the phone into my jeans pocket. “Can we stop for a sec so I can mark a cactus?”

Another tiny laugh, but his eyes are wary, questioning. He wants to know if it’s going to be like the last time we stopped. I turn away from him.

“I drank a lot of water,” I mumble, “and the road’s bumpy.”

He doesn’t sigh like I expect him to, but quietly says “okay,” and pulls to the side of the road again.

He waits in the car while I get out and pick through the shrubbery. I find the only bush taller than my waist and creep behind it, pulling the phone out of my pocket. I shiver. Dark circles of fallen tears polka-dot the ground. How can I do this to Will? Can I convince myself I’m doing it
for
him, not
to
him? What if he really does need something … professional? If his mom left behind the worst of her when she dumped him? What kind of man could he be with the help he needs? Would he even get it? Is it possible for two people who never really had a chance to find someone who could turn us around? What if they take him to prison? What would my Will become then?

They’ll have to know it was an accident. I’ll
make
them know. Make them see the Will I know, the goodness and effort and compassion that is the
real
him.

I dial Lindsay’s house. It doesn’t matter anymore who might be listening in or tracing my call. Lindsay picks up after the second ring.

“Zoe?”

My hand trembles and I drop the phone into the sand. I search for it, praying a scorpion or poisonous snake bites me before I can find it so I don’t do this. I brush the edge with my pinkie and pick it up.

“Zoe, is that you? Will? Hello?”

She sounds so far away.

The metal of the phone melds into my hand as it warms to my temperature. I wrap my fingers around it.

“Are you okay? Where are you? What’s happening?” Lindsay’s pitch is higher, the words coming out faster. The panic goes straight to my heart. I should hang up. I shouldn’t do this. I should let her wonder, assume, hope I’m okay. I should tell her things are fine, I just wanted to hear a familiar voice. What am I doing?

I press the phone to my ear. It’s gritty and hard.

I swallow. Choke on the bile in my throat.

I’m going to puke.

Will hollers out the window, asks if everything’s all right.

There’s sand in my mouth. I lick my teeth.

Oh God, if I do this—

If I don’t?

“Lin? We just left Vegas. We’re headed to Barstow.”

I hang up.

THERE’S ONE LAST TOWN OF FLASHING LIGHTS AND casinos, then we leave Nevada and drive into California. And, man, I feel like I can breathe again. So many places to get lost here. Hell, we could hole up in the desert with a tent if we had to.

The sun’s coming up behind us, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. It’s barely over the horizon, and the shadows of the shrubs, the hawks on the telephone poles, the car, are long and skinny.

Zoe’s been quiet for a long time, and I’m trying to convince myself it’s one of those comfortable silences, but I ain’t so sure about that. She stares out the window as though she can’t bring herself to look at me. I’ve done too many things wrong. I couldn’t look at me, neither. I wonder if I can change this road we’re on or if it’s too late. It always feels too late for me.

“You getting hungry?”

She shakes her head.

“That’s good. Don’t look like there’s much coming for a while.” She don’t smile at the half-assed joke. I twist the wheel in my fists. “I’ve done some pretty bad things. I’m sorry I ain’t this amazing person for you. You deserve better.”

She faces me, finally, with big eyes and a trembling chin. “You’re everything,” she croaks.

I have to get us out of this. Find that freedom we had the first day we left North Dakota. We can get through this. It’s all I want her to believe.

“I think I’ve figured out who my dad was. I think he was the devil. It runs in my veins. Still think you want to be with me?” I grin at her, try to change that look on her face. But I can’t even do humor right now. She looks at me all sad, sadder than before, and I know I’ve failed at everything. “I’ve learned a lot about what not to do, you know? I just have to get down the part of what I should be doing.”

She nods at me. “I want you to get that part down, too.”

“I know. I will.”

I rub my face, dragging the back of my fist across my eyes. They’re heavy. I’m used to being tired in my muscles after working all day, but this staying up for days is dragging on me. I swear I’m seeing a wet road in front of me, even though there ain’t been rain since we got to the desert.

“Take a look at the map. Pick someplace for us to stop in California, would you? We’ll get you something to eat and take a nap or something.”

“I’m not hungry, really,” she says, but she reaches for the map book and thumbs through the pages. She ain’t really looking at them, though. She takes a breath. “Will, maybe we should turn around.”

I raise my eyebrows at her. Her next words spill out in a rush.

“Go back to Vegas. You’re right, it’s a big place. How would anyone find us there? Maybe … maybe we should stick to our original plan. Instead of all this … so confusing. We don’t know where to go in California. What to do. Who will be there. What are we doing there?”

“C’mon, Zoe, you’re supposed to be the steady one. What do you want me to do? We can’t go back the way we came, remember? We got no one.”

She sucks on her lip for a second before letting her shoulders slump. “No, we can’t go back. I just … don’t know if I want to go to California anymore.”

A nagging builds up inside me, like a roach creeping along my arm, and it’s tough to find the words I need.

“You don’t want to go to California … or you don’t want to go there with me?”

She fixes me with a gaze, and my head’s spinning with not knowing what she wants or don’t want.

“Being with you, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“So let’s stop right here. Build a shelter and rough it in the desert. What do you think?” She laughs at that. Finally laughs. “Okay, maybe not. We’ll keep going. A little while longer. But we’ll stop soon, ’kay?”

She stares at me for a while, not answering. I look at her once, twice, checking on the road in between glances. Something’s going on in her head. I hate not knowing what. There’s cars behind us, red and blue. A little sports car, a pickup truck. No shiny black sedan, no white car with flashing lights. There’re cars in front of us, too, putting on their brake lights, and I wonder if there’s an animal in the road or something. What could be big enough to stop traffic out here?

“Are you sure you want to keep going?” She’s sitting up straight, eyeing the road. We get closer to the truck in front of us and it’s hard to see around it. “Are you sure you want to see what’s up there? Will?” And now she’s close to me, and I can smell her and taste her in the air. She’s sweet like ripe fruit. I lick my lips and kiss her temple.

“What?”

“You want to do the right thing?”

I let out a breath. “Yeah. Figure there’s a first time for everything, right?” I attempt another grin, but Zoe ain’t having it. She takes off her seat belt and scoots onto me, wrapping her arms around me and planting her lips on mine. I press the brake to the floor and ignore the honking cars behind us. They can all go to hell.

She pulls away, a centimeter away.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

“There’s cops up there.”

I pull her body harder against me.

“I saw them.”

“For me?”

She shrugs, then nods. “For us.”

I kiss her again, slow, like there ain’t no one ahead of us and no one behind us. Then I tuck Zoe back into her seat. The truck in front of us inches forward, and I swerve the car out of the lane to see the barricade about half a mile up ahead. Police cars turned sideways with their lights flaring, orange cones, and officers directing traffic.

They weren’t behind us—they were in front, all this time.

The cars crawl through the barricade.

I ain’t having none of that.

“You better get your seat belt on.”

HE SLAMS ON THE GAS AND MY HEAD SLAMS INTO the headrest. My arms flail, looking for anything to hold on to. I settle on the door and Will’s elbow and squeeze both.

“I got this,” Will says as the Camaro growls like a rabid wolf. We leap off the highway and into the desert, mowing over short, thick shrubs with the car’s fat tires. There are shouts behind us as officers scramble into their cars and take to the sand. Will floors the gas, and the speed is electrifying. The ring of the cops’ sirens swirls in my ears, the wail trading time with my throbbing heartbeat.

“Will!” I scream. I spin around, my hair whipping at my face, to see the cops closing in on us. Part of me wants them to catch up, stop this, take us somewhere safe. The other part wants us to run, run, as far away as we can. Just go forever.

What have I done?

A sharp turn to the left and I’m flung face-forward again.

Will’s mouth is set in a tight line as he leans over the steering wheel and focuses on avoiding the rocks and cracks in the earth. But they’re hard to see and we hit a narrow valley, the Camaro dipping down for an instant, then flinging us into the air with a shout and a sharp spinning of the tires. We land, bounce once, twice, before the car settles back into its bumpy pace.

It’s all I can do to remember to breathe. But the dust-filled air chokes me and I sputter against it, desperate to inhale pure oxygen.

Will spins the wheel to the left again and my body slams into the door. My head bangs against the window and begins to ache. But we can’t stop for that.

I check the side-view mirror and flinch when I see the flashing lights behind us.

Objects are closer than they appear.

“They’re right there.”

Will grunts and throws the wheel to the right.

My face hits his shoulder and I taste blood.

“We’re not losing them!” I shout as we leap a larger shrub and our heads thump into the top of the car simultaneously.

“How’d they know we’d be here?” he shouts back, his eyes flickering from me to the road.

My heart races. I swear, I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I pant and shudder and grab the dash.

It’s a rhetorical question, thrown out into the breeze because he doesn’t realize I know the answer. Because he never dreamed I could have betrayed him like this.

But I did.

“Will.”

“Not a good time.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too,” he says distractedly.

I raise my voice to be heard over the sounds of the chase. “No, I mean…..
I love you
. I thought I loved you before we left. And a couple days ago I thought that, too … but what I feel now is bigger. The kind of bigger that makes me want to do the right thing. You make me need to do the right thing. Our love like this, grown while we committed crimes—it’s going to destroy us.”

His eyebrows knit together as he tries to process what I’m saying in between steering the car around mounds and craters in the dirt. The words are rushed, falling over each other in their haste to get out of my mouth. He gives up and absently squeezes my knee before returning his hand to the wheel. I’ll tell you this again later, I promise silently, when this is all over and we’re together and life is better—the
real
better we planned it to be.

We’re approaching jagged hills. We can’t go much farther and I want to tell him that, want to tell him how sorry I am, but he’s determined to get around them. We careen left, the tires skidding in the sand and the back end of the car rounding us off course. The cops are set to T-bone right into Will’s side. My heart races and I can’t let that happen; I can’t let him get hurt.