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“I know.” He felt pretty stupid. “I just, I hoped?—”
Vitari checked the mirror, then yanked on the wheel and pulled the Jeep to a skidding stop. He leaned over. His fingers skimmed Francis’s jaw and tilted his head up. The touch stole Francis’s next breath. “All of this, everything I did these past few weeks, I’ve been trying to save you, save us. I don’t know any other way, and I’m sorry it’s not good enough, but the criminal shit is all I’ve got to give.”
Francis caught his hand, holding it still. “You shut me out, Vitari. I thought we… I wanted—” A future, with you. He couldn’t say it. Vitari would laugh, and Francis’s heart might shatter.
“Kiss me,” Vitari said.
“What?”
“Kiss me now. So I know it’s real, and what we have isn’t just in my head.”
Francis swallowed and glanced around them at the empty track. What if somebody saw?
“Nobody is out there.” Vitari shifted closer, kneeling over the gear shift, and whispered, “Kiss me, Francis, so I know I’m not losing you.”
Francis fell into his dark eyes, into the breathless way he begged. They were sweaty and bloody, both a mess, but as he reached up and brushed his fingers over Vitari’s beautiful face, traced the proud line of his jaw and down his bruised cheekbone, all his fears faded. It had been so long since they’d touched. Weeks that felt like months. He so desperately missed the feel of Vitari, the taste of him. Francis shifted forward. The wound in his leg flared up. His vision blurred, and a whistling started up in his ears. “Ugh…”
Vitari smiled and dropped back into the driver’s seat. “We’ll come back to that, when you’re healed up.”
He’d almost had him, almost kissed him, and wanted it, wanted it enough to try to climb over there and take it, take him. But if he tried it, he might pass out again. “Sorry.”
“I’ll find us something to eat,” Vitari said, pulling the Jeep back onto the road. “And you some Advil. We’ve got a long drive ahead.”
He caught Vitari’s smirk and that knowing flicker of delight in his eyes, the anticipation of what was to come the next time they were alone together.
Would it be wrong to blurt out how he loved him now, and beg him to come to Belize, to stay with him? What if Vitari laughed him off? What if he told him the truth, that this couldn’t ever be love.
Vitari would do anything to keep him safe. Except be with him.
And maybe, if Vitari didn’t love him, then he was right.
In the next town, Vitari stocked up on supplies for the road and Francis cleaned up in a restroom, ditching his bloody pants in the trash. The grocery store didn’t have cameras and nobody was around to see him stuff blood-stained clothes in a trash can. He limped back to the Jeep, and they got underway. The paved roads became rough dirt tracks, then overgrown trails, and Vitari had to switch to four-wheel drive for some sections, just to get through.
Francis drifted somewhere between asleep and awake, nodding off, then jolting his eyes open when the Jeep hit a pothole. He dreamed of crocodile boots and a yacht floating in brilliant azure waters, but then the motion made him sick, and he woke feeling grim all over again.
“Hey.” Vitari woke Francis. “Come, see this.” He opened the Jeep door and climbed out.
Francis rubbed sleep from his eyes and blinked to clear his blurred vision. Stars winked in the maroon sky. He climbed down, hissing as his leg complained with a whole array of new throbs, then limped over to where the trees had been cleared and the edge of the road dropped away. He stopped beside Vitari and took in the breathtaking view of the jungle spilling down a hillside into a valley, and a splash of an oceanside town in the distance. Town lights glistened along the shoreline, as though someone had sprinkled glitter on black paper.
Vitari glanced over, his smile brightening his whole face.
The view was stunning, but Vitari standing with his hand on a hip, shirt untucked and unbuttoned halfway down his chest, hair a mess, his priceless smile—that view was worth a thousand sparkling towns in a faraway land.
“San Blas,” Vitari said. “We’ll get a local ferry from there to Cartagena.”
Francis heard him but lost any reply somewhere in admiring Vitari.
“The roads are going to be rough, Padre. We need to stick to the tracks, stay off the main routes. You up for this?”
“What? Yes.” He swallowed and turned his face toward the glistening lights in the distance. “How are we going to get into Colombia without passports?”
Vitari’s grin was the only answer he gave. Did he have a plan, or was all of this improvised? How did he even know where to go and who to speak with to get there?
“Francis?”
Francis smiled over at him and saw how Vitari’s smile had faded.
Vitari stepped closer and gathered up Francis’s hand. “You’re going to be okay.” He swept Francis’s bangs back. “Whatever happens, I’ll always make sure you’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you.”
