CHAPTER 27
“So this is it?” I asked, looking at him. A sense of loss and emptiness had crept up on me, although I hadn’t lost anything, other than maybe my sanity.Then why did it feel like I was losing something I didn’t even know I had?
“This is it!” He leaned into my car window and looked at me with those green eyes that seemed almost luminous in the early morning light. We had collected my bags from the motel and my car from the eco estate, and then Mike had escorted me out of the town. Now, we were both parked on the long and empty road that headed back in the direction of Johannesburg.
“Well, I guess . . . Goodbye, then.” I could hear the reluctance in my voice as I said those words, gripping my steering wheel tightly as I did.
He exhaled, long and loud and slow. “Goodbye, Becca. It was really nice meeting you. I just wish things had happened a little differently, or it had been under different circumstances.” He sounded sad. I felt sad. This was sad! More sad than I think it should have been, given that we barely knew each other. But this was also mad! Sad and mad. And now my inner monologue was a Dr. Seuss book.
“Uh . . . me too,” I blurted out.
“I really did love your book, though.” He smiled a little. “And I’ll definitely buy the next one.”
“Even though I caused havoc in your town trying to write it?” I asked with a small smile.
“Yes.” He smiled back at me and a little ball of panic formed inside me. “Good luck writing it. I really,really. . .” He paused, and suddenly the air felt like it was being sucked out of my lungs. He looked emotional, and I wanted to cry. “I wish you well, Becca, I really do.”
My eyes were starting to sting and I could feel the tight ball of tears starting to form in my throat. “I wish you well, too,” I whispered back quickly, as if I couldn’t get those words out fast enough.
“Okay, Becca, it’s time,” he said, and I nodded. “It’s time to drive off and promise me that you won’t ever come back here again.” He looked at me questioningly.
I started nodding, slowly, tentatively. “I won’t. I’ll stay far away from this place. I promise.”
“Good,” he said. “Because, if you come back, I really will have to arrest you next time.” And then he did something unexpected. He leaned all the way into the car and slowly, softly, so tenderly, he placed his lips on my cheek and kissed me. I quickly turned my face, letting my lips come into contact with his. I pressed them into his. God, they felt nice. We stayed like that for a while—lips touching, but not really kissing—until he finally pulled away from me and stood up.
He tilted his head down to look at me through the window. “You drive safely, now,” he said.
“I will. You too.”
“I will. And good luck writing your book.”
“Thank you.” The goodbye was awkward and stilted and drawn out. But, finally, after standing there a little while longer, he turned around and walked away. I panicked again.
“What are you going to tell the eco people?” I blurted out loudly, mainly because the thought of him walking away right now was so unexpectedly painful.
He turned around again and put his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’ll either say you escaped from our storeroom, or I’ll tell them you are a little crazy and I released you into the custody of the mental institution you came from.”
“Which one are you leaning towards?” I asked.
He looked up, as if he was thinking. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I doubt they’ll believe I escaped. I didn’t do a very good job of breaking in, so . . .”
He gave me another smile. Dazzling, heart-stopping.Shit!Suddenly, the thought that I was never going to see that smile again made me feel cold inside.
“Crazy it is, then.” He took his hands out of his pockets and then slowly raised one of them in the air and gave me a wave. I held my hand up and waved back.
“Goodbye,” he said, and then turned away from me, not waiting for a goodbye back.
I sat in my car and watched him walk away from me. My heart felt like it had slumped into the tips of my toes. I didn’t want him to walk away and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know him, not really, and yet I felt some strange familiarity with him that had me wanting to climb out of the car and run up to him and stop him from walking away from me.
“Shit!” I hissed under my breath. I was so torn. I needed to be back in that town to continue my investigation. But I’d promised him that I wouldn’t go back. Not just promised—if I went back to town, I would be breaking the law. Arrested on the spot. And so I sat in the car and watched as he drove off, unsure of what I was meant to do next.What the hell?This was a dilemma I didn’t know how to solve, like one of those algebraic equations that never seem to end and get more and more confusing as you go.
“Crappitty crap!” I started drumming my fingers on my dashboard, creating a little soundtrack for this moment of indecisiveness. My tune landed up sounding more like theJawstheme, which left me feeling deeply unsettled. A small sense of doom and danger started nibbling at the back of my mind. As if someone bad was coming . . . As if—
I flinched as the phone rang. I looked down at it.Was this a moment of divine intervention?No, not divine—there was nothing divine about this at all. It was the opposite of divine. It was from the devil. My agent’s name flashed across my screen and, in that moment, I knew what I needed to do. Come hell or high water, rain or shine or snow or eco-freaks or hot sheriffs or promises made . . . I needed to be back in that town, because I needed my bloody story!
I didn’t answer the call—obviously. The woman drove a metaphorical icy dagger into my heart. But I did start my ignition and pull off, and then commit a very illegal U-turn. And then, even though I knew I really shouldn’t be doing it, I started driving back to the small town that I had just been kicked out of.
