Page 54 of You Can Run

“But you didn't,” he said.

“No.” She looked down at her hands. They'd stopped shaking. “I didn't.”

They drove on. The storm pressed in on all sides, the world narrowing to the reach of the headlights and the rhythm of the road.

The houses began to thin, giving way to stretches of open land where the water crept closer to the asphalt and the structures that remained stood elevated on narrow stilts, their shapes dark against the grey.

Jessica watched them pass, one after another, each more isolated than the last. The landscape felt like a physical expression of what was happening to her life, everything she'd known falling away, the spaces between growing wider, until all that was left was whatever she was driving toward.

NINETEEN

The stilt housewas a lonely box perched on twelve-foot timber pilings. When Dante cut the engine, the storm immediately filled the silence, the wind hammering the car, the rain coming sideways off the Gulf.

“Wait here,” Dante said.

He stepped out into the rain, and she watched him through the blurred windshield, head down, shoulders hunched, as he found the key taped under an Igloo cooler exactly where Miller had said it would be. He held it up, and she took that as her cue.

She grabbed the plastic bag of gas station supplies and ran for the stairs, the rain hitting her hard. The wooden steps creaked under their weight as they climbed, and Dante unlocked the door with wet hands and pushed it open.

He didn't turn on the lights.

Jessica stood just inside the doorway while he moved through the space, checking the windows, checking the single closet. It was a one-room efficiency: a kitchenette along one wall, a wide bed tucked into an alcove, large windows that should have looked out over the Gulf but were just black mirrors full of storm.

She set the bag on the counter and stood in the center of the room, her hair plastered flat, t-shirt soaked through and clinging to her. She was shivering, a violent tremor she couldn't suppress.

Dante turned back to her and stopped.

For a moment they just stood there, dripping on the floor of a stranger's house.

“You're freezing,” he said.

“I'm fine.”

He crossed the room and his hands landed at her sides before either of them could think about it. The wet fabric was cold under his palms at first, then less cold where he held her. She sucked in a breath but didn't move away.

“We're okay here,” he said. “For tonight.”

Jessica looked up at him. In the dark, with the rain hammering the windows and his hands on her ribs, the distance they'd been keeping felt less than it ever had.

“For tonight,” she repeated.

“Yeah.”

She held his gaze. “Then let it be tonight.”

She heard herself say it and understood what she was doing—drawing the same line he kept drawing, the one that let them have this without either of them having to look at what came after. A coward's bargain. She didn't care. She was tired of being brave.

Something in Dante's face shifted. “Jess?—”

“Don't.” She pressed her palm flat against his chest, over his heart, where she could feel it going. “Don't make it more than I can hold right now. I can do tonight.” Her voice caught. “I can't do the part where we pretend there's an after. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

For a moment he didn't move, and she thought he might pull back, the way he had in the motel.

Then his hand came up to the side of her face.

“Tonight,” he murmured. Then he kissed her.

It wasn't like the motel kiss, the desperate, colliding force of two people who'd been starving. This was slower, deliberate, his mouth finding hers like he was making sure she understood this was a choice. His thumb traced her cheekbone, and she felt the restraint in him finally let go.