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What the fuck! I haven’t had
a reaction like this in a long, long time. I’ve carefully maneuvered things in my life to be just out of reach…for others. Not to get to me. Just keep everyone smiling and happy and unconcerned. And that Carly bitch just…Christ.
I groan. My hands slide down my face. My heart is pounding in my ears. Either from the heat or my soaring blood pressure. Probably both.
I can feel Melody behind me. Sense her. But she doesn’t say anything.
All of a sudden, I realize how out of control I am. How she must see me. The complete opposite of the calm, controlled guy she saw giving the practiced to perfection speech. The guise is over. Whatever cool and collected persona I was trying to impress her with is gone.
“Want to get out of here?”
The words are out of my mouth before my brain can process them. I turn around to face her, my throat tight, my pulse jumping.
Melody is wearing her pink bandana around her wrist. She looks me in the eyes while fidgeting with the worn, folded material. “We’re not supposed to leave, right?”
It feels like she actually thought that reply through. I expected a snarky response; something mocking my sudden detour from Mr. Do-gooder. If she only knew.
“It’s not lockdown. You’re required to finish your treatment, which most find harder if they leave.” I stuff my hands in my pockets and jerk my head in the direction of the parking lot. “That’s my bobber right there. One ride. I won’t rat you out.”
Her gaze travels over the courtyard to my bike, and her brown eyes widen. “Ride?” She grabs my arm and pulls me behind her as she power walks. “Why the hell didn’t you say that from the start.”
Melody
The demons do envy, do dream
SINCE BEING INCARCERATED AT Stoney Creek, I have become the walking dead.
I move and talk and eat; I exist—but I’ve stopped living. I’ve been in a holding pattern, waiting for the next part to start. Unsure what that would be, or who I’d be. Everything that once mattered is gone. Nothing could wake up my deadened senses.
Until now.
The wind whips my cheeks, my hair blows in tangled ribbons behind me. The rumble beneath my thighs, the vibration traveling through my body, exhilarates me, and it’s like waking from of a coma. A bed-ridden patient seeing the sky again for the first time. Tasting chocolate after nothing but pea soup for years.
Fuck. I don’t even know if that’s what coma patients really eat. I probably saw it on a soap opera when I was a kid. One of those my mom devoured every day, drunk, yelling at the screen. But I don’t care; I laugh at myself. I open my mouth and actually hear my full volume laugh over the roar of the engine.
Boone glances over his shoulder. “Like it?”
“Hells yeah.”
He twists the throttle, and we zoom over the asphalt. Coasting down highway A-1 toward an unknown destination. And I don’t want to know where. If he takes me all the way to the bottom of the world down in Key West and we never return, I’d be all too happy.
We swerve around cars, pass brig trucks, sail through lights. The road ours.
Then he slows to take a turn down a dirt road. I tighten my hold around his waist. We lean together as the bike tilts…and it’s like coming home. I’m itching to drive. To get behind the handlebars and rev the engine.
Too soon, the bike is coming to a stop. I look around and say, “Where are we?”
Boone allows me to slide off first before he kicks down the side stand. He sits back on the seat and rests his hands on his jean-clad thighs, his gaze wondering over the gray lake. “One of my favorite escapes to beat the heat.” He cocks his head toward the sandy bank and then he hops off. “Thought some cooling off and solitude could do us both some good.”
I smirk while trailing his lead, linking my hands behind my back. “Solitude. Right. Because I haven’t gotten enough of that lately.”
He kicks a rock out of his path. “What? You’ve been around nothing but people. You’re not cramped with roommates, counselors, and nurses all up in your business?”
I half-smile and shrug a shoulder. “It’s different. Those people…they’re not really—” I try to find the right word “—there. They’re like window-dressing. Props in a very bad movie. Like a Twilight Zone version of my own. I’m still waiting for the credits to role, for all this to be over.”
Boone stops and turns to look at me, his hazel eyes squint in contemplation of my voiced thoughts. I realize I’m toeing that invisible line, giving him a bit more insight into myself than he probably wants.
Dumb or not, that rule’s in place for a good purpose. The only reason someone doesn’t ask you about yourself is usually because they don’t want to be asked the same. I’m not in a rule breaking mood, so I let the silence consume the moment.
