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I open my mouth and my jaw aches as I work it, rolling the socket left and right in slow circles.
My body suddenly gyrates when the mattress lifts and drops. A bump, I think. My mind reaches for the answer through a strange fog that doesn’t scare me but confuses me.
Realisation overwhelms me.
I’m in a car.
Bronson
Present day
For the past three hours,we have been on this red dirt back road. Nothing but a wasteland of small woody shrubs surround us. A plane so fucking straight, it feels as though just over the blurry horizon is the edge of the earth. I squint, focusing on the heat rising from the bitumen in the distance, on an impossible curve where the earth and sky collide.
Love it, but I can’t wait to get back to them.
I miss my outlaw.
Miss my beautiful brothers.
I can feel the District in my bones; it’s a part of me and my family. A city built with the bricks of our legacy and bonds, now prosperous only because the residents are revelling in the deals they made with the devil so many decades ago. Withus.
“You crazy son of a bitch!” Shoshanna screams, and I wince.Fuck, she sounds pissed. I was coming to terms with my decision to take her, coming to peace with it, but the rage in her bark throws me straight back into that place of disdain.
I feel it like a knife dragging down my skin and yet, I’ll do it again and again and again if it means I get to keep her. She’ll laugh about it one day. I’m sure she will.
Steering the RV off the road, I mentally brace myself for what’s coming. As I step outside and head to the door of the luxury motorhome, the quiet from within its sheet-metal walls seems unnatural given the screech from a few moments ago.
It would have been easier and quicker to fly her back home, but I can’t get the fucking diamonds through customs, so that was out of the question.
“Calm down, baby,” I say through the door. “Don’t be mad.” I wait with bated breath for her to respond. As I press my palms on either side of the door, I dip my head between them, straining to catch any hint of movement.
Did she fall back asleep?
I gave her two decent shots of ketamine and an antihistamine to extend her slumber, but she should be awake by now. I knock on the door. “Baby, you okay?” When I hear nothing more, I decide to go in and check on her, remembering that she getshangryeasily. “I’m coming in, okay?”
Just as I unlock the latch and swing the door open, something blunt hits me square in the forehead and I grunt from the shock of it. Gripping the throbbing part of my head, my vision blackens slightly, and I stumble backwards.Damn, baby. “Fuck,” I mutter.
She flies past me.
Too quick for me to stop her.
Merely a blur of black as my vision tries to catch up with what I know in my mind is happening.
I hiss and bite back the shock, fight against the static behind my eyes, and leg it quickly after her, not wanting her to get dizzy and stumble. She shouldn’t be running after that fucking trip.
“Where are you going?” I call out, slowly gaining focus on the woman sprinting into the wasteland. I feel relief when she slows down, her head darting from side to side, surveying the scenery. She stops dead in her tracks, looking out over the small twiggy shrubs that scatter the desert.
I stop too, watching her come to terms with the vast landscape. Above her, an eagle circles us. Clouds of dirt floats just above the earth in the wake of her feet.
“There is nowhere to go, Shosh,” I mutter, and I can hear the remorse in my voice as though my vocal cords are all twisted. I approach her slowly, eyeing her small womanly shape surrounded by nothing but desolate space. Clutched tightly in her hand is a metal frying pan.
The culprit of my head lump.
Her long black hair dangles down to just above her backside, loose and wild and incredible. Bare feet covered in red dust shuffle with nervousness. Long shapely legs poke out from below the oversized black shirt she is wearing - my black shirt. “Did you really think I was going to let you go back to him?”
She twists to face me and my heart aches under her expression. Where I thought I’d see fierce eyes ready to go rounds with me, I see amber pools of sadness. Not what was I was expecting. “I’ll never forgive you,” she murmurs.
Her words snake through my veins, so I take a step towards her, feeling the urge to grab her throat and pull her to me. My jaw clenches, but a smile of optimism plays with my lips. “You will.”
