AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If this had been any other scenario, I would’ve started committing a homicide the very moment that Trista stood up on her toes to hug Utah when she said goodbye to him. But my eyes never even left Memphis.
“If I don’t hear from you at least once every twenty-four hours, I’ll be on my way back here, Memphis.”
She smiled for real that time and it loosened whatever was trying to squeeze my heart until it burst. I looked down at the bundle of papers she’d handed me and flipped open the passport that was on top.
“Or,” I choked out while I stared down at the photo Memphis had slipped in there, the one of her and her friends at that book fair. “If you ever decide that you just want me to come back to teach you to drive, I’ll be on my way, sweetheart.”
She gave up trying to hold back her own tears and crashed into the front of my body so I could hug her. I kissed the top of her head and had to squeeze my own eyes shut to keep from just fucking sobbing right there on the sidewalk.
“I’ll see you again, Jersey Boy.”
I couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question, but my response was the same either way.
“You will, boss lady.”
epilogue
TRISTA
He didn’t turn into a brand new man overnight. We’d been here for months, and Jersey was still the very same asshole he’d been when he tossed me into that trunk the first time; but there was also very much a lighter side to him these days. The childish sarcasm and attitude seemed to be bone-fucking-deep personality traits that simply could not be removed from his existence.
But he laughed now.
And he smiled.
He did both a lot, actually.
He even pulled pranks when he got bored and decided that we needed to fight about something to liven things up again.
Memphis never failed to check-in with him within her allotted timeframe either. I think it meant just as much to her as it did to him. I didn’t dare to tell him that I got text messages from her every so often too, because her messages to me were usually about Utah. She’d decided on the same time every single day that she’d text him though, and she kept to it religiously; almost as religiously as I could find Jersey pacing around with his phone in his hand in the few minutes leading up to that time every day. And when I say religiously, I mean Memphis missed her regular time by three whole ass minutes one day and the man had already called for a car to come pick him up and take him to the airport. We hadn’t ever really talked about why this island had been the one that he chose, but there was never any doubt in my mind that it was almost entirely because it was outside of U.S. control and still only a four hour flight to Miami.
He didn’t actually buy an island, either. He disliked people, but he knew I always felt better in populated areas where I could blend in and hide in plain sight if it became necessary. But he did buy land on this island. He had Memphis get her hands on a recreated version of whatever license this island required for foreigners to be able to purchase property here. Most of the people spoke English, there was an outrageous and constant flow of tourists in and out, and the ever-changing ocean of faces around us somehow really did ease my mind. Knowing that Jersey never actually had to go anywhere or be away from me was probably the real reason behind that. I had pretty sound reasoning that suggested I was already living with the most dangerous man on this island.
Within a week of being here, Jersey hired someone to come out and build a private dock that gave me a walkway straight to the ocean from the back door of the house. And the week after that he had one of those crazy little suspended huts on stilts built right off the edge of that dock and then furnished it like it was our own little honeymoon suite on the water. Needless to say, that was where I really lived. The temperature here never dropped below 70 degrees and the water of the Caribbean always looked perfectly blue. It was a strange little paradise to find myself in after spending years living out of a backpack with barely enough cash to survive and having to steal identities from other people. If anyone under the sun had tried to tell me I’d end up obsessively in love with the unhinged bounty hunter who’d locked me in the trunk of his car, zip tied my wrist to his, made me want to somehow simultaneously scream and stare at him in silent adoration, and fucked me within an inch of my life every single time, I’d ask for a hit of whatever drug they were taking, because it sounded like a fucking fantasy come true.
I laid on my chair on the dock, smiling to myself like a lunatic while I thought about the last year. I’d been kidnapped, stabbed, shot; and it was still the best year of my weird life, even with the amount of devastation that it included.
“Deep breath, baby,” Jersey whispered from right beside me before I squealed and tried to squirm away from him because that meant he was here to tip the chair until I fell right out of it and into the fucking ocean.
And that was exactly what happened.
“You looked a little too peaceful,” he said once I’d managed to get my head back above the water.
“I hate you.”
He smiled while he stared at me for a minute before he leaned over the edge of the dock to hold a hand out toward me. I learned quickly that I’d never be able to pull him down into the water from this position. I’d tried on several occasions. It only resulted in him lifting me out of the ocean just to throw me right back in it for even trying to do the same to him. I usually settled for clinging to his body like a leech the second that my feet were on the dock in front of him just to make sure I could soak whatever he was wearing too.
We went out for dinner that night, just like we did most nights. Every time I ended up sitting across from him, I wanted to ask if he was attempting to make up for that first date that never actually happened and ended with me in the trunk of Persephone. But I was more than certain the response would be something sarcastic about how that was where I deserved to be just for strapping a knife to my thigh before that date, so I never did ask. Instead, I just enjoyed the sight of him smiling and I reached for one of the hands that I’d gotten so used to holding; hands that had the power to make the entire world spin, or to bring it grinding to a standstill depending on who they were touching.
* * *
JERSEY
I woke up entirely certain that flash hurricanes had become an issue overnight in the Caribbean with the way the wind must’ve been blowing. Then I remembered that I actually just slept next to a chainsaw each night. I didn’t mind it. Anytime she woke me up this way, it was a guarantee that I was going to wake her up as well. She slept in that weird position that all females seemed to prefer. She faced away from me, half on her stomach and half on her side with one knee almost up to her fucking armpit. No complaints on my end about it. Easy access, since she still only slept in the black shirt that she’d taken from me all those months ago in that hotel room.
The bottle of lube that sat next to my side of the bed got a lot of use these days. I added it to myself before I made sure there was a little extra on my fingers and sent them exploring in between her legs. She never reacted immediately. The girl was the heaviest sleeper I’d ever encountered, and it made for a great fucking time. Her body understood what was happening before her brain ever did. She started squirming and sighing without ever waking up. Just the fucking sounds that she made were enough to have me rock hard in no time. I crawled over the top of her body until she was between my legs, and she started to stir when she felt the bed move around her. But she very much moved the wrong direction if she thought she was going to escape me. She ended up on her stomach under me, so I forced her legs apart and pushed my hips down against her until I was nearly halfway inside her. She tried to raise her upper body off the bed in an instant when she woke up.
“Nowhere for you to run, Fancy Face,” I said and put a hand right between her shoulder blades to push her back down. “And even if you tried,” I leaned down to whisper right into her ear. “There’s nowhere in this world you could go that I wouldn’t find you.”
