AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m well aware of his fingers grazing over my knuckles affectionately, and the gesture warms me all over. His long fingers envelop my wrist, pulling me toward him, and I quickly comply as he settles me onto his lap.
I’m sitting sideways, his long legs offering me all the support I need.
“Do you want to go to Canada?” he questions, his hand resting at the back of my nape, toying with my hair.
“It was so important to me, but now…I don’t know,” I confess as his fingers trail down my neck and across to my collarbone.
“What’s important now?” he asks, his breath fanning out across my cheeks.
I don’t reply as I lose myself to his touch.
“How about we just go wherever the road takes us?” he suggests, placing a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth.
“I like the sound of that. And besides, who knows what Tabitha has planned. She did say to keep moving.”
“Then it’s settled.”
“I’ve never really been anywhere. I’m sorry we’re seeing the sights of America as fugitives,” I add sadly.
Quinn inches his face toward mine, mere inches separating us as he whispers, “I’d go anywhere with you, Red. It wouldn’t matter where. Just as long as you were with me, nothing else would matter.”
“Even if we’re Bonnie and Clyde?” I ask, trying to make light of our situation.
Quinn nods, a small smile tugging at his sinful lips. “We could be Thelma and Louise, for all I care. Just promise me no more running away from me. We do thistogether. Promise me.”
I bridge the gap between us, pressing my lips to his before I whisper, “I promise.”
It’s day two, and we need a car. We ditched Quinn’s truck a few miles down the road, hiding it as best we could in a dense area of trees.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble for the tenth time as we walk alongside the road, the early morning sun leading us toward our journey to nowhere.
Quinn walks Lucky on a short leash while he enjoys sniffing everything in sight. “It’s fine, Red. It’s just a truck,” he says, adjusting his black baseball cap to block out the sun reflecting off the pavement.
He only says that to make me feel better, but it’s not working.
“I know you’re lying. So, to make it up to you, I’m going to steal you a hot-ass car,” I reply loudly when a semi roars past us, my hair whipping into my face from the momentum.
Quinn chuckles, his lips tipping up into a heart-stopping smile. “Oh yeah?”
“Yup.”
“I don’t think you’ll find anything but tractors out here, Red,” Quinn teases as we walk past a few farms.
“Why does it smell so bad out here?” I ask, covering my nose as I keep getting wafts of…something.
Quinn chuckles and waves his hand out toward the sky. “That would be the fresh country air you smell, city slicker.”
“Well, if that’s what fresh country air smells like, give me pollution any day.”
That earns me another laugh from Quinn, who finds this simply hilarious. After we decided to go wherever the road took us, we both lightened up a bit, but every so often, I could see his thoughts drifting back home and, no doubt, to Tristan.
I find myself doing the same, but after Tabitha’s ambiguous text message, I try not to think too much about it all because I know she has something up her sleeve. And so do I.
“Red, I think we’re going to have to hitchhike,” Quinn says, placing his hand over his brow and looking from left to right at the vast nothingness before us.
I’m not sure where we are, as we’ve driven for about an hour and dumped the truck in some creepy, remote forest. I shiver when thinking about the desolate, insect-infected spot. I’m trying to keep my cool and not envision every bug known to humankind coming out and eating my face off. We’ve walked a couple of miles into, well, nowhere, so I hate to say it, but I think he’s right.
“Do you think that’s safe?” I ask, swatting a fly away from my face.
