Earlythenextmorning, James and I were enroute to Quantico.
The end of the road for us.
We needed gas, so we stopped only about forty-five minutes away from the cabin. We’d abandoned our single-night haven before dawn sliced the sky like we were fleeing from a crime we committed.
Maybe we were.
What happened there felt criminal. Stupid. So fucking stupid on my behalf.
James’ too, but his stupidity was born out of something well-intended while mine was the result of self-motivation and a lack of fucking awareness.
James pulled up to a pump station in need of some manicuring and shifted the car into park. Wordlessly, he unlocked his seatbelt and got out.
We hadn’t shared a word since last night.
I think James was too exhausted for words, and I…
For the first time, I couldn’t say what I was thinking.
Staring out at James through the window, I waited for him to press his back to the car before I pulled my phone out. My fingers tapped against the screen, pulling up the app and putting in my location.
The device dropped into my lap when James rotated over his shoulder towards the car, wrapping his hand around the gas pump while keeping his stare on the ground. I’d only caught a glimpse of his eyes a few times today, and not once were they ever looking back at me.
I missed them.
I was going to miss him.
But this all-consuming dynamic between us had taken on a life of its own without me even realizing, and I had to snip it dead before I could do the same with as little aftershock as possible.
A pop from the driver’s side door lifted my gaze, peering up at the rugged curve of James’ chin. He’d left his heavy stare straight ahead and a crack of space just big enough in the door to talk to me through.
“I’m going inside to grab a coffee.”
So get out of the car was an unspoken order I played along with.
Flip-flops slapped my heels in a noisy echo as I followed behind him, glancing a quick check down at my phone.
Anticipation fisted my gut, curling my fingers tighter around the rectangle shape.
A chime announced our entrance into the gas station, James trudging in on cemented feet over to the mediocre coffee set up at the back.
He must have followed his own rules last night and stayed awake after his nightmare. Dark circles hollowed out the space beneath his eyes as he picked out the biggest to-go cup they had, permanent frown lines chiseled around his dusky pink mouth. His hair had gone to complete shit—which meant I totally adored it—and his golden skin was the palest I’d ever seen it.
James honestly looked sick from lack of sleep, which I hated to say was great for me.
See? More disgustingly selfish statement for the sake of an end goal that had been five years in the making.
I knew who I was. I wasn’t proud of it, but I knew. I was a self-serving, terrible, no-good woman, and the proof of it was miles long.
Johnny. Demitri. James.
At least with Demitri, I’d been upfront about what I wanted from him: Sex. To piss off my dad. To fill the void of loneliness.
But James wasn’t awarded the same grace from my villainy.
No, I saw the animalistic shadow lurking behind his eyes, and writing him off as any other loathsome man who deserved retribution, I went after it. I pushed and I played and then I clung when he proved to be an anomaly in the system: the existence of Heaven and Hell in one man.
All I wanted was for us to fuck each other and hurt each other and bleed our darknesses into each other, because I didn’t think anything else was possible.