Felice
The moment the police released Pierce from the building, Felice nearly fainted from relief. Although his clothes were dirty and his boots dragged behind him, leaving lines in the gravel he walked, Pierce was free, and that was all that mattered.
Running from the car, Felice slammed into him with nearly enough force to topple him over. As it was, he swayed under her weight, his eyes reddened and puffy. But Felice didn’t care. He was out, he was free. She had freed him.
“Felice, why did you — ”
Her eyebrows furrowing, Felice looked up into those eyes that set her heart on fire. “Because I couldn’t leave you in there to rot in jail. You don’t deserve to.”
His gaze sliding to her shoulder, Pierce made a face that shook her to the core. “Perhaps I do belong in jail, Felice. Perhaps I belong there — ”
She interrupted him, “Shut up and get in the car. And no more talk like that.”
They drove back to Felice’s hotel room in silence, each lost in dark thoughts. After they arrived, Pierce blinked into the sunlight like he’d never seen it before. Here, the air was different, wetter and heavier, than it was in desert. Felice missed home and her little white mansion in the desert like a knife to the heart. This town was cold and ugly, and Felice wanted nothing more than to fly home right this instant. But she wasn’t going anywhere without Pierce.
The hotel was some sort of mid-range place with scratchy pillows and the kind of service she’d expect at a McDonalds, but at least no one recognized her here. And that was for the best. The last thing she needed was to have cameras following her around to add to the stress of these insane last couple of days.
Pierce continued to follow her like a duckling, a cloud of unbreakable silence hovering around him like a storm cloud. Felice tried to start up a conversation, but whatever words she might have used shriveled up on her tongue and blew away, leaving her empty. So she said nothing instead, letting the silence grow between them until it took up the whole room. In spite of everything Felice had done, Pierce didn’t even relax when she brought him back to the hotel room.
She gave him clothes to change into, towels, and soap, and pushed him into the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a shove. She ordered too much food from the lackluster room service and waited for it to arrive as Pierce stood in the shower. After about twenty minutes, the food arrived, and Pierce had been standing so long in the water that Felice was tempted to check on him. But the water turned off eventually, leaving the hotel room in near silence.
By the time Pierce stepped out of the shower, Felice had the little hotel feeling homier: a warm meal on the kitchen table, the scent of cheap coffee filling the space, and a tiny fire in the fireplace. But a gas fireplace was better than no fireplace at all, and she wasn’t planning on complaining.
Pierce looked dully around the ugly little room, his eyes running first over the 1980s, glow-in-the-dark patterned couch, then the two queen sized beds wrapped in warm, flannel bed coverings. The balcony door was open a little, letting in a cool breeze of freedom into the space, filling it with the scent of freshly mowed grass. Then Pierce’s eyes slid over the feast Felice had gathered for him. Then, his tired eyes settled on her.
Those eyes were incredibly haunted, shaking Felice to her foundations. His face twisted until he was almost unrecognizable, his eyes swimming with tangled emotions she couldn’t even begin to unravel. “Felice, you — ” He swallowed hard then started again. “You saved me; I don’t — I can’t even begin to …” Settling down on the floor in front of her, Pierce bowed his head over her lap, dripping water from his hair onto her pants.
She stared down at him, unsure of what to say. Her heart was cracking, looking down at this beautiful, broken creature before her. She’d never seen anyone look so vulnerable before, and it filled her chest with an ache that echoed in her very bones.
Without needing him to say a thing, Felice placed her hands over his head, that gentle brush relaxing some of the tension in his shoulders.
And Felice could feel her heart stitching itself back together, filling the void that had become her world since the Gala.
# # #
Pierce
How could he even begin to explain her what it mean that she came for him? Pressing his forehead against the warm fabric of her jeans, Pierce closed his eyes, focusing solely on the feel of her heat radiating out of her and into his skin. There was something incredibly solid about her, even though the whole rest of the world seemed to be off-kilter and a little wobbly around the edges. Being out of jail didn’t quite feel real yet, and Pierce was having a hard time remembering, when his eyes were closed, that he was free.
Felice had saved him. The thought still haunted his every breath, stealing it away until there was nothing left in him but a kind of disbelieving hope. It seemed unreal; it all seemed unreal. No one had ever done anything like this for him before. No one ever stood up for him, a poor little boy without a father. No one stood up for tattooed tough guys who broke the law for a living. It wasn’t done.
Except Felice had. She had gone out of her way to save him. She had flown 3,000 miles with Kenneth to find out how to set him free
Looking up into her face, Pierce saw confusion there and a tentative smile. But there was something else in her. It was a glowing thing that seemed to shine out of her eyes like a beacon, drawing him in. She ran her fingers through his hair, the scrape of her nails against his scalp sending wonderful little shivers through every inch of his body.
“Thank you, Felice,” he said, his throat closing over anything else he might have said. But it didn’t seem like enough. Nothing he could have said was enough. Felice made him feel like he was worth something. Made him feel like anything was possible. And a simple thanks didn’t feel like enough.
“You would do the same for me, Pierce. Now come on,” she said gently, prodding him with her gentle hands. “Let’s eat before this gets any colder.” Pierce winced as he stood, his whole body sore and unhappy from the lack of sleep and his rough travel. After pushing himself to his feet, he took the seat opposite Felice and glanced down at the food. It looked amazing, and he dug in, his stomach suddenly twisting with hunger.
They didn’t speak much while they ate. Pierce occasionally glanced up from his food. He was afraid she would disappear if he didn’t keep her in his line of sight. That all of this would turn out to be a fever dream and he’d wake up in a jail cell, alone and broken.
But each time, she would smile at him, nibble on something from her plate. She was real, as real as the air around him.
As soon as Pierce was full, he could barely keep his eyes open. He laid down, his eyelids drooping. Felice settled down beside him, her fingers running through his short hair over and over again.
It was easy to relax with her there. Felice let him curl up against her body, where he slowly drifted off to sleep, his arms wrapped possessively around her hips.
She said, “Go to sleep, Pierce. You need a little rest. Everything will be better after you rest.”
Although he didn’t quite believe her, Pierce let himself drift off into sleep anyway, pushing his problems out of his mind for another time. Although he wasn’t out of hot water yet, Pierce knew that worrying about it today would get him nowhere. Felice’s body warmed him, her solid presence making it easy to forget his worries. She was, after all, all that mattered.
When he finally collapsed into the black arms of sleep, his dreams were filled with visions of Felice’s emerald eyes.