Chapter 18
Luke
We’d been hiding out in our cabin for the last couple of days, and I could see that the worry was eating at Anna. She ate less and less, and when she slept, it was fitful. She had woken up a few times from nightmares, and I had had to calm her down, telling her she was safe, and she wouldn’t be found here.
The cabin was out of the way, and I had been safe here for over a year from some of the worst people on earth. If I had been able to hide out here without being found, she would be safe, too.
Even though I reassured her often, I wouldn’t tell her about my past. She accepted that we were safe, but it didn’t make her worry any less, and I was worried about her emotional state. Anna was getting more depressed, and I hated that there was nothing I could do about it.
On Friday, I woke up to an empty bed. The sheets were cold when I ran my hand over them. Anna had been up for a while.
I climbed out of bed and walked to the living room. The cabin was cold after the long night, and the fire had died down. Anna stood in front of one of the windows, wearing her outdoor coat against the cold. She looked out at the landscape, deep in thought.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She looked at me, startled before she realized it was only me.
“I keep worrying that he’ll find me out here. Every time I look out of the window, I expect to see my dad standing on the other side, looking in.”
The thoughts were a nightmare by themselves.
“You’re safe here, sweetheart,” I said. “No one’s going to find you here. The cabin is well hidden among the trees. You’ve seen how difficult it is to spot from the road if you don’t know it’s there, and the snow makes it hard to travel up here by chance.”
I walked to Anna and pulled her into a hug. “You’re going to be okay.”
“I hope so,” Anna said. “I’m tired of being scared. I’ve been scared since my dad got a hold of Lizabeth’s phone. I don’t even know if Lizabeth and her parents will be okay.”
“He won’t find us here. I think your friend will be all right, too.” I was saying it to make her feel better, but I didn’t know that for a fact. I didn’t know what kind of a person Anna’s dad was. I wanted to know what she was hiding, why she wouldn’t even talk to her dad. I wanted to know what she was scared of and why she was on the run. But Anna was already terrified and wasn’t coping well. I didn’t want to make matters worse by asking her what was going on. It wasn’t any of my business, and unless she wanted to tell me, I wasn’t going to ask. Whenever I wanted to pry, I reminded myself how I would feel if she asked why I was running if she knew I was hiding out. I didn’t want her to know the ugly side of my life, and I was sure she didn’t want me to know hers.
I doubted her reason from running was a bad one like mine was, but anything was possible.
Later that afternoon, Anna came out of the bathroom. She looked irritated and upset.
“Could we make a run to Dillon?” she asked.
I frowned. I didn’t want to head out unless it was necessary. We were making a lot more trips to Dillon than I usually did by myself, and it made me feel like we were showing our faces too often.
“Do you really need to go?”
“I do, yeah. I’m sorry.” She hesitated. “I got the wrong tampons.”
I didn’t even know something like that was possible. Being a woman sounded like a pain in the ass to me if I looked at what Anna was going through to have her period. And it happened every month. But I wasn’t going to argue with her. If she needed something, then I would help her get it.
“I guess we can,” I said. “If it’s really urgent.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said, looking down. She knotted her fingers together. “I know it’s an effort to go into town.”
It was an effort to go into town, and if we were hiding out, I wanted to stay away from town as much as possible. Something about Anna seemed off as if she wasn’t telling me something. She seemed evasive and distant, and it made me wonder if she was hiding something. The last couple of days she was so different than she had been since she arrived. She had been open about everything, but now she was closed off. Maybe it was because she had found out her dad was on her trail. Either way, I didn’t like how she was, now. I had loved it when she was so open and honest with me.
“We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready,” I said.
“Thank you,” she mumbled and started getting ready to go, putting on her jacket and her boots.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I didn’t even try to say that I understood because I didn’t understand at all.
We drove to Dillon in silence. I kept an eye on the weather. The clouds had accumulated again, and I wanted to be back at the cabin before it started snowing. Anna looked out of the window, deep in thought. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but I was starting to sound like a broken record, and I felt like she would only tell me she was “fine” anyway. It was what she had been telling me lately, even though I could see plainly that she was anything but fine. This thing with her dad was eating away at her, and something else was bothering her that I couldn’t pinpoint. It made me uncomfortable.
We stopped at the store, and Anna said she would be back. She headed into the shop without me before I could protest. Usually, we went in together. I waited in the truck for her to finish up. I wasn’t going to run after her if she was so set on shutting me out. Her behavior was so different.
When she came back, Anna had a paper bag with her. She hugged it to her chest when she came in.
“Did you get what you needed?” I asked.
She nodded.
I took a deep breath, unsure how to word what I was feeling.
“Is there a reason you’re being so secretive?” I asked. “When we came here for tampons before you were fine about it. Now it seems you’re set on hiding it from me.”
Anna shook her head and looked down, not making eye contact.
“I’m shy about it,” she said. “It’s weird having my period here where it’s a mission just to get what I need.”
I nodded. I would allow her explanation, but it didn’t mean that I believed her. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe my past with the mafia, my inability to trust any of the people I had been working with, including Frankie, the Big Man who had taken me under his wing, made me suspicious of everyone.
But I hadn’t been suspicious of Anna when she had arrived. It was only recently that she had started acting so strangely, making me think something else was up, that she was hiding things from me and refusing to tell me the truth.
I didn’t confront her about it. I dropped the subject and pulled back into the road to start on the long drive back to the cabin. I wasn’t sure what to think anymore. I wasn’t sure how to handle the way Anna was being. I felt like Anna was hiding things from me, which wasn’t very easy in a cabin so small and with our lives so intertwined. But the novelty of our relationship—if that was what we could call it—and the romance of being stranded in the cabin together was wearing off. Real life was staring to catch up with us, and it was starting to get strained. I didn’t like that Anna was hiding things from me.
The moment I thought it, I reprimanded myself for being such a hypocrite. I was upset that Anna was hiding things, that she wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but I had been doing the same to her since the moment I had met her. She knew nothing of my past, of why I was in the cabin and why I stayed here for so long. I had lied to her about my parents, for God’s sake. But being on the run myself had made me suspicious about Anna’s background and her reasons, and try as I may, I couldn’t help but put myself first when it came to safety.
It was, after all, why I was here. Because I was looking out for number one, and I had to do what I needed to do to stay safe and to survive.
When we arrived at the cabin, Anna walked inside without a word and locked herself in the bathroom. I hadn’t lived with a woman before. Was this what it was like? Would it be like this every month? I pushed the thought of something long-term out of my mind. As soon as Anna knew what was happening with her dad, she would leave, and I would never see her again. I was sure of it.
I pulled my thoughts back to the topic at hand. I had no idea if this behavior was normal and if her hormones were fucking with her. I had heard that it was a rollercoaster for women, but I didn’t have personal experience.
After the longest time, Anna emerged from the bathroom.
“Is everything all right?” I asked. “You were in there for a long time.” I kicked myself for making it sound like I had been timing her.
“Yeah, everything is all right,” Anna said, and it was a refreshing change from “fine.” I wasn’t sure I believed her, though. She still seemed distant and switched off.
Anna put the kettle on. “Coffee?” she offered, and I accepted. I watched as she prepared two cups and waited for the water to boil. I studied her attitude, her mood, and tried to figure out what was going on with her. Maybe I was only being paranoid, and this was normal. Maybe I was reading too much into everything.
But I had been around people who had hidden agendas for a long time, and I liked to think I could spot suspicious behavior when it smacked me in the face.
And Anna was behaving very different than what I had gotten to know about her.
When the coffee was ready, Anna brought my cup to the couch. We drank in silence for a short while before Anna put her cup on the coffee table.
“I’m going to lie down for a while,” she said. “I don’t feel very well.”
She stood up and walked to the bedroom, closing the door. It was something she wouldn’t have done before, but she was feeling sick. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was mood swings and hormones and all the other lovely things that came with a woman’s cycle. I finished my cup of coffee alone, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the cabin and stood up to rinse out the cups. When I picked up Anna’s cup, I realized she had barely touched it at all. The mug was almost full, and the coffee had gone cold.
I walked to the sink and poured the coffee down the drain and washed the cups. Whatever was up with her, I hoped it would be over, soon.