It feels unreal.
I take the steps down from Fletcher’s gym two at a time. As I sweep out onto the street, I see a white Mercedes pull out of a parking space. The bright, white LED lights blind me for a moment, and then it rumbles off, obviously a sport model.
I go to my rental, just a cheap and functional thing, and climb in, and sit in the car for a moment.
Unreal really is the word, and I’m afraid that at any moment I’m going to wake up, and this is all going to be a dream.
What are the chances? How… I shake my head. I can’t even wrap my mind around it.
All I know is that seeing Dee… it didn’t make me feel the way I expected to. I felt a surge of relief, and I wanted her, God, I wanted her. To be close to her, feel her against me.
But I thought I’d be crying tears of joy, and while I feel that, genuine joy, there is conflict. It’s not over! Finding her wasn’t just the end of the road. All this time, all this God damn fucking time I’d been thinking only up until the point that I found her.
I never thought about what we’d do after that.
But now I have her again, now she’s mine again, and it’s still not over.
Glass is still coming for us.
Fuck!
I do a quick grocery shop, pick up some chicken breasts to bake, some mushrooms and garlic to sautee quickly together as a side, and then some brown rice and broccoli. It may not be the most interesting meal, but it’s healthy, nutritious, and that’s the only way I know how to cook.
Dee greets me at the door, and I start setting up in the kitchen. She sits at the table, a basic wooden one, and asks me, “So what did this Fletcher guy say?”
“He’s got a safe house,” I say, filling up the sink and soaking the broccoli. “That we can use if we need to.”
“That’s good.”
“And he said he’ll send me the details for a gig. Just a small one,” I say, shaking my head when I see her expression. “Nothing big or fancy. Small-ish payout, maybe thirty to fifty grand if I win all the rounds.”
“A tournament?”
“I think it’ll be five rounds with a bye.”
“I can’t talk you out of fighting, can I?”
“Why would you want to?”
“I just can’t help but think you’re out of practice, out of shape. You’re not at peak conditioning.”
“I don’t need to be. I’ll still win. I’ve got more to lose, anyway.”
“Like that’s a comfort to me.”
“Anyway, I asked Fletcher about getting a gun.”
There’s a pause, and I start washing the broccoli heads.
“A gun?” Dee echoes slowly. “You’re not supposed to have guns here.”
“I know,” I tell her, meeting her eyes in the reflection of the kitchen window.
“Aren’t we taking a risk, then?”
“We’ll keep it here. It’s just a precaution. Look, would you rather need it and not have it?”
“No,” she says, her voice quiet. “But I’d rather not need it at all.”
“So would I, but your father’s still looking, which means that we have to still be prepared. I’ve thought about it. I’ll get the cash from the fights, we’ll hide it here in the apartment, along with the gun. We pack a couple of small suitcases, park them by the door. We fill the trunk of the car with non-perishables. Canned food, that kind of thing.”
“Sounds like a fallout shelter.”
“Well, if we get wind of Glass, we’re out of here straight away. Grab the bags, the money, the gun, and we hit the road to Fletcher’s safe house where we lay low for a while.”
“Why does he have one?”
“Leftover from his fighting days, probably,” I say.
“And so, what, we just wait?”
“We can go now,” I tell her. “You and me. I can transfer all my money out of the States. We risk Glass tracking it here, but we think he’s coming here, anyway. We take it, and go.”
“And then what?”
I shrug. “The world’s a big place, Dee. We could get lost, anywhere. All that money… all that fighting, that was for you, even if I didn’t know it back then.”
“What do you mean for me?”
“I think I was saving it all to buy you out.”
“Buy me out of what?”
“Your father’s grip. Remember? Just a few more fights? I figured we could go get lost. Who knows where… Asia if we want. Europe. We could just go traveling, move from place to place. Or we could find a place to settle down, change our names, leave no trail.”
“We can’t do that now,” she says, rubbing her belly. “Not with Thom on the way. I trust my doctor here, and traveling would just put stress on my body.”
“I agree,” I say. “Things have changed, now. Now, you haven’t just left home. Now you’ve left home with a baby, and that’s what Glass wants. The stakes are higher for him, too.”
“I can’t believe he wants to raise the child as his own.”
“I can.”
“What do you think?”
“We don’t know for sure Glass is coming here, not yet. If I access any of my accounts back home, he’ll know from where exactly, and he’s probably got connections out here.”
“Probably.”
“So,” I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter, gazing down at the pack of chicken breasts. “I say we start exploring ways to get that money through a middle man if we want to use it to buy ourselves privacy. Or… or we just make do, say goodbye to it for now. I get a job, we try to do it here and hope Glass doesn’t find us, but always have an exit strategy.”
“Those don’t sound like great choices.”
“I don’t want to live like that, either.”
“I’m not letting Dad take my… take our baby.”
“Then I’ll get to work on the money. In the meantime, we go as usual, just together. Always together.”
Dee nods at me. “Okay. If we get that money, then what?”
“Then we go anywhere we want. We just can’t tip your father off.”
“It’s not that easy to hide, anymore. You found me through the internet and I changed my passport, my identity.”
“Then we go somewhere where that kind of digital landscape is less robust. Where we’re not going to be tracked by CCTV, by credit card receipts, by—”
“So, what, the third world?”
“Not exactly, Dee,” I say. “But America, England, here… if you’re worried about being tracked down, these are the places where it is most easy to be.”
“So you’re suggesting Thailand or something.”
“Or something, yes.”
“And what about Thom’s education? What about his quality of life?”
“I don’t have all the answers, Dee. I just know what we can do. We have one option we haven’t explored.”
“What’s that?”
“Put a hit on your father.”
She freezes. “No,” she says after a moment. “And you don’t have that kind of sway.”
“I have several million dollars, and there are a lot of desperate people.”
“Nobody would get close enough.”
“We know your father’s routine.”
“No!” she cries, slapping the table. “I am not going to put a hit on my fucking father.”
I lick my lips, meet her eyes. “I didn’t think you would go for that.”
“So why even bring it up?”
“Everything has to be on the table right now. We are working under the assumption that he is coming for you right this very minute. I won’t ignore an option. In the cage, you—”
“Quit it with the damn fighting analogies, Duncan, I’m not an idiot. I get it. Try get the money through a middle man. See what you turn up, I’ll talk to some people at work.”
“Fine.”
“If you get it, then we split, plain and simple. We go somewhere, change our names again, change everything, use all of that money to buy a secure future for our son. I don’t need luxury, but I need security.”
“I agree.”
There’s a drawn out pause, a moment of quiet where we both reflect, and where the tension between us is unusually high.
“You got any white wine?” I ask, knowing it’s probably a long shot. Dee won’t be drinking while she’s pregnant, even if doctors say it’s okay every now and then. She’s thorough like that.
“You drinking now?”
“Sometimes, but it’s a sauce for the chicken. I’m going to bake it.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a bottle my boss gave me a while back. Hold on, I’ll dig it out.”
“The alcohol will boil off.”
“I know.”
She hands me a bottle of Oyster Bay, probably a little too good to use as just a cooking wine, but if it’s all we have…
I season the chicken, salt, pepper, some diced garlic, whisk together the wine with a tiny bit of olive oil and then pour it over the chicken, cover it in aluminum foil, and pop it into the oven.
“We’ll have a late dinner tonight,” I say, looking at the clock. It’s already half-past eight.
“You were really saving all that money for us?”
I meet Dee’s eyes. They’re wide, black, inky, and like the first time I climbed out of that limo and saw her outside her house, I feel like I’m falling into them.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You were the only important part of my life. What the hell else did I have to spend it on?”
“Yourself?”
“I’m a simple person. I don’t need to buy myself shit.”
“So you thought I’d just run away with you, huh?” She grins. “We’d go traveling the world together? Go get lost together?”
“Yes.”
“How did you even know if I would say yes? I was in college… I wanted a career.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I might have,” she whispers. “It was clear Dad wasn’t going to loosen his grip.”
“No,” I agree.
“I never would have guessed it.”
“I didn’t talk about it.”
“No, you didn’t. You should have.”
“Why?”
“We might have been able to go before all of… this. Before Dad found out about the baby.”
“I wasn’t ready yet.”
“Ready for what? A few more fights gets you, what, a little bit more?”
“Ready to risk you saying ‘no’.” I grip the edge of the counter, for the first time admitting it to not just Dee, but to myself.
“You were scared?”
“Yeah,” I say, voice low. I turn around, start washing the mushrooms, but feel Dee’s hands snake around my waist. She rests her head on my back, and I wash and slice the mushrooms with her holding me in silence.