An outlaw.

That’s what he was. He was running from someone. The cops, maybe. Or whoever he’d stolen that money from. He’d mentioned Detroit, which made my imagination rush with intrigue. Everything about him, from his black leather jacket to the tattoo on his forearm, spoke of a life lived on the wrong side of the tracks. As my mind raced, soaking in his proposition, I inhaled the scent of him—all wild energy and animalistic strength and a car driving too fast.

He searched my face eagerly. I sat back in the booth, raising a single eyebrow high on my forehead, giving him pause.

“Y’all all right over there?” Marcia asked us as she walked past, all bones beneath that skirt, tossing her graying hair behind her shoulder. “I can tell him to throw a few more burgers on the griddle. I’m telling y’all, you’re too skinny. ‘Specially you, son.” She pointed at Colt, waggling her eyebrows. “Maybe I don’t have to tell that trucker to call you after all, Luna.” She winked.

I gave Colt an eye roll.

“She means well,” I said, grinning.

“Sure. I mean, you obviously need a strong man to protect you,” he sassed back, forcing me along some kind of line.

“Ah, so that’s the game you’re going to play?” I asked him.

“I’ll play any game I can. I’ll toss this money into your arms if you’ll come to Mexico with me. And that has to happen A-S-A-P.” He spelled it out, sounding frank and sarcastic, as if I weren’t his only hope.

Of course, no matter how much I dreamed of the sun, I had no desire to go to Mexico. My father was ill and required medical attention; he needed someone to beat back against both the loan shark and the gambling addiction.

Plus, I was still going to community college to “make something of myself,” whatever that meant. I was the backbone of our tiny family, and I couldn’t abandon it for some blue-eyed stranger. Not even a handsome one whose very eyes spoke of danger, who filled my body with lust.

I didn’t have time for it.

Creating an attack plan, akin to any chess master my father and I had watched on television in the past, I leaned toward Colt and whispered into his ear, knowing he was all mine.

“Of course I’ll come with you,” I said. “And to demonstrate my allegiance to you, I would like to show you something.”

Colt gave me a gruff nod, his instincts taking over. Our scents mixed in the air around us, igniting a feeling in my groin and causing me to stir.

I moved from my perch on the booth and took his hand, guiding him away. Marcia side-eyed me as we eased past the sizzling grill, through the kitchen, past the walk-in freezer, and into the stockroom, which was lined with cans. It wasn’t the most romantic place, sure, but at a moment’s notice, it was all I could do.

Besides, when Mannie—the owner of the diner—wasn’t around, Marcia and I had the run of the place. He was normally drunk, knocking into countertops and drooling down his white button-down, half-blind, anyway. As far as Marcia and I knew, when he wasn’t at the diner, he was sleeping off a hangover at his apartment down the road—keeping the television on as white noise to camouflage his loneliness.

“All right, cowboy,” I whispered to Colt, shoving the door closed behind us. “I said I’d show you my allegiance. This is it.”

But suddenly, his hands were upon me, as if he couldn’t resist. He wrapped them tightly around my waist, thrusting me against the wall and kissing my neck, panting with desire. I tilted my head back, sighing, my brain giving way to lust.

Propping me up on a prep table, he spread my legs wide and then ripped off my panties, tossing them on the floor. Colt gazed into my eyes, holding steady for a long, dripping moment.

Unable to take it any longer, I moved my hands to his crotch, eager to feel him. But he halted me, standing tall and dominant over my sitting position on the cold, metal table.

“No,” he growled, his eyebrows lowered. “You don’t do anything until I tell you to.”

“Is that the kind of wife you really want to take over the Mexican border?” I asked him, sounding sultry. “Because I don’t think your wife will play by those kinds of rules.”

“Oh, she will. And she’s going to like it,” he said.

With a sudden motion, he ripped his belt open and revealed himself: a staggering member with an incredible girth. Thrusting forward, he eased himself into me, and I was prepared, wide-legged and dripping wet.

The sex was hot and fast, the table jolting back and forth as we fucked. I kept my eyes open as I clung to the muscles of his back, wishing we’d taken the time to undress, to gaze at each other’s naked forms.

But there simply wasn’t time.

With him deep inside me, I felt like an outlaw myself, like a woman from a film who was in love with the villain and helping him escape town. And yet, at the end of the day, what I would truly do to him would ruin his plans.

This appetite for destruction both frightened and thrilled me. I clung to him tighter still, clawing my nails into his back as I sensed him grow closer to an orgasm.

I wouldn’t allow myself to come with him. I had to be measured and outside the boundaries of emotion if I was going to follow through with my plan. But as he crept closer, pushing into me, whispering into my ear—“Oh, fuck, Luna, yes.”—I couldn’t take it.

I felt myself begin to orgasm with him. My back arched toward the wall, my green eyes meeting his blue ones in a moment of electricity, of passion. Shocked, gasping in the moments after our joint orgasm, I felt him slip away from me.

“Wow,” Colt murmured, pulling his weathered jeans back on and re-fastening his belt. Shrugging slightly, he returned to his more dominant, aggressive form, swiping his hand across his face and erasing the words of adoration from his lips.

It was over almost as quickly as it had started. We continued to stare at one another, panting, as I slipped a strand of my sweaty red hair behind my ear. Shoving my feelings down as far as I could, I leaped onto the ground of the storeroom and lifted my panties from the floor to shove in my dress pocket.

“You aren’t going to put those back on?” Colt asked me, sounding sneaky.

“Why would I do that?” I asked him, turning my shoulders, flirting with him again. The attraction still pumped through my veins. “Listen, I was wondering if you would come with me on a short errand. I have to drop off that payment you owe me. I don’t really feel like having all that cash on me when we cross the border. You feel me?”

Colt nodded, placing a firm hand on the small of my back. “Absolutely, darling,” he said. He sounded so casual, as if these kinds of dealings were run-of-the-mill for him. “I’ll drive you over, shall I? I wouldn’t want you to be lonely.”

“Ha,” I scoffed.

“What the hell are you gonna do with all that cash, anyway?” he asked me, his eyes flashing. We turned from the storeroom and its lines and lines of cans, marching past the grill—which now held three burnt burgers, black and crisp on the edges, pink in the middle.

“Where the hell did you get it, cowboy?” I asked him, giving him a sassy look. He grimaced and turned his head left and then right. It was clear he wasn’t going to fess up about where he’d gotten the bills from in the first place.

I wasn’t sure I really cared, anyway.

“All right, no more questions. Let’s get out of here.”

As we left the restaurant, I gave Marcia a final wave. She waggled her eyebrows as she swiped a rag over the countertop. I would never hear the end of this during my next shift. Colt was the first guy I’d ever dragged to the storeroom, and he would also be the last.

“Which one’s yours?” I asked him, as we walked into the parking lot.

He pointed his long, toned forearm toward the blue Mustang near the back. It was bright and garish—not exactly the thing I would have chosen if I had been in the mood to hide. But I shrugged and started toward it.

Moments before we reached the vehicle, Colt paused and passed me the suitcase of cash, delivering it to me like a newborn baby.

“Be careful,” he said. “If you move too quickly, it’ll pop open.”

“I know,” I said back.

Colt revved the engine and then exited the parking lot, cranking up the radio. The DJ’s voice, the same one I listened to every night at this hour when heading home from the diner, was overly peppy in my ears. Given the strangeness of the previous hour, the DJ remarking on the brightness of the new moon sounded almost eerie.

“And if you lovers are listening out there, just know that it’s the moon of Scorpio out tonight. Evil things are on the run. Wild nights will come and potentially destroy you. And that’s why we’re playing this ’80s classic—one you’ve all certainly heard before. Just a few more days till Halloween, guys! Keep yourselves safe out there.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t say ‘God bless’ at the end of that,” Colt said, rolling his eyes.

“We take our Halloween very seriously around here,” I told him. “Halloween and new moons. You don’t have any regard for that up in Detroit?” I pressed the suitcase harder against my chest, watching the road through the windshield as we whizzed down the highway. I would need to tell him when to turn. My father’s exit was just three away; the number glittered ahead in the headlights.

“We have a few more things to worry about in Detroit than moons, Luna,” Colt told me. His voice was gruff, as if it held memories of shadowed Detroit streets, of murder, of toil.

“Have you always been like this?” I asked him, my voice lower.

“Where are we turning?”

“Just here. Exit 42,” I said, pointing at the turnoff.

He floored it, going nearly 20 miles over the speed limit, and then raced down the country road, bumping over the gravel.

“Jesus Christ, Colt. Suppose we get pulled over? Aren’t you hiding from—”

“I’m not hiding from anyone. But the sooner we get on the road to Mexico, the better,” Colt said.

With a quick motion, he reached into the side compartment and drew out a cigarette, stabbing it between his lips. The flash of a lighter made me jump. I forced myself to be calm, watching him smoke. Being in his late 20s, he hadn’t yet taken on the look of a smoker: no fine lines, no tinged teeth.

“You’re going to say it’s bad for me,” Colt said, inhaling and then puffing it out the window. The smoke created gray lines against the blackness of the night. “And you aren’t wrong.”

“How boring is it to destroy yourself in such a typical way?” I responded.

I instructed him to turn into my father’s subdivision and guided us toward the crooked yellow home of my youth. It sprung up in front of Colt’s headlights far too soon, showing an image of my father in front of the television, his face blue and green. Perhaps he was watching chess, a passion of his. Those painstaking hours, two people poised in front of a checkered board, trying to outsmart one another—he lived for it.

“Where are we?” Colt asked, squinting through the window at my father. “Who is that man, Luna? And why are you giving him all this cash? Doesn’t seem like he’ll use it for anything worthwhile.” He glanced at me, looking vaguely suspicious. “You aren’t—”

“That’s my dad,” I said coolly, popping open the door of the Mustang. I flashed Colt a quick smile, before saying, “Stay here. I can take care of this myself. I’m a big girl.”

Colt fell back into his seat, giving me a slight shrug. “If it suits you, sure. But we’re getting back on the road as soon as you get back out here. Clear?”

“Crystal,” I replied. My heart twinged as I slammed the door closed, sensing I had a bit of calculating left to do for the night. If we were getting straight back onto the highway after this, then how was I going to escape Colt’s grasp and return to Iowa City before morning? I had a shift the following day. I had class. I couldn’t just disappear with a stranger.

No matter how good of a fuck he was.

I stuck my key into the door and then knocked, knowing it freaked my father out when I just entered without calling. I heard the floorboards creaking in the next room as he left his armchair, schlepped toward the foyer, and flicked the lights on. He rubbed his eyes in that familiar way and beckoned me inside, not bothering to walk the rest of the way.

It had been only a few hours since I’d seen him, but it felt like days. I opened the door, dropped the suitcase against the wall, and hugged him tight, listening as Colt’s Mustang continued to purr in the driveway.

“Hey, Lunie,” my dad said, stroking my hair. “I didn’t expect you back here tonight.”

Stepping back, I sniffed, feeling light. “I found a way to solve our little problem,” I told him matter-of-factly. I tapped at the suitcase, pinging the rickety thing open to reveal stacks upon stacks of bills. They rolled onto the linoleum floor, their rubber bands sticking to the ground.

My father gasped, bringing his hands to his mouth. “Luna, no,” he whispered. His eyes blinked back tears. “How on earth did you—”

I held up my hands, stretching my fingers toward the sky. I hadn’t lied to my father in years. I hadn’t needed to, especially when he told enough lies for the both of us. “Don’t ask me any questions about where I got it, because I won’t be able to tell you.”

My father knelt down, his knees creaking. The mechanics of him were busting down, leaving his heart slow, his knees aching.

“You won’t be able to tell me?” he asked, his words soft.

“I just need you to take this to that loan shark as soon as you wake up tomorrow,” I said. I lowered myself to his level and tossed the bills back into the suitcase, as if they would be safer there. “And once the loan shark’s paid, Dad, I need you to never deal with him again. Okay?”

My father’s eyes, filled with about a thousand questions, met mine. This was exactly how he’d looked when I was 13, when he’d found out I’d skipped school to hit a downtown clothing sale.

The fact of it was, my father’s gambling addiction had started to get bad around then, and he hadn’t noticed that I didn’t have any clothes without holes in them. I had been ridiculed, the portrait of hideous ’90s fashion as I’d scrambled together outfits from whatever my mother had left behind when she’d passed. He’d grown angry with me when he found out, grounding me for a week. Not that he had ever been around to see if I stuck to his rules.

But I was 25 now, and he was more of a child than I ever had been.

“I still can’t wrap my head around this,” he said, his voice soft.

In the next room, the chess tournament went to a rare commercial break. A bright-voiced woman told us about her favorite brand of laundry detergent, demonstrating stain removal in a three-step process. I shuddered, knowing I needed to get away from this cash as soon as I could.

“Just promise you’ll do this for me, Dad. For yourself,” I said sternly.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Luna?” he asked, pressing the suitcase closed and eyeing me. “You aren’t doing anything illegal, are you? You’re not—”

“I’m not doing anything you need to worry about,” I told him. I rose from my squat and readjusted my dress, my nostrils flared. “And if this all goes according to plan, we won’t have to speak about this ever again. All right?”

My father looked hopeful for the first time in years. He rose from the floor, looking poised to either hug me or shake my hand—I wasn’t sure which. In the awkwardness that fell around us, my chest felt crushed, weighted down.

“I’ll do it,” he finally said. “First thing when I wake up tomorrow. Luna, do you want to stay here tonight?”

I gestured toward the driveway, where the Mustang motor still ran. “I’ve got a friend waiting for me. But I’ll call you tomorrow, all right, Dad?”

I moved toward the door and stepped back out onto the front porch without giving him another moment to hesitate, to hum and haw. My gaze landed on the crooked porch swing, and I felt an urge to curl up in its cold embrace.

Jumping into Colt’s car, I gave him a crooked smile. Wrapping my hand around the thickness of his wrist, I waited until his blue eyes met mine. He looked almost shy, a bit ruffled, his blond hair hanging around his ears.

“I have an idea,” he said.

Back in the house, my father turned off the television. He moved up the steps, turning off one light after another until he reached his bedroom.

“What is it?”

“I say we get a motel room to rest up a bit before our full-day journey tomorrow.”

“Oh, a restful stop, you say?” I asked him, my eyebrows high.

“I think we both deserve it after the day we’ve had.”

“If you say so. I know of an almost decent motel back near the diner,” I said, instructing him out of the neighborhood. “One of the finer establishments in the state, according to Forbes magazine.”

“Oh yes. I think I read that article,” he joked.

As we drove back the way we’d come, I allowed my head to fall back on the headrest. Easing my hand across the armrest, I found my fingers intertwining with his. I sensed that Colt had nothing restful in mind for our night at the motel, but I was happy to be along for the ride right now. I would enjoy his company, tire him out, and then sneak back to my car at the diner before he awoke.

It was a failsafe plan, just as long as I took every precaution.

I couldn’t afford a misstep.