EIGHT
LOLLIPOP
SERA
Amy: Who is he? And why are you just telling me about him now? I asked you months ago if you were seeing anybody, and you said no.
Me: I’m sorry. I’m telling you about him right now, though. It’s nothing serious. I didn’t think he was going to be able to make the date, so I didn’t mention anything. He called this morning and told me he was going to come and pick me up, so there we have it. Look, if it’s a problem and you’d prefer him not to be there, then I understand. Just let me know.
It was probably a bad idea to tell Amy she could veto Fix’s impromptu attendance at her wedding. She was far more polite than I was, however, and barely argued with me over the matter.
Amy: If you’re here on time and everything goes according to plan, then I don’t care who you bring. So long as he doesn’t fuck up my big day.”
So long as he didn’t fuck up her big day? God, that was a riot. There were a thousand and one ways Fix could fuck up Amy’s big day, which included, but were not limited to, murdering one of the guests. My sister’s friends were all assholes as far as I was concerned, but Amy was fond of them for some reason, so she probably wouldn’t take too kindly to having any of them killed. My ex-boyfriend, Gareth, was going to be there. Things between us had hardly been serious, but when he’d cheated on me and totaled my car, I’d sworn I’d remove his balls if I ever saw his miserable face again. Amy had warned me he was going to be in attendance—as Ben’s oldest friend, he’d been assigned best man duties—and she’d begged me not to cause a scene. I’d been dreading setting eyes on Gareth again, but now he was the least of my worries. Fix was going to turn heads. There would be questions. Lots of them. And when someone asked my plus one what he did for a living, what the fuck was he going to say? “Oh, I kill people for money?” He hadn’t even blinked when he’d told me that in the motel lobby last night. His comment had washed over me, but if he said that to Amy? God, there would be fireworks. Fourth of July fireworks. The kind of fireworks that could be seen three counties over and would permanently burn the retinas of anyone unfortunate enough to catch sight of them.
“You’re grinding your teeth.” Fix hadn’t said much in the past few hours, and neither had I. I’d been staring at the back of his neck from the back seat, wondering how easy it would be to choke him out and escape without him crashing the car during my attack. I’d decided the chances of him driving head-on into a barrier, or veering off the road altogether, were far too high, and I’d shelved the idea, but that didn’t stop me from imagining how satisfying it would be to wrap my hands around his neck and to squeeze as hard as I could.
“I tend to do that when I’m stressed,” I answered him. “And, as you can probably tell, I’m really stressed right now.”
“This isn’t exactly how I’d planned on spending my week either, Angel.”
“Oh? And how exactly did you plan on spending your week?” This was going to be good. He probably had another four or five hits lined up or something. I had no idea what his quota was, but he seemed like an industrious guy. Didn’t seem like the type to be taking time off to sip whiskey in front of a roaring fire while reading a good book.
His eyes darted to the rear view mirror. I pretended not to see him look back at me. “I had responsibilities back in New York that are going to have to wait now. Believe me, this is highly inconvenient.”
“Responsibilities?” A number of possibilities occurred to me: what if he had a wife and a family back home that were waiting for his return? He fucked me last night, but so what? A guy who ended people’s lives on a regular basis was hardly going to flinch at cheating. What if he had an ailing grandmother in a care home that he usually had coffee with every Wednesday? Would she know all about his extra-curricular activities? It was then that I remembered the woman who’d been trying to get hold of him so desperately. “Do your responsibilities involve Monica? Does she know who you are, Fix? Does she know what you do whenever you leave the state?”
A ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, before it vanished. “Monica isn’t my responsibility. But yes, she does know who I am. She’s probably the only person in the world who does know me. And yes, she knows exactly what I do whenever I leave the state.” The tone in his voice hid a shadow of amusement. There was a story behind his relationship with this woman, Monica, but he didn’t seem like he was going to share it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask him about it.
I turned to stare out of the window, leaning my forehead against the cold glass. Wyoming whipped by in flashes of green, blue, grey, brown and white. Columns of smoke poured from the chimneys of homes set back from the road. There were people inside those houses, preparing lunch for their families. Planning the rest of their day. Cleaning and cooking. Paying their bills. Watching television. How could life carry on so normally, so blindly, for some people, when my whole world had been turned upside in the space of a couple of hours? I closed my eyes, and all I saw was blood pooling on the floor of that auto shop. The body of that rapist lying there on the frozen concrete, rapidly cooling, his eyes open, staring at me, frightened, as if he were pleading with me to help him, even in death. “How many people have you killed, Fix?” I asked quietly.
Silence filled the truck, and I began to think he wasn’t going to answer. Then he cleared his throat, and spoke. “Does it matter? Doesn’t the death of one person at my hands damn me to hell either way?”
“I don’t believe in hell.”
Again, another cursory, if a little intrigued backward glance from Fix in the mirror. “So you’re an atheist, then.”
“I’m someone who believes you shouldn’t kill people, even if there is no higher power monitoring our behavior up in the clouds, chalking up points for or against us.”
He smirked. The truck was filled with the scent of fresh, cold air and pine needles. It would forever be a smell that reminded me of this moment. If I were destined to have any more moments, that was. Fix’s ice blue eyes returned to the road, scanning the horizon, and I caught myself staring at the line of his jaw; his facial hair had grown noticeably overnight, and now he was sporting a healthy five o’clock shadow. I hated myself for it, but once again I found myself stunned by how absolutely, ridiculously attractive he was. He was beyond dangerous, and I was beyond stupid to be thinking such things about him at a time like this, but I’d known it for a long time now: there was something fundamentally fucked up inside me. I’d been in too many messed situations already to react the way any sane person might when locked in the back of a moving truck with a potential mass murder. And he really was pretty.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. His voice was deep and penetrating—the sound of rumbling thunder. I tightened my grasp around my cell phone, holding onto it for dear life; it was a miracle he’d let me keep it, really. Fix was a smart man, that much was desperately obvious. So there had to be a reason he hadn’t confiscated my only current means of contact with the outside world. From the backseat, I could easily send a text, pleading for help, and Fix knew that.
“No. I’m fine,” I answered him.
“Okay,” he responded flatly. But another five miles down the road saw him pulling off our course and onto the forecourt of a gas station.
“I told you I wasn’t hungry.”
“And I said okay. But, with all the grumbling and rumbling coming from your stomach for the last hour, I knew you were lying. Also, this truck doesn’t run on thin air. If we’re going to make it to Alabama, then we’re actually going to have to stop for gas every once in a while.” He paused while he killed the engine, then turned in his seat and pulled a face that must have matched my own pretty closely. “I know. The laws of potential energy and physics in general are fucking stupid, right?”
The ease of his smile struck me as odd. But then, Fix had had a long time to come to terms with the fact that he was a killer. It was old news to him. I’d had less than a few hours to wrap my head around his entire existence, and it was taking me a hot minute to figure out what the fuck was going on. “I’ll have a bottle of water and a bag of chips,” I said. “Plain. No cheesy shit.”
According to Amy, I had a look that withered men’s balls and had them retracting inside their bodies, never to be seen again. I was giving Felix that look now, but he seemed utterly impervious to it. Didn’t even bat an eyelash. In fact, he laughed under his breath as he opened up the driver’s door and hopped out of the cab, moving with the ease of someone very comfortable inside their own skin. I hissed under my breath when, instead of filling up the car and heading inside the gas station, Fix tugged open the back passenger door—my door—and gestured rather bluntly for me to get out.
“I head inside that building, I’ll come out to find my truck gone,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. “You think I’m that dumb?”
“I wasn’t going to steal your truck, Fix. You took the keys with you, for god’s sake.”
“You look like a girl who knows how to rig a hot wire. Now come on. And play nice. The guys in these rural rest stops usually have about fifteen weapons strapped to their bodies, they’re bored, and they have itchy trigger fingers. One doe-eyed, please-help-me-kind-sir look from you, and they’ll be pumping me full of buckshot.”
I felt a little unsteady as I slid out of the truck, straight into Fix’s arms. His fingers curved around my sides, pressing lightly into my ribs, and I could feel the warmth of his body radiating right through my jacket. “I don’t need help, thank you,” I hissed, trying to wriggle free of his grasp. He shoved me, stepping forward at the same time, so that my back was butted up against the side of the truck and his chest was flush against mine, my body pinned between the vehicle and his solid, strong, muscle-packed form. I gasped, trying to catch my breath. Trying to figure out which was stronger—Felix Marcosa, or the Ford I was leaning up against.
“Are you listening?” he growled, leaning in so that our faces were mere inches apart.
“And why would I care if you’re riddled with buckshot?”
“Because. You don’t hate me. You’re trying to avoid the thought altogether, but you actually quite like me, Sera. And you’re not at all sorry about the guy I left on the ground back there in Liberty Fields. You know you’re not. He was a rapist and likely a murderer, too. He was a violent man, who reveled in the misery and the suffering of others, and I can tell…you’ve seen your fair share of people like him.” He reached up and slowly ran his fingers along the edge of my jaw, along the slightly puckered line of my scar, and a jolt of ice rushed through my veins. I whipped my head to the side, removing myself from his touch, shuddering at the very idea that someone, anyone, had just dared to touch such a secret, hidden, vulnerable part of me with their fingertips and their words.
“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped, slamming my palms flat against his chest, pushing him firmly enough that he had to take a step back. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me, my past, what I’m thinking or what I like. You’re grasping at straws, trying to convince yourself that I’m safe. That I’m not going to tell anyone what you did. And if that’s what needs to happen in order for you to let me go, then I’m all for it. But please…please don’t try and convince me of anything. I’m not that simple to figure out, Fix. You’ll never see inside me. You’ll never piece the fractured pieces of me back together long enough to make a whole picture, so don’t even try.”
My heart was galloping away from me as I slid around him and made my way across the forecourt. I didn’t look back. Underfoot, the ground was buckled and broken, huge ruptures in the concrete creating a giant spider’s web of cracks. Weeds had shot up from the earth beneath, ankle high, knee high in places, and I couldn’t help thinking it: Amy and I were so similar to those weeds. We’d been born beneath a pile of shit so high that it seemed impossible we’d ever make anything of ourselves, but somehow, between the cracks, we’d managed to push our way through, fighting, and we’d survived. We were still weeds, though. We’d never be anything more.
“Can I help you, miss?” The guy behind the counter, armed to the teeth as Fix predicted, was actually an old woman. Her weapon of choice were a pair of knitting needles. She was probably someone’s grandma, and she smelled of talcum powder and gentle, sickly sweet smell of someone who might just die any moment now. Her cardigan was three sizes too big for her. I could see the balled up wad of tissue stuffed up the her right sleeve a mile away. Why did the elderly always insist on keeping tissue to hand at all times? And why was a pocket or a bag not good enough? Why did it have to be up the sleeve?
“I’m just gonna look around for a second, if that’s okay?” I said softly. My temper was still flying high, but there was no sense in lashing out at the poor old girl behind the counter, knitting what looked like baby clothes. I paced up and down the aisles, eyes scanning over the products stacked on the shelves but not really seeing anything. The strip lighting overhead hummed and spat, the light itself flaring and dimming, flickering epileptically—the first signal in any bad horror movie that things were about to get fucked up. I picked up a can of Pringles, wondering how I’d use the tube of chips as a means of self-defense, and that’s when the door opened and Fix sauntered in, flicking his hair back out of his face like some sort of goddamned demi god. The old woman behind the counter stilled, her needles ceasing their rapid-fire clack, clack, clacking, and she just stared at him like she couldn’t believe her eyes. Truly, I felt sorry for her. Her accent was thick and local. She’d probably never left this shitty, dull, backwater, and she’d almost certainly never seen a man like Fix before. Not in the flesh, at least. The men around here were beer swilling, overweight, and belligerent, no doubt—of the opinion that brushing their hair or their teeth would make them a ‘pansy’ and half a man in the eyes of his guffawing peers. Gross.
Fix, on the other hand, looked like he’d just stepped out of a TV screen and accidentally stumbled inside the gas station while trying to find his way back to the Oscars. “Good…good evening?” the old woman said. She sounded confused, as if she didn’t really know what time of day it was anymore, or if the evening was any good.
Fix flashed her a smile that could easily have stopped the old woman’s heart; miraculously, she survived the experience. “I’d like to pay for pump number four, please,” he purred. “And whatever my friend has decided she’d like.”
I slapped the can of Pringles and a bottle of water down on the counter, arching an eyebrow at Fix. “Friend?”
He gave me a rueful smile, then shrugged his right shoulder before wrapping his arm around me. “You’re right. Sorry, Angel.” He gave the old woman a conspiratorial flash of his teeth, his eyes wrinkling ever so slightly at the corners. “She’s my girlfriend. We’re going to a wedding, y’know. I’m meeting the family for the first time.”
“Oh, well don’t you be nervous,” she said, wagging her finger at him. “Manners. That’s all you need to make a good impression. You seem like a charming young man, and you, my dear, seem like a lovely young lady, as well. I’m sure your folks are going to be thrilled to meet your new beau.” She poked her tongue out in a really weird and awkward way, winking at me, and I couldn’t rein in the cringe that bunched my brow. If she saw my expression, she didn’t react to it, though. She accepted Fix’s cash, giggling like a little girl when he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to buy a lollipop. He tore the wrapper right off the candy and shoved it into his mouth there and then at the counter.
Two identical pink dots of embarrassment blossomed high on the old woman’s cheeks, and a fiendish smile tore across Fix’s own face. There appeared to be life in the old girl yet. Fix knew the sight of him sucking on that thing was having an effect on the cashier, and he was delighting in the attention. I mean, I couldn’t deny it—there was something damned distracting about a grown man sucking on a lollipop. Fix’s mouth was sheer perfection. His lips were full, and fuck me if they weren’t perfectly bitable. I’d learned that last night, when I’d fallen into bed with him without a clue who he really was. It was a good thing he didn’t cast me a sideways glance; he undoubtedly would have found identical flushed cheeks on me, too.
Grabbing the bag the old woman had placed my items into, I stormed out of the gas station, kicking myself for reacting. I’d made a host of remarkably stupid decisions in my life, but allowing Felix Marcosa to crawl his way under my skin wasn’t going to be one of them.
Back in the car, I climbed into the front seat of the truck instead of the back. Sitting next to Fix wasn’t high on my list of priorities, but at least I could watch him properly from the passenger seat. And if he tried anything, I had a better chance of seeing it coming.
Fix started the engine, then made a soft humming sound, pushing the lollipop into the side of his cheek. “You’re going to have to stop scowling at some point, Sera.”
“I’ll stop scowling when you get in this truck and drive off without me.”
He laughed, as if this amused him greatly. “Then you’re gonna develop some deep lines on that pretty forehead of yours, Angel.”
He tore out of the parking lot like the cops were already on our tail.