CHAPTER SEVEN
Sam
“None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are free.”
-Goethe
Getting in touch with Carlos again is easier than I expected.
The first time, our meeting was arranged via texts between two burner phones. I don’t expect the number he gave me to work again, but only minutes after hitting send on a text asking about making another purchase—this time a sizable amount of cocaine—I get a reply.
I lean in to whisper to Danny across our table. “He says he can do a kilo for three thousand dollars.”
We’re at one of the many outdoor cafés near the city center. The wind is blowing and no one is seated close enough to overhear our conversation, but I’m more anxious about the drug deal than I was the gun. But then, the penalties for getting caught with that much cocaine are more severe than getting caught with an assault rifle. I’m going to be vulnerable until I unload the drugs on Scott.
It’s a risk, but hopefully, as long as I’m careful, I’ll be okay.
The more I think about it, the more the idea of Scott behind bars feels like the right thing. For a spineless toad like him, even a long weekend in a cage with real criminals will be enough to make him shit his pants several times over. After a year in a foreign jail, he’ll be scarred for life and determined never to do anything that might land him in lock up again.
“If you cancel your reservation for next week and stay with me, we’ll have enough with some left over,” Danny says, pulling me from my thoughts. “Or I could pay for it. It would just be a matter of figuring out how to withdraw the cash. I’ve been living with Caitlin and Gabe the past year so I could help out with the baby. I’ve saved a lot of money not paying rent.”
“How is the baby?” I ask, the question out before I think better of it.
It’s not a good idea to let things between Danny and I get personal, but I can’t help but wonder about the newest member of his family. I remember how excited he was, how he kept calling his sister from New Zealand to see if the baby had been born.
It feels like so much longer than a year since we landed in New Zealand, in that place where, for a few blissfully ignorant days, I thought Danny and I were going to have a chance at a future together. Where we’d been happy, despite the lies and arguments. Where we’d made love all night and then spent a perfect day on the river, feeling like all the best things in life were ours for the taking.
It hurts to remember, but I can’t seem to help it, not with Danny sitting in front of me, with the sun in his hair and that familiar grin on his lips.
“Juliet is the best,” he says, his love for his niece making his face light up. “Beautiful, bossy, and super smart. And she’s got this laugh like a velociraptor screech from those old Jurassic Park movies. It’s the wildest thing. I’ve got a video on my phone if you want to hear it.”
I shake my head, forcing my gaze back to what’s left of my plate of fish tacos. “No, that’s okay.”
I can’t watch a video of Danny’s niece and giggle with him over her silly laugh. I can’t even make eye contact with him right now.
He’s the kind of man who turns heads when we walk down the street—with his long blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail, handsome face, and sculpted body that manages to be elegant and intimidating at the same time.
But when he smiles like that, with all the love in his big heart on display, he’s stunning. Heartbreaking.
Almost irresistible.
It’s not a good idea for me to stay with him at his cabin—he messes with my focus, and at a time like this, focus could mean the difference between freedom and life behind bars—but I refuse to let him empty his savings for me. I refuse to take anything from him. I’ve already stolen too much.
“I’ll cancel my reservation for next week and use that money to pay for the drugs,” I say, determined to get us back on track. “It sounds like Carlos can meet up tomorrow, but what do I do with the coke once I have it? I can’t keep it at my hotel with the maids coming in and out during the day.”
Danny pops the last bite of his sixth taco into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. Clearly planning illegal activities doesn’t interfere with his appetite.
“The commune is pretty chill,” he says. “Just a bunch of people determined to keep their lives simple and play for a living as much as possible. My cabin is at the edge of the woods and there’s no maid service. I don’t see why the stuff wouldn’t be safe there, but we could bury it in the jungle until we’re ready to move it if you want to. Just to be safe.”
I nod, pulse speeding as I pick up the phone and start thumbing a text to Carlos. “Then I’ll tell him I’m good to meet tomorrow. We can head back to your place right after to hide it.”
Back to Danny’s place.
Soon, I’ll be sleeping in the same room with another person for the first time in a year. And not just any person, but Danny, the only man I’ve ever made love to.
Last summer, he proved that Todd and the rest of them hadn’t killed the part of me that craved physical intimacy, but that was before the trial. I haven’t had so much as a hug from another human being since I left L.A., but I haven’t missed physical contact. I’ve been cut off from my own body except in those moments when a workout or a punching session brought every cell violently to life. But that life was hard and focused, cold for all the heat pumping through my veins.
I had assumed that’s who I am now, and that the trial had succeeded in alienating me from my own sensuality in a way even the rape hadn’t.
Sitting in that courtroom and telling my story to a roomful of strangers, while the four men who violated me looked on with horrified expressions and insisted they were innocent, had been like living through it all again. But this time, instead of the horror being my own private weight to bear, I’d been exposed to the entire world. I’d been forced to share the ugly truth and then been branded a liar, unworthy of compassion or justice.
The experience proved to me that people, on the whole, are stupid, ridiculous, and cruel.
But Danny is none of those things.
Instead of being livid that I abandoned everything we had built without a word, he apologized for that last night in New Zealand. Instead of being too hurt to want anything to do with me, he flew to Costa Rica to punish the men who took our happiness away. After a year with no word, I am still alive in his heart, more alive than I am in my own flesh and blood.
I’ve been cold as stone and just as numb, but maybe, if I were to touch him, to let him in, just a little, I could come back to life.
Back to him…
The phone buzzes next to my elbow and I flinch, so startled my arm jerks forward, spilling my glass of water all over the white tablecloth.
Heart pounding, I right the glass and toss my napkin over the mess, fighting to bring my breath under control as I rescue the phone from the path of destruction.
“You okay?” Danny asks, brow furrowing with concern.
“I’m fine,” I say, teeth digging into my bottom lip as I glance down at the latest message from my drug and arms dealer. “Just thinking too hard.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Nothing, stupid things.” I turn off the phone and slide it into the front pocket of my backpack. “We’re going to meet at four thirty tomorrow afternoon. Same place.”
“If you don’t want to do it, I could go in your place,” Danny says. “I’d rather if you’ll let me. I saw that guy. I don’t like the thought of you being alone with him again.”
“I’ll be fine. If he was going to hurt me, he would have tried the first time,” I say, picking pieces of ice from the tablecloth and plunking them back into my glass. “I think he’ll want to keep me around, just to see how much more money he can get from me if nothing else. And worst case scenario, I’ve been training for months. I know how to defend myself.”
“I can tell,” he says, his gaze drifting down to my shoulders and bare arms. “I wouldn’t want to mess with you.”
His words say one thing, but his eyes and the husky tone of his voice say another. They say he still wants me as much as he ever did. That he’d like to know what it feels like to have my stronger, more powerful legs wrapped around him and my muscled body pressed against his, skin to skin.
I should warn him to cut it out and honor our deal to keep the personal stuff out of this.
But instead I find myself leaning closer and saying—
“No, you wouldn’t. Because I would kick your ass.”
His eyes flash. “Oh yeah? You think you could take me, Collins?”
“I know I could,” I say. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
His tongue slips out, curling over his bottom lip and drawing it back between his teeth. It’s his fighting-not-to-kiss me face, the one made familiar from hundreds of car rides back from the beach when we were kids, when we were sprawled in the back seat and my dad was sneaking peeks at us in the rearview mirror, making sure no teenagers were making out on his watch.
The heat in Danny’s eyes makes me think about warm lips, eager tongues, and the taste of him sweet in my mouth, and for the first time in so long, I want to touch someone.
To touch him.
I can already imagine how perfect it would feel to have his arms around me, pulling me into his lap, kissing me senseless in front of the people bustling by on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and going about their lives as if there is nothing in the world to be afraid of. Not on a day like today, with the sun shining and a faint ocean breeze blowing in from the sea miles away and the music of street musicians filling the air with a light and happy beat.
But there are so many things to be afraid of, and if I let my shields slip, I will start to remember them all, and not the way I do now, faintly from beneath my calluses. I will be raw and vulnerable again and I can’t go there. Not now. Maybe never, and Danny doesn’t deserve to have hope dangled in front of him and then wrenched away.
For now, I have to stay free of any promises but the ones I’ve made to the men I will destroy.
So I push my chair back, moving away from Danny, no matter how much a part of me wants to do the opposite. “I’ll call you tomorrow for directions to the cabin and see you after the deal is done.”
“Sam, wait—”
“Thanks for lunch,” I say, forcing a smile as I retreat to my hotel room to rebuild my defenses.
The next day I see Danny only for the half hour it takes to march the kilo of cocaine I’ve bought from Carlos back into the jungle and bury it, and for the next three days, I insist on doing as much of our communication as I can over the phone. When we have to meet in person, we meet at small cafés throughout the city, finalizing our plans in public. The only time we spend alone is during the eight miserable hours we spend in the hot sun digging a pit deep enough for a man to stand upright and not be able to peer over the edge.
At no time do I allow our conversation to get overly personal or that flirtatious lilt to enter my tone again. I am determined to protect Danny from me, even though that’s clearly not what he wants.
The morning I check out of my hotel, on my way to drop my things at the cabin before Danny and I head to the airport to put our first plan into motion, I’m too nervous about the cocaine in my bag to worry about what it will be like to sleep in the same room with him again.
He promised to take the bed and give me the fold out couch. We should be safe on our separate islands, sharing the same ocean, but never getting close enough to touch. I will stay strong and learn to ignore his smell, his smile, and the way being close to him feels like treading water inches from a life raft.
I will not let him haul me in to safety.
I will stay in the water with sharks until the sea runs red with their blood, and only then will I let myself imagine what it might be like to no longer be alone.