Molly:

“Hey,” he whispers softly, brushing my hair out of my face. We are laying on top of my comforter, my head nuzzled into his corded chest. I don’t know how long I fell asleep for, but I feel like I could spend days like this, cuddled up next to him.

He makes me wild when he touches me, something about letting him control my body sets me free. Free from my insecurities. Free from my loneliness. Free from my worries about the favor I need to ask from him.

I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to spoil this absolutely perfect moment, his gentle touch comforting me in ways that I didn’t know I craved so badly. Normally after sex like that, you want to climb out the window and never look that person in the eye ever again, but for some reason, I want to linger in his arms as long as he’ll have me.

“You stayed,” I sigh, smiling, kissing him on the chest. “You didn’t have to.”

“There is not a single place on this planet that I’d rather be right now, Molly,” he sighs. “I wanted to stay.”

“What time is it?” I ask. I can tell the sun has begun to set by the muted light shining through my curtains.

“Does it matter?” he asks, kissing my ear. “You got a date or something?”

“No.” There is no other man. There will never be another man that makes me feel like he does, I’m afraid.

“You know you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, Molly. Everything about you.” He hugs me tighter to him. “Please tell me you know that?”

“Tucker…” I stutter.

“I need you to know that before I tell you why I really came to see you today.”

“Is everything ok?” I ask, sitting bolt upright and staring him in the eye.

“Yes,” he sighs. “No. One of my brothers is in trouble. He got arrested and I need to bail him out.”

“What did he do?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They picked him up on an old warrant. I don’t ask questions. All I know is I owe this guy my life as I know it and I need to get him out. I have no idea what to do and I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”

He looks sincerely upset.

“I hate even asking you. It makes me feel useless,” he says. “My current situation makes me so helpless sometimes. I hate it.”

“You’re not useless, Tucker. And the only reason why you’re helpless is because you’re not playing with a full deck. Maybe you are happy with your life as a Vagrant, but you had no other choice at that point. You didn’t choose that life for yourself with a sound mind. You haven’t given yourself the chance to figure out if that truly is the life for you. I am going to help you get your friend out of jail, but you’re going to have to do something for me.”

His brief life history makes me feel so sad for him. I can tell my words hit him hard.

“I’m not ready,” he says. “Please don’t.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I promise. “It’s unethical. But the second you understand where I’m coming from, I’ll be here waiting to help you.”

There’s a long silence, and I can tell he’s thinking, but his blue eyes look so far away, like he’s searching for something that’s just out of reach.

“I want to bail your friend out of jail,” I say. “How much is it going to cost?”

“I don’t want your money,” he says. “I would never ask you for money.”

“I know you wouldn’t. But you’re going to earn it. All of you guys are going to earn it,” I assure him.

“Anything,” he says. “I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“I’m going to write a story about you guys. A few weeks before I met you, I pitched something to my agent,” I confess. “He called me this morning and told me Rolling Stone is willing to pay me a lot of money for it.”

He looks confused. “What did you tell him?”

“Basically, I told him maybe, which was going to end up being a no. Because of you.”

“What do you mean?”

I sigh. I don’t know if I’m going to come off crazy or caring. “I like you, Tucker. I respect you. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to exploit you and your family. I didn’t want you to think I was using you.”

“You did that for me?” he asks. I squeeze his hand in mine.

“How much to bail your friend out?” I ask.

“He’s not going to go for it, Molly. We can’t have that kind of exposure. There’s a lot of people who don’t agree with the way we live or the things we do.”

“Do you trust me?”

He brushes his hand over my cheek and stares deep into my eyes.

“I’m very good at my job, Tucker. Nobody is going to get exposed or exploited. I care very deeply about the people I write about. If at any point you guys want me gone, you just have to say the word. Now how much money do you need?”

He hangs his head and laces his fingers in between mine.

“I appreciate it,” he says, “I really do. But you don’t know Moss.”

“And you do. And you’re going to march your ass down to that jail and tell him if he knows what’s best for him, he’s going to let me do this. You’re going to tell him that he needs to man up and do what’s right by his family if he wants the Vagrants to continue to exist as they do.

“How much money do you need?”

“Three thousand dollars,” he says.

“You in?” I ask.

“I guess so; I feel so bad taking your money.”

“Don’t,” I assure him. “Let me make a phone call.”

I pick up my cellphone and call my agent.

“Josh,” I say, “I’m gonna do it. But I’m going to need an advance ASAP.”

Tucker:

Leaving her there by herself once again was maddening, but she’s right. I might not have a lot of responsibility to this world, but the Vagrants are my family, and I need to make sure I keep my word to them.

Seeing Moss in jail was strange. He didn’t even look like himself when I talked to him. He looked like an animal who was locked in a cage for pharmaceutical testing. Far away and out of it, he sat in the holding cell staring at the wall.

“I’m going to get you out of here in the morning, Moss,” I told him.

He just nodded at me, as if he didn’t care what I had to say. His brown eyes looked more black than usual. His face, blank.

“There’s a woman, Molly Hill, she’s a journalist. She’s going to come pay your bail tomorrow and take you home. She wants to write a story about the Vagrants.”

The way he shrugged at me and then waved me off without so much as a word left a bad taste in my mouth. It was as if he was broken. Our loudmouthed leader was just a shell of himself.

Back up on the mountain, everyone was stressed when I returned, huddled around the campfire hurling insults and drinking moonshine.

“Where is he?” Luna wailed. “Is he ok?”

Once I explained the situation, explained that he was going back first thing in the morning because Molly was going to donate the money, tensions seemed to relax.

When I explained to everyone WHY Molly was going to donate the money, the dynamic took a turn for the worse.

“Fuck off, Tucker,” Forrest scolded. “You want to bring an outsider up here to take pictures of us like we’re monkeys in a zoo or something? You’re out of your mind!”

“It’s not like that,” I promised. “She’s not like that.”

“Just because you’re putting your dick in her doesn’t mean she doesn’t have some sort of ulterior motive. You can’t trust girls from down there,” he said.

“If she does anything at all that makes us uncomfortable, she promised she would be done. It’s the only way she could get the money. It’s the only way WE could get the money. Do you want Moss to have to sit in prison?”

“What’s he have to say about all this?” Luna cackled. “I’m sure he’ll send that bitch running before she even makes it to camp.”

“You can only hope, honey,” Mitch teased her. “I’m sure if Tucker here is sweet on her she’s probably something special. Wouldn’t be the first time we saw you in a catfight.”

“Nobody’s fighting anybody. And you all are going to be on your best behavior. She’s doing us a huge favor. And Moss didn’t really say anything about the interview, or anything at all.”

“Shit,” Mitch grumbled. “He’s had some really bad experiences in there. It really fucks him up.”

“My work here is done,” I told them all, but Forrest felt the need to follow me down the trail.

“I’m sorry for being so rude.” He grabbed me by the arm to stop me in my tracks. “You just don’t get it. There’s a reason why a lot of us don’t want to be put into the public eye. We’re not just hiding out up here for the love of it. We’re hiding from who we were down below. It’s not safe for us.”

It hit me hard and fast. These men I called my brothers weren’t just born here. They came here because they were running. Maybe they weren’t the good people I assumed they were, even though they had been nothing but kind to me. Maybe they changed for the better. Or maybe I changed for the worse.