Safe Haven(34)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

Kevin stopped, panting and feeling ill. As she’d rounded the corner, her profile had flashed in the bright lightand he thought again that she was beautiful. She’d always reminded him of a delicate flower, so pretty and refined,and he remembered that he’d saved her from being raped by thugs after she left the casino and how she used totell him that he made her feel safe but even that hadn’t been enough to keep her from leaving him.

Gradually, he began to hear the voices of people walking on either side of him as they passed by. Chatteringabout nothing, going nowhere, but it jolted him into action. He started to jog, trying to reach the spot where they’dturned, feeling like he was going to vomit with every footfall under the blazing sun. His palm felt slick and sweatyaround the gun. He reached the corner and peered up the street.

No one in sight, but two blocks up, there were barricades blocking the road for the street fair. They must haveturned on the street before it. No other choice. He figured they had turned right, the only way to leave thedowntown area.

He had a choice. Chase them on foot and risk being spotted or run back to the car and try to follow them thatway. He tried to think like Erin and figured they would go to the house where the gray-haired man lived. Erin’shouse was too small, too hot for the four of them, and Erin would want to go to a pretty house with expensivefurniture, because she believed she deserved a life like that, instead of appreciating the life she had.

Pick and choose. Follow on foot or in the car. He stood, blinking and trying to think, but it was hot andconfusing and his head pounded and all he could think was that Erin was sleeping with a gray-haired man and therealization made him sick to his stomach.

She probably dressed in lace and danced for him, whispered words that made him hot. Begged him to let herplease him, so she could live in his house with fancy things. She’d become a prostitute, selling her soul forluxuries. Selling herself for pearls and caviar. Probably slept in a mansion now, after the gray-haired man took herout for fancy dinners.

He felt sick, imagining it. Hurt and betrayed. The fury helped his thoughts clear and he realized that he wasstanding in place as they were getting farther and farther away. His car was blocks away, but he turned andstarted to run. At the carnival, he pushed through people wildly, ignoring their shouts and protests. “Move, move!”

he shouted, and some people moved and others were shoved aside. He reached a spot clear of the throngs ofpeople, but he was breathing hard and he had to stop to vomit near a fire hydrant. A couple of teenage boyslaughed at him and he felt like shooting them right then and there, but after wiping his mouth, he simply pulled thegun and pointed it at them and they shut up fast enough.

He stumbled forward, feeling the ice pick chip away at his head. Stab and pain, stab and pain. Every damn stepit was stab and pain and Erin was probably telling the gray-haired man about the sexy things they would do inbed. Telling the gray-haired man about Kevin and laughing, whispering, Kevin could never please me the way

you do, even though it wasn’t true.

It took forever to get to his car. When he reached it, the sun was baking it like a loaf of bread. Heat spilled out inclouds, and the steering wheel was scalding to the touch. Hellhole. Erin had chosen to live in a hellhole. He startedthe car and opened the windows, making a U-turn back toward the carnival and honking at people in the street.

Detours again. Barricades. He wanted to blow through them, to blast them into pieces, but even here, therewere cops and they would arrest him. Stupid cops, fat and lazy cops. Barney Fife cops. Idiots. None of them weregood detectives but they had guns and badges. Kevin drove the side streets, trying to zero in on where Erin washeading. Erin and her lover. Both of them adulterers, and the Bible says Whoever gazes at a woman with lust has

committed adultery in his heart.

People everywhere. Crossing the street haphazardly. Making him stop. He leaned over the steering wheel,straining to see through the windshield, and caught sight of them, tiny figures in the distance. They were justbeyond another barricade, heading toward the road that led to her house. A cop was standing at the corner,another Barney Fife.

He surged forward, only to be stopped when a man suddenly appeared at the front of his car, banging on thehood. A redneck with a mullet, skulls on his shirt, tattoos. Fat wife and greasy-looking kids. Losers, all of them.

“Watch where you’re going!” the redneck shouted.

Kevin mentally shot all of them, bang-bang-bang-bang, but forced himself not to react because the cop at thecorner was eyeballing him. Bang, Kevin thought again.

He turned, speeding up, heading through the neighborhood. Turned left and sped up again. Turned left again.

More barricades up ahead. Kevin made another U-turn, went right, and turned left at the next block.

More barricades. He was stuck in a maze, like a rodent undergoing an experiment. The town conspiring againsthim while Erin got away. He slammed the car into reverse and backed up. He found the road again and turned,then raced straight to the next intersection. It had to be close now and he turned left again, saw a line of trafficahead, moving in the direction he wanted. He turned, muscling his car between a couple of trucks.

He wanted to accelerate but couldn’t. Cars and trucks stretched before him, some with Confederate flags onthe bumper stickers, others with gun racks on the roof. Rednecks. People in the road made it impossible for thecars to move forward, walking as if they weren’t aware that any of the cars existed. People sauntered past,moving faster than he was. Fat people, still eating. Probably eating all day long and slowing the traffic while Eringot farther and farther away.

His car went forward one length and stopped again. Went forward and stopped. Over and over. He felt likescreaming, wanted to pound the wheel, but people were everywhere. If he wasn’t careful someone would saysomething and Barney Fife would investigate and remember his out-of-state plates and probably arrest him on thespot, simply because he wasn’t a local.

Forward and stopping, over and over, movement measured in inches until he reached the corner. The traffichad to ease up now, he thought, but it didn’t, and up ahead, Erin and the gray-haired man were gone. There wasonly a long line of cars and trucks ahead of him on a road that led nowhere and everywhere at exactly the sametime.

37

A dozen cars were parked in front of the store as Katie trailed the kids up the stairs to the house. Josh andKristen had whined most of the ride home about how tired their legs were, but Alex ignored it, reminding themperiodically that they were getting closer. When that didn’t work, he simply commented that he was getting tired,too, and didn’t want to hear any more about it.

The complaining ended when they got to the store. Alex let them grab Popsicles and Gatorade before they wentupstairs, and the burst of cool air as they opened the door was ridiculously refreshing. Alex led Katie to thekitchen and she watched as he drenched his face and neck at the kitchen sink. In the living room, the kids werealready sprawled on the couch, the television on.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I was about to die about ten minutes ago.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“That’s because I’m tough,” he said, pretending to puff out his chest. He retrieved two glasses from thecupboard and added ice cubes before pouring water from a pitcher he kept in the refrigerator.

“You’re a trouper,” he added, handing her a glass. “It’s like a sauna out there.”

“I can’t believe how many people are still at the carnival,” she said, taking a drink.

“I’ve always wondered why they don’t move up the date to either May or October, but then again, the crowdsseem to come no matter what.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “What time do you have to leave?”

“In an hour or so. But I should be back before eleven.”

Five hours, she thought. “Do you want me to make the kids anything special for dinner?”

“They like pasta. Kristen likes hers with butter, Josh likes his with marinara, and I’ve got a bottle of that in therefrigerator. They’ve been snacking all day, though, so they might not eat much.”

“What time do they go to bed?”

“Whenever. It’s always before ten, but sometimes it’s as early as eight. You’ll have to use your best judgment.”

She held the cool glass of water against her cheek and glanced around the kitchen. She hadn’t spent muchtime in their home, and now that she was here she noticed remnants of a woman’s touch. Little things—redstitching on the curtains, china prominently displayed in a cabinet, Bible verses on painted ceramic tiles near thestove. The house was filled with evidence of his life with another woman, but to her surprise, it didn’t bother her.

“I’m going to go hop into the shower,” Alex said. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

“Of course,” she said. “I can snoop around your kitchen and think about dinner.”

“The pasta’s in the cupboard over there,” he said, pointing. “But listen, when I get out, if you want me to driveyou over to your place so you can shower and change, I’d be glad to do it. Or you can shower here. Whatever youwant.”

She struck a sultry pose. “Is that an invitation?”

His eyes widened and then flashed to the kids.

“I was kidding.” She laughed. “I’ll shower after you’re gone.”

“Do you want to pick up a change of clothes first? If not, you can borrow sweats and a T-shirt… the sweats willbe too big for you, but you can adjust the drawstring.”

Somehow the idea of wearing his clothes sounded extremely sexy to her. “That’s fine,” she assured him. “I’mnot picky. I’m just watching movies with the kids, remember?”

Alex drained his glass before putting it in the sink. He leaned forward and kissed her, then headed toward thebedroom.

Once he was gone, Katie turned toward the kitchen window. She watched the road outside, feeling a namelessanxiety come over her. She’d felt the same way earlier in the morning and assumed it was an aftershock of theargument she’d had with Alex, but now she found herself thinking of the Feldmans again. And about Kevin.

She’d thought of him when she was on the Ferris wheel. As she’d scanned the crowd, she knew she hadn’tbeen searching for people from the restaurant. Not really. She’d been looking for Kevin. Believing for someinexplicable reason that he might be in the crowd. Thinking he was there.

But that was just her paranoia surfacing again. There was no way he could know where she was, no way toknow her identity. It was impossible, she reminded herself. He never would have connected her to the Feldmans’

daughter; he never even spoke to them. But why, then, had she felt all day like someone was following her, evenas they left the carnival?

She wasn’t psychic and didn’t believe in such things. But she did believe in the power of the subconsciousmind to put together pieces that the conscious mind might miss. Standing in Alex’s kitchen, however, the pieceswere still scrambled, without shape or order of any kind, and after watching a dozen cars pass by on the road outfront, she finally turned away. It was probably just her old fears raising their ugly head again.

She shook her head and thought of Alex in the shower. The thought of joining him made her flush hot withanticipation. And yet… it wasn’t quite that simple, even if the kids hadn’t been around. Even if Alex thought of heras Katie, Erin was still married to Kevin. She wished that she were another woman, a woman who could simplymove into her lover’s arms without hesitation. After all, it was Kevin who had broken all the rules of marriage whenhe first raised his fists against her. When God looked into her heart, she was pretty sure that He would agree thatwhat she was doing wasn’t a sin. Wouldn’t He?

She sighed. Alex… he was all she could think about. Later was all she could think about. He loved her andwanted her and she wanted, more than anything, to show him that she felt the same way. She wanted to feel hisbody against hers, wanted all of him for as long as he wanted her. Forever.

Katie forced herself to stop picturing herself with Alex, to stop dreaming about what was to come. She shookher head to clear it and went to the living room, where she took a seat on the couch next to Josh. They werewatching a Disney Channel television show she didn’t recognize. After a while she looked up at the clock, andnoticed that only ten minutes had gone by. It felt like an hour.

Once he finished with his shower, Alex made a sandwich and sat beside her on the couch as he ate. He smelledclean and his hair was still wet at the ends, clinging to his skin in a way that made her want to trace the line ofdampness with her lips. The kids, glued to the screen, ignored them, even after he put the plate on the end tableand began to run his finger slowly up and down her thigh.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered into her ear.

“I look terrible,” she countered, trying to ignore the line of fire burning its way up her thigh. “I haven’tshowered yet.”

When it was time for him to leave, he kissed the kids in the living room. She followed him to the door and whenhe kissed her good-bye, he let his hand wander lower, past her waist, his lips soft against hers. Obviously in lovewith her, obviously wanting her, making sure she knew it. He was driving her crazy, and he seemed to be enjoyingit.

“See you in a bit,” he said, pulling back.

“Drive safely,” she whispered. “The kids will be fine.”

When she heard his footsteps descending the steps outside, she leaned against the door for a long, slowbreath. Good Lord, she thought. Good Lord. Vows or not, guilt or not, she decided that even if hewasn’t in themood, she definitely was.

She peeked up at the clock again, certain that this would be the longest five hours of her life.

38

Damn!” Kevin kept saying. “Damn!” He’d been driving for hours. He’d stopped to buy four bottles of vodka at theABC store. One of them was half gone, and as he drove he saw two of everything unless he squinted, keeping oneeye closed.