Taming Cross

“It was my only choice.”

“That’s pretty damn selfless.”

She doesn’t reply, just starts picking at her colorless fingernails.

“How long were you with Cientos?”

This time, she flicks her gaze at me, but she doesn’t answer. Her green eyes say, Do you really think I’ll talk to you?

“I’m on your side, you know that right? I chose to take this job, to come find you.”

“Do you want a cookie?”

“White chocolate macadamia.”

“You’re from California.”

“That’s right.” I answer smoothly, even though the comment throws me off. “How could you tell?”

“Your accent.”

“Ah.” But she’s not saying I sound familiar, right? Because I’m now remembering every time I answered the land line when I was in high school and people thought I was my dad. Before she can put my familiar face and familiar voice together, I thrust forward the bag of girl stuff. “For you.”

She sits the sack on the ground, beside the water, and takes three steps to the blanket. She lies on it and gazes up at the trees—or rather, the single one in this grove that’s tall enough to block our view of the stars. “How do I know you don’t work for Priscilla Heat?”

My stomach clenches tightly, but I don’t let it show. Instead I frown, like this is preposterous. “Why would you think I work for a  p**n  star?”

“Never mind.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks down at the blanket, as if seeing it for the first time. “Are we sleeping on this together?”

“I couldn’t bring two bags. If you like, I can sleep on the ground.”

She shakes her head. “Just stay on your side.”

I’m surprised she isn’t more leery of me. I wonder if it’s my hand, and try to push all the self-loathing away. She’s tough. Been through a lot. She can probably tell a good guy from a bad one at this point.

I lie down beside her, looking up, like she is. I want to touch her, but I focus on the sky instead. Silence envelops us—silence and the sounds of water.

“I’m not sorry I killed him,” I tell her.

She doesn’t reply, and I feel my chest fill up with something warm and unnamable. Concern, I guess it is. Concern that’s inappropriate, given who I am and who she is. Given what I knew and didn’t do. And still I can’t help but say, “I am sorry that this happened to you.”

She rolls over, with her back to me. “We need to be up in two hours or so. We’ll have to travel farm land until we’re past Parral and Delicias, until we’re very close to Chihuahua. Otherwise they’ll find us. They probably have the police on their side.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding,” she says flatly.

Damn; I really didn’t think this through. “You rest. I’ll stay up.” And figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of this.

She never replies, but eventually I hear her breathing even out.

I know I’m being a bitch. I even feel a little sorry for it.

The problem is, I just can’t help myself.

When he wakes me up about an hour before sunrise, after only one hour of sleep, I help him re-pack the bag and I try to find some equilibrium. I try to make myself feel human again. To feel sad for the loss of life yesterday, worried for the clinic, excited that I’m free. I try to care about this man who saved me, even if it’s just one living creature to another.

But I can’t.

Disliking him is easy, because it gives me a mission. It gives me someone else to blame, at least for a little while. Also, it helps me avoid temptation.

Evan is beautiful. Stunningly handsome, and cool under pressure. Reckless, charming, and considerate. He even bought me deodorant. Real deodorant. My favorite brand and second favorite scent, at that. I’ve basically been putting chalk under my arms for the last year and a half.

Since he likes Battlestar Galactica, I know he has good taste in TV, and before we take off on the bike, I find he has good taste in music, too. He’s got a small iPod and it’s fully charged. He hands me one ear-phone and takes the other for himself, and for the next hour or so, as we poke along at thirty miles an hour, through old, dried up fields, we’re serenaded by Neil Young, the Grateful Dead, and Bon Iver.

Bon Iver is what really gets me. I had barely heard of them when I was living in Vegas, but the two or three songs I had heard, I adored.

After an hour or so on the road, I start feeling…weird. It’s that particular light-chested feeling I remember from my high school days. From my kissy slut days. And I know what it means.

I’m hyper-aware of my arms around Evan;s hard, warm waist. Of the way his upper body tenses when we hit bumps. I can imagine that at this low speed, it’s hard to keep us balanced, especially with that contraption he has for his left arm.

I shut my eyes and remind myself that I’m not supposed to worry about him. It’s his fault we’re in this mess. This was not my plan.

But aren’t you grateful for it? a little voice inside me asks. Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to go back to the cartel?

I wonder what it means for me that Jesus is dead. It doesn’t mean more safety right now, but it might eventually. If Jesus was as humiliated as I think he was by my running away, he might have kept coming after me, even if I made it to America. If he’s dead, it all depends on Christina. Does she want to waste the resources?

She was one of the select few who knew he was g*y. I think she hated me because she hated that he felt he had to hide behind a mistress.

Despite what happened before I ran off, I feel a sort of sadness that he’s dead. For all he turned out to be a total sociopath, he wanted to be a school teacher when he was a kid. He was a monster, but in many ways he was good to me—at least for most of the time I was with him. I was one of the few people he could ask for advice about his boyfriends. I remember the last time he bought new cologne. “Which one makes me smell like salvation?”

It just seems impossible that he’s dead.

But Evan is right; he shouldn’t be sorry for killing Jesus. Jesus was one of the bad guys, and the main thing I feel about his death is relief.

I lay my cheek against Evan’s back and shut my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts.

I don’t want to go back to my old life in the States. Maybe that’s part of why I’m feeling angry at him—Evan. I don’t even know if I can go back. As long as Priscilla and Jim Gunn are around, I’ll never be safe. And then there’s Drake. The honorable governor from the state of California. Who thinks I wanted to blackmail him, to ruin him, and who, I assume, didn’t mind one bit when Priscilla and Jim Gunn sold me as a sex slave. I have to assume he’d try to get rid of me again.