Wanderlust

“So wait. Why didn’t you get it out then? We could have died.”

“Nah, probably not. She’d have launched herself, I’d have blocked, and she’d have caught my arm. It would’ve got torn up pretty bad, but that’s it. She was too malnourished to do much. That’s why she’s so close to a rest stop. Must be near to starving to chance it.”

I tried to calm myself though inside I felt shivery, bordering on hysterical. “Okay. Here’s a question. Why was there a tiger in the woods? In Texas.”

“There’s more tigers in Texas than in India. The old travelling circuses let them loose when they disbanded, and since then they’ve maintained a steady population.” He reached back and rustled in some bags behind the seats. “Most people think they’re large cats. I’ve seen them before but never that close.”

He tossed big slabs of jerky packaged in shrink wrap onto my lap.

“Open those up.”

Without a word, I tugged at the little slit in the corner and pulled out the savory meat.

He drove up to where we’d reenter the freeway but rolled a little ways onto the grass. He hit the button and rolled down the window.

“Throw it out there. Far as you can.”

I stared at him for a minute, but he just waited. Sighing, I turned and tossed one of the pieces of meat onto the grass.

His exhalation was derisive. “That as far as you can get it?”

I scowled at him, then reached back and threw the next piece. It landed a few feet farther. I unlatched the seatbelt so I could turn my whole body. The rest of the pieces landed only a few feet from the treeline.

The meat rested there, small pockets of brown amid the grass.

I glanced back. “Will she find it?”

He chuckled. “Oh, she’ll find it. She’s just wishing we’d get the hell out of here.”

With that, he gunned the engine and we sped back onto the freeway. He used his radio to tell someone about the tiger and they messaged him back something about a wildlife rescue organization going out to set a trap.

Only as the minutes ticked away did the events fall in order for me. The way he’d protected me, yes. Even more interesting, the way he’d protected the tiger. He could have shot her and been done with her. Instead he’d risked his own life for hers, he’d fed her, he’d sent help for her.

And maybe most shocking of all: I was riding up front.

He glanced over, seeming to follow my train of thought. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Are you going to make me go back there?”

After a moment, he shook his head. “Good girls get to ride up front.”

The words were humiliating but stirred something inside me. I was beginning to recognize that tension as lust. Dirty, wrong, but undeniable. It was spacious in here. The seats were a soft black leather. Like the waitress had said, very comfortable.

I huddled against the door, staring straight ahead. My exhilaration from the encounter with the tiger morphed into excitement. I was in the truck! Inside the truck. I didn’t want to mess this up. And maybe I would have been excited even without the kidnapping. This was like an adventure. A slightly perverted adventure of questionable consent, but beggars like me couldn’t be choosers.

As the truck rumbled forward, I noticed the swaying of a necklace roped around the rearview mirror. No. I looked closer and realized it was a rosary. Pale cream beads and a silver cross. I wondered if it had belonged to someone he loved, like maybe his mother. It humanized him a little bit. There must have been someone he loved, before he had turned into this, a man who had to force women into staying with him.

We drove for several minutes in silence. I stared out the window, watching the farmland rush by. The sky was a brilliant green-blue like I imagined the sea would look, though I had never been. I blinked up at the clouds that seemed to hang above us, even as we sped eighty miles per hour down the highway, even as the clouds themselves must be floating along in a different direction.

On Earth, it was much more dismal. The farmland was brown and flat. Even someone as clueless as I knew that was a bad sign in terms of producing crops. And there were no houses, no people. Not that I could jump out of a moving vehicle even if I saw someone. We were so high off the ground, almost flying, with a tint strong enough that no one would see me wave for help.

I had traded one prison for another, this one mobile but absolute. Inescapable even as it sliced through the countryside. Neither my mother’s home nor this eighteen-wheeler were gilded, but I preferred the view in this cage.

Except to the left of me, where Hunter sat, tapping the wide steering wheel in a restless beat. His legs were long, reaching leisurely to the floor. His whole body was slouched slightly, clearly quite comfortable. In contrast, my own knees were pressed together, my fists balled together right on top.

“So tell me about yourself, sunshine.”

Tell him…about me? He couldn’t really care, and I couldn’t really want to tell him—could I? Sadly, I wasn’t so sure. I had spent most of my twenty years with one person. Here was a new one. The novelty was too much to resist.