Wanderlust

“You told me the story from it, about the girl and the canoe. Is that why you keep it?”

I played at the hem of my dress, distracted and jittery. “Not really.”

“So what’s the big deal with Niagara Fucking Falls?”

Despite myself, I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Hunter to be irreverent whenever possible. “No big deal, okay? I’m just curious. Am I not allowed to be curious?”

He eyed me. “Mouthy, huh?”

I was mouthy, though I wasn’t sure where the hint of attitude had come from. Was I becoming more comfortable with him? Was I coming to trust him?

Scary thought.

“So you want to go there. Then why were you heading to Little Rock?”

“Didn’t have enough money,” I mumbled. Then stronger, “But I guess you know that, seeing as you already looked through my stuff.”

He snorted. “Okay, so why haven’t you gone there before this?”

Because of my mother, I wanted to cry. But that was a lie.

“Too scared, I guess,” I mumbled. It wasn’t as if I had any pride with him anyway.

His gaze softened.

A smile turned my lips. “Don’t imagine you have much experience with that.”

He squinted into the distance. “Depends on what you’re scared of. Me, I’m scared of standing still.”

My heart skipped a beat at his confession. Maybe we could open up to each other after all…and then what? What as the end goal? Even Niagara had lost some of its appeal, just another point on the map, a way-station to a true and unimaginable destination.

I expected us to stop at another fast food restaurant or a diner. But this time, we didn’t pull off the road for him to stash me in the back. Instead we exited the freeway where a large sign had the icons for gas, food, and lodging, and continued on until we were pulling into a truck stop.

He wasn’t hiding me.

This truck stop was a lot like the first one, and it made my heart speed up. Maybe it was foolish to hope, but he could let me go here. I’d served my usefulness. I had pried into his life. I had opened up about my hopes and dreams. For whatever reason, he could be finished with me, and now he’d leave me here in a place where he found me.

So why did I feel disappointment?

It was premature, I knew, but a spark of hope could conflagrate a wildfire. If I were freed, I would call the cops, file a report, and return to my car. Then I would drive to Little Rock, where hopefully the job was still available, the one at the camera shop where I had never been. I swallowed thickly. So why did it feel like a step backward?

Faced with the loss of him, I suddenly wanted what Hunter could show me. For all that he was a little unhinged, he saw things—really saw them. I wanted that. Maybe I even wanted him to keep me.

But that was insane. Completely loco. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see the craziness of that wish—the same way a Kamikaze pilot must have felt in the second after he volunteered, like what did I get myself into?

Besides, the part of me that could be spontaneous and risk-taking had atrophied long ago. I was like my mother, bound by fear, but instead of being restricted by geography I was restrained by societal conventions. He was a bad guy, a kidnapper, and I shouldn’t want anything he had to offer—not even freedom.

So I pressed my lips together and ignored the flutter in my belly. Even when he pulled into one of the long diagonal parking spots meant for trucks—right next to another one!—I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even trying to hide our presence here. It was all out there in the open, in the waning late afternoon light.

He turned to me. “Don’t give me any trouble, okay? Let’s just have a quiet dinner.”

I blinked. We would eat…and then he would turn me loose?

“If you can’t be good for your own sake, do it for theirs. Anyone you get to help you answers to me, and they’ll live to regret it. Understand?”

“You’re not letting me go?”

He stared impassively for a moment, then he laughed. “I thought we went over this. No.”