Held: A New Adult Romance (12 page)

 The paparazzi fall away as we head north. Either the highway patrol caught up with them or they had better things to do. Amber slows, then my adrenaline spikes once more as she begins to swerve. She reels across the highway like a drunk, prompting angry horn blasts. For a moment I think she's going to crash, but as she approaches the side of the road she slows like a clockwork toy winding down. She comes to a halt maybe three inches from a signpost.

 I leap out and bang on the door of the Escalade. When she opens the door she practically spills out, her mouth wide open as she gasps for air. Figures - thank God she slowed down before her panic attack got any worse.

 "Breathe. It's okay. It's okay. You're not alone. I'm here."

 She slides down onto the verge and fights to catch her breath. "Oh shit," she says, when she can speak again. "Oh shit shit shit."

 "Shh. Everything's fine. You're safe. They turned back about ten miles ago."

 Amber exhales slowly through pursed lips. "Why? What happened?"

 "Police, I guess. That or someone tipped them off that Lady Gaga had been spotted wearing jeans and t-shirt."

 She lets out a shaky little laugh, but it's like her face doesn't know whether to laugh or cry and suddenly she's doing both. "Don't make me go back," she says, still breathless. "Please, Jimmy. Don't make me go back."

 "We've got to go back, Amber. Your Dad..."

 "No. No." She swallows and pulls her hair back from her face, twisting it up in a scrunchie.  "I can't go back. I can't go back to living in a fucking bubble. I'm crazy as it is - it was only making me worse, don't you see?"

 "Amber, please. Get back in the car."

 She scrambles to her feet and for a wild moment I think she's going to do something really nuts, like start running and screaming. But she doesn't. She stands with her back to the door of the Escalade, hugging herself. "If I do, will you take me home?"

 I nod. I'm not going to lie to her - she'd see through me in an instant anyway. "I have to," I say. "It's my job. I'm supposed to protect you."

 She bites her lips, making them red. She's breathing too hard and she looks like she might shake apart, but I nearly faint with relief when she nods her head. "Okay," she says.

 "Okay?"

 "Okay. Yes. I understand."

 "Good. It's not safe out here. You don't need that. You need to get well - not run around being chased by the paparazzi."

 Her tongue darts out over her lower lip again. "Okay," she says, and opens the rear door of the SUV. "Take me home."

 "Thank you," I say.

 "It's all right - I understand. I don't want you to get into any trouble."

 "Probably too late, but thanks."

 She climbs into the back. "Let me just get changed, okay? They know what I'm wearing."

 I lock up the security vehicle and get into the driver's seat of the Escalade. She's futzing with her bag in the back seat. I catch a glimpse of her bare arms and reach up to adjust the rearview mirror, so as to spare her modesty. But she catches my eyes in the mirror and there's a Mona Lisa smile dancing in the corners of her lips. She looks me right in my reflected eyes and peels off her t-shirt. No bra. Her breasts are small and round, peach soft and pale. I'm hard in an instant - hard and stupid as all hell.

 Quickly, I look away. She knows what she's doing and I'm an idiot for falling for it, but when she's dressed in black she has the same glow as a pearl on velvet. Or maybe one of those old movie stars, whose skin was never anything but white, those beautiful black and white ghosts with their dark mouths and razor thin eyebrows.

 By the time I hear the click, it's too late.

 There’s a gun pointed at the back of my head.

 "Drive," she says. "North. Don't turn back. We need to find the exit for the Coast Highway."

 I start the car. My hand's shaking. I think hers is too, but it's hard to tell and I don't dare turn around to check. I don't think she'd shoot deliberately but she's wired, tired and always on edge. The slightest jump or startle and the inside of the windshield is gonna be decorated in a fetching new shade of brain.

 "Amber," I say, trying to hide the tremble in my voice. "Please put the gun down."

 Where the hell did she even get that? Right away I know the answer will be waiting for me on the security footage back at the house. It’s the Bond gun, the one that was hung under the picture of Daniel Craig.

 I always wondered if it was a prop or the real deal.

 I feel the solid shape of my own piece digging into my hip. Unlike her, I know how to use it. Too bad I've already fastened my seatbelt - I could have reached for it then.

 "Drive," she says, again. "I don't want to have to shoot you."

 "That makes two of us." If that’s not a real gun she’s picked up the acting gene from her old man. Underneath my shirt I can feel the sweat run down between my shoulders. I'm conscious of every move I make, every flicker of my eyeballs, every beat of my heart. I'm nothing but bone and gristle and sweat, but I'm alive, I'm alive. Funny how it takes a gun pointed it at your brainstem to make you realize how much you're going to be missing. And worse, you might not even miss it. You might not even know.

 I keep going north. "Follow the signs for Monterey," she says. "I'm sure there's an exit somewhere."

 The engine roars as I pick up speed. The window is down a notch on the driver’s side and the wind whips past my ear, deafening me. I would have to turn my head to speak, so I don't. All I can do is keep driving and pray that she eventually lowers the gun. Sooner or later her arm will get tired.

 We reach the exit and head for the Cabrillo Highway. Sunny Southern California is fading with the evening light. The orange trees give way to evergreens and the wide ocean beaches to rocky shores. I've never been this far north before and it seems like a strange set of circumstances in which to realize that it's beautiful. But it is. And I have to. I have to hang onto the beauty of the rocks and the trees and the sky, because they may be the last things I ever see.

 Amber catches her breath in an impatient hiss. For a heart stopping second I think she's going to lower the gun, but no - she's just switching hands. She shakes her cramped left hand and holds the gun awkwardly in her right. Great - of all the fucking times to find out she's left-handed, one fumble away from blowing my brains all over the dashboard.

 And now there's another pressing concern. I need to piss, and she's not helping shaking that gun barrel next to my head. I slow down, enough to make my voice heard over the sound of the engine.

 "Amber, please. I have to pee."

 I catch a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror. She's so out of her depth it's not even funny. "No."

 "Amber, I swear to God - I am not fucking around. I'm not going to try anything. I just need to pee."

 Out of the far corner of my eye I see the gun wavering. She shakes her head. "I'm not going back to L.A."

 "I know that," I say. "And I'll drive you wherever you want to go. Just put the gun down."

 She snorts. "How stupid do you think I am, Jimmy?"

 "I don't think you're stupid at all," I say, through dry lips. My mouth is parched, a steep contrast to the other end of me, where my bladder feels like a giant watercooler. "I swear - we'll go wherever you want to go."

 Her eyes are cold and glittery - her Dad's eyes. I don't think she understands exactly how scared I am right now. Can she even see past her own panic? What is she capable of? What the hell did she
do?
I think back to the paparazzi, to the questions they were screaming at her.

 "You won't call the police?" she says.

 "No."

 "You won't call my Dad?" And suddenly she's a little girl lost all over again, a skinny Hollywood brat who can't even handle a gun properly. She would never hurt me. She's too soft, too sheltered. She wouldn't know how.

 "No," I say. "I promise."

 She presses her lips tight together and shakes her head. "And how do I know I can trust you?"

 I have to think about that one. I could remind her that I brought her cigarettes, that I didn't go prying into the details of her life online. And didn't I tell her about the camera? The reason why she went tearing off in the first place?

 "You don't," I say, eventually. "Isn't that kind of how trust works?"

 She lowers the gun. "Keep driving. We'll pull in at the next rest stop."

 I'm so keyed up it takes all of about ten minutes for my muscles to even start to relax, and when they do they leave pain in their wake - my shoulders, my thighs and back. Is this what it's going to feel like when I'm old?

 The gun is on the back seat. She could still pick it up if she wanted to, but she doesn't. When I catch her eyes they've gone dull, defeated, like she knows this is over. And I hate that look, with a hatred as hard and sudden as an unexpected fist. Better crazy than beaten.

 I stop the car. For the first time in over a hundred miles I dare to turn around. She's tiny in the big back seat, her bright hair streaming down around her face. I glance at the gun. "Can I have that?"

 She nods. I reach out and take it, tucking it into my belt. It feels real, but with a weird gut-lurch of relief I realize the whole time it wasn’t even loaded. I remember how to breathe again.

 "Good," I say. "Good girl. Just wait there, okay? I'll be right back."

 She nods again. She's not crying. Not yet.

 I take the keys and pee as fast as I possibly can. On the way back I pass a vending machine and grab a couple of sodas, one eye on her at all times. I can see her head bobbing the back seat. When I get back she's crying so hard she can hardly speak.

 "You want a soda?"

 She shakes her head, her long hair swaying.

 "Cigarette?"

 She nods. I open the back door wide for her, so that she can light up. She rummages in the holdall, tossing out a handful of shirts and a book (Madame Bovary) before she finds her pack of Luckys.

 "I'm sorry," she says, when she can speak again. "I just...I couldn't take it any more."

 "It's okay," I say, like I didn't spend the last hundred or so miles thinking of how I'd like to say goodbye to my friends and family, thinking of the sugar skull I'd never get to give Chuy for
Dia de los Muertos
. "I think I understand."

 She swallows hard and stares back at me. "Do you? Really?"

 "No. Maybe not."

 "I'm sorry, Jimmy," she says.

 "Jaime."

 "Jaime?"

 "It's my name."

 She starts to cry again, thinking I was making some kind of point to needle her. I grab her hand. "No, please don't cry," I say. "I'm just saying. It's funny how these things matter at the strangest times. After everything I feel like you should know how to pronounce my name."

 She sniffs hard. "You'll be pleased to know there's only one way to pronounce mine," she says, with a flicker of something almost like humor. "God, I'm so sorry I dragged you into this."

 "
De nada
," I say, gazing up at the sky. It's dark now, dark the way the desert is dark - big skies spattered with a million billion stars. The rush of the traffic mingles with the roar of the ocean, but she's close enough for me to hear her throat work as she swallows.

 "Well, it's not exactly nothing..." she says.

 "I know, right? Would this be a good time to ask 'where the fuck are we?'"

 She laughs and it's as startling and sweet as a birdcall in the middle of the night. "Not where we should be," she says.

 "Where's that, exactly?"

 "Another hundred miles or so," she says, scratching the nape of her neck. "I've got a place up the coast, up at Big Sur. I guess I just felt like I needed to go there."

 "What about your Dad?"

 "I'll call him. Smooth things over."

 She spots my skeptical expression right away. "I will," she says. "Honestly. This is not gonna blow back on you, I swear."

 "And you'll call your Dad?"

 "Yep."

 "Swear?"

 Amber shakes her head. "I never swear. Not any more. I guess you'll just have to trust me."

 Chapter Twelve

Amber

I haven't been back. Not since.

 I don't know why I even wanted to go there. I don't know what I was expecting. Would the place be exactly as I left it? - the towels on the floor, the phone off the hook. Maybe it was some kind of sick desire to return to the place where my life fell apart - I don't know. It wouldn't be the first time, like when Dad brought me back from Vegas.

 But when I switch on the light the room looks like it did the first time I ever saw it, right down to the striped rug and the wide adobe style fireplace that was such a novelty to me that I wanted to build fires every night, just so that I could watch the flames dance.

 Jaime whistles. "Nice. Not what I was expecting."

 "What were you expecting?"

 "I don't know. When you said 'cabin' I suppose I expected something more...I don't know...Eighties slasher movie, I guess."

 For a second I see nothing but red, but I laugh it off. "Nothing like that," I say. "But exercise caution should you find any books bound with human skin, if you know what I mean."

 "Hell no. According to the rules we'd be first on the chopping block - the ethnic friend and the girl who takes her top off?" He pulls a face and draws a finger under his throat.

 He catches me by surprise. I thought he'd never mention that again - too much of a gentleman. He's a good Catholic boy. He knows ballroom dancing, for heaven's sake. I feel the blood hot under the skin of my face and the old, nervous, hyperactive tug between my thighs. I'm still full of adrenaline, buzzed on the dipshit combination of fear and lust that used to make life so exciting. "You looked," I say.

 Jaime raises an eyebrow. "You pretty much flashed me." He stands with his weight on one foot, so that his narrow hips are tilted at an angle. He's not big - not bulky in the shoulders like Justin was - but his forearms are solid and when he danced with me I felt his gentle strength.