19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

T exas looked the same as Arkansas had, yet Cleo found herself fascinated by how different these states appeared from her native New York/New Jersey. There were trees, but they weren’t cloying; she was used to forests towering over every road in the east, blocking her view of her surroundings. She could actually see the landscape around her here, and she soaked it in.

Until she remembered that they were being chased. Or at least followed. Where was Guayabera Guy now? And what would he do if he caught up to them? How exactly did a person get “brought in” when they were being hunted? Would he tie her up? Knock her out with chloroform? What methods had her dad told him were acceptable for his daughter? Chills crawled up her spine and she shivered. She needed to think about something else or she’d wrench her neck from all the head checks, making sure nothing looked suspicious behind them.

“Your question,” she said as she took a bite out of a fried moonpie. Ew, no. Hard pass.

Clark motioned to the moonpie Cleo had put back with disgust and said, “I want to know how you would rank desserts.”

“What kind of desserts?” Cleo forced herself to stop turning around and focused on the guy next to her.

Clark and Cleo spent five minutes debating the merits of various desserts—Clark's favorite was pie while it was Cleo's least favorite. Cleo said, “Great, now my stomach is rumbling. Why did we start talking about food?”

“Are you hungry already? We ate lunch not that long ago. When are you going to learn that a salad is not sufficient calories for a meal?”

“It’s sufficient for me to sit in a car all day, doing nothing physical or exertionary of any kind.”

“Exertionary is not a word.”

“It is too. It means full of exertion .

“No way. That is fake.”

“You’re fake.”

Clark grabbed her knee again and began to squeeze, right where Cleo was apparently incredibly ticklish. She hadn’t known that until today, but twice now she had lost her mind when he’d tickled her there. She tried to wiggle away, but he was strong and persistent. He continued to squeeze as she tried to fend him off. She jerked her leg out of reach and Clark turned the wheel in his haste to follow it. The car swerved slightly into the other lane, provoking a neighboring car to screech its horn at them. Clark quickly put both hands back onto the wheel and righted the car, looking a bit terrified that he’d nearly crashed into another vehicle.

“Wow, Clark, ten and two, remember?” she said, modeling the way he’d lectured her at the beginning of their trip about holding the steering wheel.

He glared. “My question again,” he replied tersely.

“It is not. You asked the last one about desserts.”

“And then you asked me back.”

“That wasn’t an official question, I was simply asking if you agreed or disagreed. It’s my question. You owe me after nearly getting me killed.” She motioned her thumb behind her, reminding him of what happened back there just now.

He sighed, clearly exasperated with her, but she detected a small smile at the corner of his mouth that gave him away. He loved bantering with her.

“Fine, what’s your question?”

“What are you most afraid of?”

The trace of a smile disappeared from his face. He rubbed his bicep and then ran his hand through his hair. “Who says I’m afraid of anything?”

“Everyone’s afraid of something.”

“Spiders,” he said.

“B.S.”

“What? You said everyone’s afraid of something–”

“And if it were spiders you’d have said that first.”

“Fine, needles.”

“Says the guy with a tattoo? Uh uh, more B.S.”

Clark growled. “You’re a menace, do you know that?”

A smile split Cleo’s face. She put her hand over her heart, and in her best Scarlett O’Hara impression she purred, “Why sir, I’ve never before been paid such a compliment.” Switching back to her normal voice she added, “Come on, stop stalling and spill.”

Clark resisted for several moments before he finally blurted, “I’m afraid of hurting someone I love.” He paused for a breath then added, “Or, perhaps, of being the reason someone I love gets hurt when I could’ve done something to prevent it.”

Cleo’s brow furrowed. “That’s awfully specific. It sounds like you’ve got first-hand experience with this.”

Clark cleared his throat. “Sorry, no follow-up questions at this time.”

Without any warning, he asked his question. “What happens if that guy who’s chasing you catches up to us?” Cleo drew in an audible breath. She’d managed to forget about him for a minute.

“What do you mean? Are you worried about yourself? He won’t hurt you…probably.”

“I’m not worried about me, or at least I wasn’t until you just said that. He likely has a gun, huh?”

“You’ll be fine. I’m the only one he cares about.”

“I’m talking about what happens to you when you're back home. Does your father force you to still marry that guy? Does he put you under house arrest? What happens next?”

Cleo picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “I’m not sure what will happen. I guess any of those are possibilities. I’d like to think he wouldn’t force me to do anything I don’t want to do, but a year ago I’d never have believed I’d be in a situation even remotely like the one I was in when I ran away, so who knows? I should’ve put my foot down a long time ago, but I have a hard time saying no to my dad.”

“It can be hard to set boundaries with the people we’re closest to.”

“Yeah, and I got used to doing whatever I had to in order to keep the peace at home, even back when I thought Bernice was my mom. I didn’t know I was doing it until I began therapy.” She resisted the urge to look behind her again. “I also worry that there’s something wrong with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if I’m like my mom? What if she ran when it got hard, and I do the same thing?”

“You didn’t run because it got hard, you ran because you weren’t in a safe position. I think it was incredibly brave of you to leave when you did. I’d hope my sisters would’ve done the same if they’d been in your shoes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have–” Cleo braced herself on the dashboard as Clark slammed on the brakes and swerved a little to the side to keep from hitting the car in front of them. All around them other cars were doing the same as traffic came to an abrupt halt.

“What’s going on?” she asked, though Clark likely couldn’t see anymore than she could. He looked behind them and then pulled out his phone to check the traffic.

“It looks like there’s an accident a few miles up the road. The guesstimate is this will be an hour delay.”

“Is there another way we can go to get around it?”

“I don’t see anything on here.”

“When is the next exit?”

“A mile or so I think?”

Cleo squirmed. She’d gotten herself an RC cola at the gas station, just to try it, and was going to need a bathroom before that hour was up. How long would it take them to go a mile to the exit? The car inched forward as traffic moved slightly, but if it stayed at this glacial pace she would be in trouble. As if it sensed the impending crisis, her bladder seemed to instantly surge to completely full status. Why had she drunk a soda on a road trip? She knew those went right through her.

“What is it?” Clark asked, watching her fidget.

“Nothing. I just…might need to powder my nose soon.”

Clark tilted his head and arched his brow. “You need to powder your nose?”

Cleo willed him to understand her, but he continued to look confused. Motioning with her hand in front of her she said, “You know,...?” When he seemed no closer to understanding she added, “I need to take a trip to the little girl’s room? To tinkle? Use the facilities?” At his blank expression she said, “I need to go to the bathroom, Clark.”

“Ah, why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because we’re in the south, and I’m trying to have some southern manners.”

“Well, I think ‘nature calls’ is a polite way to say it and everyone understands that.” He looked around and then checked his phone again, as they were still at a crawl. “Can you hold it until…?” Her screwed up face must have been all the answer he needed to that question. “Guess not. Then, I think your best bet will be to go out there in those trees.”

Cleo pivoted to where he pointed past her at the row of trees on the side of the road. “No.”

“There’s plenty of cover there.”

“Those trees would barely cover my pinky, let alone my booty.”

Cleo didn’t miss his pointed look at her butt when she said that. He blushed when he saw her catch him. “Look, I’ll keep my eyes on the road, and so will everyone else. No one wants to watch a girl urinate.”

“Pervs do.”

“There are no ‘pervs’ here, Princess.”

“How do you know that? Are you going to question every driver here?”

“Well, I have no bottle for you to pee in, and I don’t think that would work very well anyway. I’m not mopping up a mess in our rental because you refuse to pee in the woods.”

Woods was a generous term for the scant number of trees outside right now, but Clark was right: Cleo didn’t have another choice.

“Promise you won’t look?”

“I promise. Believe me, this is not how I want to see you naked,” he mumbled. Cleo whipped her head around to catch a blush creeping up Clark's face that he quickly covered. His next sentence was muffled behind his hands. “I don’t want to see you naked period, Princess. Now, will you get?”

“And you won’t leave me?”

“And be deprived of your next question for me? Never!”

Cleo slid on her shoes and opened her car door. Stepping out, she tried to discreetly close it, but she was pretty sure no matter how inconspicuous she tried to make herself, every pair of eyes was trained on her right now. And everyone knew exactly what she was doing. Why else would someone leave a running car to tiptoe to some trees on a freeway, but to relieve herself? Well, Cleo was pretty sure she was about to earn herself a new most embarrassing story, and Clark was witness to it all.

She picked her way down a small hill to the tall grass and moved diagonally toward the trees so she wouldn’t be directly in front of Clark. Not that it would matter, as he was creeping forward enough that he’d be parallel to her in no time.

She reached the treeline and found the largest trunk, then grabbed up a couple leaves that she hoped weren’t poisonous. The last thing she needed was to wipe with something that would cause an itchy rash down there.

She tried to conduct her business as quickly as possible, but nearly fell over in her haste. Catching herself on the tree before the pants around her knees could trip her into the open, exposing herself in front of dozens of bored motorists, Cleo clung to the tree for dear life. She needed to be quick and careful. She finished up, luckily managing to keep her clothing from getting wet, and pulled up her pants.

Before emerging from the trees, she tipped her nose up and squared her shoulders, attempting to not look as humiliated as she felt. Clark had only moved about twenty feet while she was gone so it wasn’t a long walk to catch up to him, and Cleo got in the car and shut the door without a word. She immediately began applying the hand sanitizer Dottie had left in the car.

Clark wasn’t speaking either, but one glance confirmed that he was fighting the grin threatening to overtake his face. Her eyes slitted. “Shut up.”

Clark threw up his hands. “I didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t have to. I know you.” She shoved his bicep and he pretended to rub it as if injured. How many times had she touched him there that day? Cleo wondered if she’d ever touched Jameson this much. She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t seem to help herself when it came to Clark.

“Did you actually go?”

“Of course I went. I wouldn’t put myself through that walk of shame only to remain uncomfortable.”

“I filled up three bottles myself while you were out there.”

Cleo blanched and spun around to find said bottles, but Clark was smiling mischievously again. She put her hand to her chest when she realized he was lying. She moved to shove him once more but stopped herself before she did. This urge to touch him was getting ridiculous.