Page 36 of Roma Queen
“Yeah?”
“That nearly fucking killed me. That…that nearly fuckingdestroyedme.” He sounds breathless, like he’s still trying to recover from the sex. I can hear the steady, even thrum of his heart below my ear, though, so I know it’s not that. Iknowwhat he means perfectly well. He’s referring to the fact that I tried to run from him.
With infinite care, I press my lips to his chest, closing my eyes. “I’m sorry. Don’t worry. I’ll never do that again.”
And I won’t.
Seventeen
ZARA
“You havegotto be fucking kidding me.”
Just as Pasha predicted, the door to Shelta’s Airstream is flung wide open to the elements when we wake, and the woman herself is nowhere to be found. She managed to start up the van and leave without drawing any attention to herself, so when she made her exit no one can tell. All anyone knows is that the Rivin camp’s fortune teller has disappeared, and very few people seem bothered by the fact.
With the van gone, however, and a fresh foot of snow on the ground, there’s no chance Pasha and I will be hiking back to the parking lot. I’m taken aback when he leads me around the side of Patrin’s Winnebago and he throws back a crackling, frozen tarp, revealing a Ski-Doo underneath, though.
“What?” Pasha’s mouth skews to one side in a surprisingly boyish expression. “It’s just like riding a motorcycle. You just sit on the back and hold on to me.”
I scan the snowy, featureless glen, my eyes unable to pick out a single rise or dip to the landscape against the backdrop of all that white. “You’re going to drive us off a cliff.”
He gives me a scandalized look. “What the fuck do you take me for? We’ve been coming here every winter my entire life.Iknow this valley like the back of my hand. And besides, there’s a fire trail on the other side of that rise. It’s five miles longer than the route we hiked in on, but it’ll be a breeze on this thing.”
I’m still riddled with doubt as Pasha fires up the Ski-Doo, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I either ride on the back of this deathtrap, or I sit out the rest of the winter here, waiting for the snow to ease or for all of it to miraculously melt overnight.
Pasha looks like some kind of rock star as he climbs onto the Ski-Doo and reaches his hand out to help me on behind him. His leather jacket’s still back in the Mustang, but holy hell, he doesnotneed it. The tattoos that climb up his forearms and sneak out from underneath the collar of the same torn sweater he wore yesterday are enough on their own. But it’s the sharp, daring, amused glint in his pale green eyes that screams, ‘I am a bad,badboy.’
“Chicken?” he asks.
“Child?” I retort. But it’s me that pokes my tongue out at him like a five-year-old as I clamber onto the back of the Ski-Doo, purposefully refusing to accept his proffered help. He laughs softly, the smoke from his breath skating on the frosty morning air.
“So damn stubborn,” he mutters to himself. I playfully dig my knuckle into the small of his back, and he yelps, twisting around until he can see me over his shoulder. “Icouldmake you stay here with Patrin,” he informs me. His smile fades, and his eyes become distant, as if he’s just realized something. “In all seriousness, thisisprobably the safest place for you. Lazlo would never dare come here. Patrin and the boys would fucking skin him alive.”
Nope. No fucking way. I wrap my arms around Pasha’s waist, holding onto him firmly. “You’reinsane. Start the engine on this thing before I freak the fuck out.”
“Zara—”
“Pasha,no. I’m coming back to Spokane. I’m gonna be there to help find Sarah. And I’m going to find out who Lazlo is, once and for all. I’m going to find out how he’s connected to me, and I’m gonna make sure he’s punished for what he did to Corey. Don’t even bother trying to talk to me out of it again. You’ll be wasting your breath.”
He’s frustrated, I can tell. The muscles in his shoulders are tensed, harder than granite, but he keeps any further objections or suggestions in check. With flared nostrils, he huffs down his nose, his eyes alive with worry as he turns the key in the Ski-Doo’s ignition and the engine roars to live, rumbling like an earthquake beneath me.
“Whydoyou guys spend each winter here?” I speak the words into his ear, so he can hear me over the ruckus.
He smiles, and fuck me if I don’t have to curb the temptation to climb around and straddle him so I can pull the fullness of his bottom lip onto my mouth and suck on it. “We’re very tortured souls,” he says, laughing. “We like to make things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves.”
“Seriously? You don’t have a reason for spending such horrible, freezing weeks here, when you could be sunning yourselves on a beach in Southern California?”
Pasha kicks the Ski-Doo into gear and slides back into his seat, turning to face forward again. “We come out here because it’s hard, and doing things that are hard makes us strong. Not everything in life is supposed to be easy, Firefly.”
* * *
Three minuteson the Ski-Doo and I trust Pasha implicitly. He isn’t reckless like most guys would be, wanting to show off in front of the girl they like. Instead, he picks the safest line, and is incredibly careful as he navigates the terrain.
It’s still early, and the sun hasn’t fully risen over the tops of the trees yet. The morning is the color of pale crushed pearls and cotton candy—the faintest suggestion of color, shimmering in the east, laid bare against a broad swathe of cool, wintery, washed-out sky. Buried under a thick layer of snow, the landscape reminds me of a frosted, high-end wedding cake.
How long did it take for us to hike in to the camp the other day? I don’t remember, I didn’t watch the clock, marking every laborious, breathless minute that passed, so I can only guess that it took around three hours. Our progress on the Ski-Doo is much more impressive.
Pasha locates the fire trail immediately, and we’re speeding down a gentle slope, heading back toward the parking lot in no time. The world whips by in a blur and I'm almost hypnotized, lulled by the rhythm of the Ski-Doo's engines. The dull thump of the hangover I earned myself after drinking all of that whiskey last night eases as we descend down the valley and the fresh air floods my lungs. It feels like we're inside a snow globe, two tiny figures surrounded by a perfect, brilliant, pristine winter dream.
