Page 34 of Running Feral

“You want to break into Kasia’s abusive ex’s house to steal evidence of his underage sex-abuse crimes? While you’re currently on the run from your own abusive ex?”

The words come out very slowly, like he knows he has several objections, but he can’t quite articulate them yet.

“Yep.” I nod. When he doesn’t make a move with the plates, I grab them out of his hands and put them on the little table before returning to stand right in front of him. “It’ll be fun. Use my evil powers for good, or whatever. Besides, I’ll have you by my side to protect me, right?”

My tone is teasing, and I tug at the front of his shirt and bat my eyelashes at him coquettishly while I say it, which seems to snap Gunnar out of his shocked daze.

He bats my hand away from his shirt gently, looking at me with a powerful combination of annoyance and indulgence that I kind of want to soak up like a sad, underwatered little houseplant.

“You’re terrible. I can’t decide which is more concerning: the catatonic version of you that makes me worry so much I might drive into a ditch, or this version,” he says, gesturing at me vaguely. Then he smiles, leaning into the ever-shrinking gap between our faces. “You’re dangerous, little one. You know that, right?”

My stomach flip-flops. I may be the one who started flirting, but I wasn’t expecting to get it back in such a real way, and my body was totally unprepared for it.

I’ve been appreciating Gunnar in both a personal and an aesthetic way for months now, and it’s only intensified the last couple of days. But my dick, unsurprisingly, has not been interested in the conversation. He’s been preoccupied with sad shit, and I was happy to let him mope. It’s not like I really needed him for anything.

But right now, with Gunnar looking at me from a few inches away and my clothes still smelling like him after spending the whole night sleeping in his arms, some things are waking up. The chipped and dented connections in that part of my body are finding ways to line themselves back up again, and while the feeling is very fucking abrupt, it’s not unwelcome.

I have completely forgotten what we were talking about. Is it my turn to speak?

Gunnar seems to break from his own lascivious trance around the same time and takes half a step back from me. His face falls, and he scrubs one hand down it.

“Let’s just eat. We can talk about it afterward, okay? I’m not crazy about the idea of putting you in danger, but I’m also very aware that I can be overprotective, and when it comes to catching a child predator, I might need to have some perspective. But first…” he trails off, hesitating for a second before reaching out to touch my cheek. Just for a second. So lightly I can barely feel it. “Fuck it,” he sighs. “Let’s just eat first, and then you can talk me into it.”

I feel like I’ve been spun around and turned inside out, but the smile comes to my face, anyway. I’ll win this fight. He knows it; I know it. It’s only a matter of time.

Six hours later, we’re parked in Gunnar’s car down a shitty back road behind Mishicot. Mishicot is not far from the bar and isessentially the trailer park version of a ‘town’, with a population of 196.

I’ve managed to avoid it the entire time I lived in Possum Hollow, despite being a fifteen-minute drive away. And now I’m here, because this is my stupid plan, and I talked Gunnar into going along with it approximately four and a half minutes after we finished breakfast.

Kasia and Sav are watching the bar. Kasia knows we’re doing something, but doesn’t have the details, so she can’t be implicated. Sav, we decided, got all the details, just in case we needed rescuing. Then it took a long time for me to piece together something from Gunnar’s closet that I could actually do crime in—very old, too-small black work-out pants that he should have thrown away a long time ago, with the cuffs rolled up, along with a t-shirt I will be daring him to still fit into later and a black sweatshirt that Kasia lent me. Because if you account for my broader shoulders and her heftier chest coming out in a wash, we’re kind of the same size.

“It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.”

Gunnar looks at me from the driver’s seat, the same grave-but-kind look in his eye that I’ve come to recognize. He almost always seems to pull that expression when he’s more worriedforyou thanaboutyou, but it’s cute either way. I’ll take it.

“I’m not changing my mind. This is important. I’ll get whatever I can find, like a laptop or a secret hard drive. They always have a secret hard drive. Leave it out, leave the door open and call the cops. He gets busted, goes to jail, Kasia lives happily ever after, and I get rid of a tiny little percentage of my karmic debt. It’s simple.”

“And what if you can’t get in?”

I snort. “Please. The man lives in a trailer. If I can’t break in without leaving a trace, I deserve to get caught.”

The skin around Gunnar’s eyes tightens, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You’re my look out. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.”

He pauses before turning even more in his seat to look at me and reaching out like he’s going to touch my cheek again, but then quickly pulling his hand back in.

“Then why do you look nervous?”

I freeze for a second, but then let out all my tension with a huff. I guess I can tell him? Otherwise, he’ll just assume it’s about this, which it really isn’t. This is kiddie-league level theft.

I roll my eyes, because I know it’s going to sound so stupid when I say it, but I also know he won’t leave it alone until I tell him.

“It’s nothing. I’m not nervous about this. I’ve just never been to Mishicot before. I’ve always avoided it because it’s where my shitty sperm donor is from.”

Gunnar raises his eyebrows as the information sinks in. “Is he still here?”

Shaking my head, I avoid his gaze. “No, he bounced a long fucking time ago. I don’t think anyone knows where he is. I’ve never even met him.” Gunnar is waiting for the other shoe to drop, clearly, so I give it to him. “But I do have a half-brother that I’ve also never met, and he lives here.”

---