Page 15 of The Crush
As my climax crashes into me, it takes him, too. Only a few more thrusts before his rhythm falters, before he thrusts deep and groans, pressing his forehead back against mine as we both try to catch our breath. “Perfect,” he murmurs again, and the way he says it makes me actually feel like it’s true. “Fuck, are you—”
“Yeah,” I reassure him, grinning and still enjoying the feel of him as he shakes his head and kisses me again.
To my relief, when he eases out, he doesn’t go far, dropping onto the bed beside me with his arm thrown across my waist. Still trying to convince myself this is real, I roll onto my side to see him better, smiling as I push the damp curls from his forehead. He smiles, too, trailing his fingers up and down my arm until the sounds of the outside world slowly start to break back in. For him, as well as for me, judging by the shift in his expression at the noise.
“As much as I’d like to keep you in my bed the rest of the day,” he mutters after a few more heartbeats pass, bringing his hand up to brush against my cheek. “We should probably…”
“I know,” I say quietly, unsure where we go from here but too afraid to ask. “Time’s up.”
He frowns, pulling me tight against him and kissing me again. “Maybe we could find some more time? Later. After everyone’s gone.”
My heart hammers in my chest, irrepressible hope clouding out every thought of self-preservation. “I’d like that.”
He smiles again, buries his nose in my hair and takes a deep inhale, staying close even once he’s reluctantly helping me pull back on my clothes, both of us laughing at the way my limbs refuse to cooperate. Both of us trying to quickly hide the signs on one another that we each had made.
Somewhere along the way, Daniel tells me that he wants to be the one to go out first, to make sure no one had noticed us sneaking away. If the coast is clear, he’ll slip himself into the crowd and the conversation before I do the same. And if it isn’t…
“I’ll yellfire,” he says, letting me button up his shirt. “And you run for my truck. Keys are under the mat.”
I laugh, a bit anxious, but also knowing that no matter what comes next I wouldn’t change this. Nor would I change the way he comes back almost as soon as the door closes. “A little more, Isabel,” he tells me, voice and touch urgent. “Give me a little more so I can make it through this fucking party.”
In answer, I’m already pulling him closer, already kissing him, already wondering why it doesn’t make me more afraid to know with so much certainty…
I’d give him everything if I could.
The Lie
The news played on every channel. Breaking through a steady stream of Christmas advertisements on December 2, 1993, to announce the end of a story that some may have forgotten the US was still telling.
My friends must have thought I was crazy, sitting in my room and watching broadcast after broadcast. The same news every time with the same take. The same pictures of a man that had made destroying lives into a billion-dollar business. That we had spent sixteen months trying to find before he’d finally met his fate running barefoot on a roof in Medellín.
But I wasn’t looking for Pablo Escobar.
“I don’t know,” my mother had said when I’d talked to her later that night, the sound of her own TV audible in the background. “I saw Tadeo earlier, and…he seemed to think Danny still wasn’t coming home.” She’d sighed, sounding sad. “I don’t know, mija.”
No one ever seemed to. No one ever seemed to know exactly where he was or when he might finally come back, just as we hadn’t known he was going at all until the morning it happened. Until he’d shown up to give my mother a tight hug, my father and my brothers a firm handshake, and me…a gentle pat on the arm.See ya, kid.
I hadn’t bothered to ask my mother many questions then, just like I hadn’t bothered to ask the day Escobar was killed. Even if it might have made me feel better to hear her tell me that everything would be all right. Even if I never liked to be told things that I already believed were lies.
Why then was I always telling so many?
Thirteen
Isabel
Saturday, September 24, 1994
A dry summer turns into a dry fall. The gravel and dirt kicking up so bad on the country roads that I can barely see out of my rearview window. Not that I’m bothering to look back.
My eyes are already on the faded red truck with the wide white stripe coming into view, pulled over on the side of the otherwise empty road. Exactly where he said he’d be.
I pull up behind him, my car barely coming to a full stop before I slam it into park and clamber out of my driver’s seat. When I reach his passenger side, it’s already unlocked, waiting for me to climb up into the cab, across the bench seat, and directly into his lap.
“You’re late,” Daniel grumbles against my neck, his lips skimming my skin and his hands already wandering.
I grin. “Someone’s impatient.”
“For this? Of course I fucking am.” His teeth nip right above my clavicle, hard enough to make me gasp but not enough that a visible mark will be left behind. That, he’ll do somewhere hidden. Somewhere that will be just another secret between us that we keep.
