❝cuando me fui él me mandó a buscar,
y yo no pude, no, decirle que no.❞
☽
FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. Why?
"Medina," I snap, "¿qué pasa?"
Who the fuck just opened fire in The Purple Caterpillar?
Thud!
It's fist against drywall, a hard knock, adjacent to us, reverberating through the porcelain beneath my clammy palm, and a "Hey!" and Drake, leaning in, pressing a finger to my lips, saying something that sounds like, "Qué te calles, Melo."
My pulse spikes. Oh. Fuck, oh, fuck. What is...
It softens, and I can't breathe.
Drake, inching back... back... back. Click. Drake, unlocking the bathroom door, nudging it open with a Timberland, so fucking slowly. It's too quiet. His neck cranes, and I watch him, in a feverish, panicked confusion, shuffling, his cuffs bunched at his elbows, his hands pulling his hood up, inked knuckles...
Why did I trust him?
Drake, leaning through the doorway, reaching behind blindly for... for...
"Ay, Melo." His gruff, throaty whisper. "Quédate detrás de mí."
My heart somersaults. What?
His toe crosses the threshold, and I grab his hand, lacing our fingers together. I can't stay behind him; I don't let go. It feels like a slow surrender, stepping out of the bathroom, raising our linked hands, what Bonnie and Clyde may have looked like, if they ever surrendered, if they hadn't been taken down.
The air is tense, silent, but smoky, and Ciara is nowhere to be found.
Drake looks both ways, and I follow his gaze, counting—twofoursix—silhouettes, waiting, lurking in pockets of darkness, spread out across The Purple Caterpillar—similar in stature, bulky, straps and slings, draped in ammo belts, dressed in camouflage, holding rifles, as if ready to... hunt.
"Drake..."
Pump-Action Remington 7600s.
Deerslayers.
Curtis loved them.
"Oh, fuck, Melo."
Palurdos, Papá would have called them. Rednecks.
"Run."
Trees streak across my blurry vision.
Breathless, sprinting through backwoods Maine.
Darkness.
I'm limping, shouldering against bark and brittle branches, sifting through an ankle-deep mist, chafed bloody, caked in muddy pine needles, deliriously dizzy. I'm coughing on salty air, and I'm gagging on a moist, mossy chill, and I'm choking on dirt, spitting up worms and soupy slush, gravelly bits, onto frostbitten toes.
It's a starless sky.
I'm barefoot, lost, imprints on soft soil, and I'm running, like Drake told me to, caught by a snarled root, a faint cry, whispering through swaying, skeleton limbs, a sickeningly sweet, smothering cocktail—spruce, pine, fir—and I'm tripping, tripping, tripping, tumbling down, down, down, beneath a canopy of nothingness.
"Luz."
I only have a split second to peer up.
Bang!
YOU ARE READING
Dark Places
Mystery / Thriller[UPDATES ON FRIDAYS] It's been three years since Luz Melo left Portland, Maine... and Drake Medina. ☽ When her "borderline" alcoholic lifestyle in NYC falls apart, leaving her girlfriend in rehab, her grades trashed, and her scholarship revoked, th...
