GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 9: BLEEDING

'Sweet tea in the summer

Cross your heart, won't tell no other

...

Love you to the moon and to Saturn

Passed down like folk songs

The love lasts so long.'

Blue and red were all I saw on our way back, as the sun was setting in a mesmerizing gradation, and as if even nature were sensing it, it disappeared right when the large sign appeared on the horizon.

Subrose, the town welcomes you for a lovely stay.

It didn't look like it to me when everything I'd tried to escape was racing before my eyes, faster than the scenery, and I didn't even know how my shaky fingers could point the familiar streets.

But we were already one turn away from the destination when I announced, "Stop here."

Once the whirring of the engine ceased, I was met by a lifted eyebrow and a curious gaze focused on me, well on me and on the small church besides us, as it traveled questioningly between the two.

From the word 'sinner' I glimpsed on his forearm, it was clear Blade wasn't used to this kind of place.

"I live down the next street, but I wouldn't want us both to get killed if my mom saw me arriving on a motorbike," I explained, getting off the saddle and nodding farther along the road, though his eyebrow didn't come down at the sight of the houses all looking the same, and surrounded by white fences, of course.

I could imagine what he was thinking through his clear eyes.

He didn't comment about it, however, and instead, he once more helped me forget with a simple shrug and a smirk. "I'm used to living dangerously."

The mysterious and still mischievous twinkle in his gaze was tickling me to ask him to tell me more about it, even show me, but it was surely to postpone the inevitable.

"I don't think to this point..." I offered him a smile, only one corner of my lips lifting. I wasn't totally smiling, just like I wasn't totally joking.

"And here... I think it's safer." I pulled out the first item my fingers had found again at the thought of the chaos waiting for me, pushing it into his tattooed hand when he didn't take it.

Still, he didn't give a glance at the automatic gun, all his attention and piercing blue intensity focusing on me.

He probably had so many questions about the petite girl with an 'ordinary' life who could shoot like Lucky Luke, and what she had wanted to escape on her 18th birthday. Yet he didn't voice them out loud.

Something told me he, himself, liked to keep his secrets, or maybe he just didn't care.

"Happy birthday, Shooting star." He offered one more Cheshire cat's smile, and I took it as a cue for me to leave.

Not that he made me feel like it though, and as my gaze lifted one last time to his, where the infinite expanse of water was now clearer, contrasting with the darkness outside, I could have easily drowned in a search of what to say there.

A 'thank you' appeared futile, and it obviously wasn't his thing. Besides, I liked the echo of his last words, and I wanted them to be the last ones resonating between us. It sounded better than a proper farewell for our unique encounter.