“Like I’d do anything for you,” I told her softly. “And I would.”
“But what about here,” she said, reaching forward and placing her hand on my heart. I swear I could feel it grow in size, hot like the sun, just from her touch. “Do you feel anything here? For me? For anyone?”
From the way she said anyone, I could tell she meant Carmen.
I took in a deep breath. “I do. For you. It’s complicated.”
She nodded, looking away. “I know it is. I can tell. You don’t even know me.”
“Stop saying that,” I told her, grabbing her hand. “Stop. I know you. I know you Alana. I’ve seen you at your worst and I’ve seen you at your best. And all I want is more. More you, more everything. I want a chance to have you where we can be free and be us and not have to look over our shoulder.” I paused. “I’m just … this is new. It’s different. It’s beautiful.”
“Even though we’re on the lam and running for our lives?” she said with a crooked smile.
“Yes, even with that. I would rather this than the life I was living before I met you and there is no lie in that. Even with death at our door, I’ve never been happier.”
I was shocked to hear the words leave my mouth. I’d never even considered what happiness was, that it was a thing that could still affect me and my life. I thought happiness died with Carmen and I guess it had. But now it was here, it was with her. Despite everything, I was happy and that was fueled by knowing it could only get better. Once we made it out of here, once the coast was clear and we could settle somewhere free from fear, my happiness had no bounds.
“I can’t say I’m happy,” she said and for a brief moment it stung. She went on, trying to smile. “I can’t say it because it’s hard to feel it when I’m worried about so many things. But when I’m with you … when it’s just you and me, like this, I think I am. I just feel so much and I wish we could just enjoy it because I think it would be larger than life. The way I feel about you … it almost overcomes what’s happening. And it’s something I have never ever had.” She looked down at her hands, her cheeks growing pink. There was something so vulnerable about her that took my breath away. “I just want to be born anew, start again. Free from this. I want to do that with you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I was going to give her that, everything she wanted from me, if it’s the last thing I did.
“We could start by taking this god damn thing off,” I said, bumping my knuckles along the cast.
“How?” she asked, making a face. “Is it safe to go to a doctor here? Maybe they know it’s something I’d do and they’ve got spies out there in all the hospitals.”
I wasn’t too sure Este could arrange such a large operation, especially without Javier knowing, but I couldn’t tell her that.
“I’ve got two hands,” I told her. “They can do a lot of things.”
She smirked at me, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, I know that.” She bit her lip for a moment. “Could you seriously take it off? Don’t you need a saw?”
“Well, since you discovered that little bag of mine, I actually have a saw in there. I could cut halfway and then rip the rest off.”
Actually, I didn’t know that for sure but I was sure going to try.
She was considering this. “And it wouldn’t hurt?”
“I will never hurt you,” I told her.
Minutes later she was lying on the bed underneath a bunch of towels, her cast propped up under a couch cushion. Being as precise as possible, I cut a line through the cast on the inside of her leg, from the top beneath her knee all the way to her toes. The saw worked hard, whining loudly, as plaster dust rose and a sickly burning smell mingled in the air.
She winced the whole time, I’m sure certain I was going to cut right into her bone. But somehow I managed to do a pretty clean job.
“This might feel funny,” I told her as I put the saw to the side and poised my hands at the top of her cast. Near the knee was the closest cut, pretty much all the way through and I hoped it was enough to get a nice tear going throughout the whole thing.
“If you could not re-break my bones, that would be great,” she said, doing an impression of the boss from Office Space, only with a Mexican office.
I grinned at her. “Uno, dos, tres,” I said and then tried to tear the cast apart with all my might. My muscles strained, my hands wanted to slip but with a satisfying crack the black cast split open into a puff of dust.
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed as she stared down at her leg. “My leg is so hairy.”