It’s awkward for him being here. I can tell.
“What’s the plan?” I ask him. Jase likes to shield me from things, to give me vague half-answers because he thinks I can’t handle things. And he thinks I am so weak and defenseless and pregnant right now, I doubt he’d share anything vaguely important with me if he thought it might alarm me.
Elliot shrugs lazily. “Get you out. And run. That was the plan. Now?” he takes a sip of the tea and pulls a face, “now, I don’t know.”
I nod, staring into my own tea. I probably won’t even drink it; I just like the way it feels comforting to hold tea in my hands.
“Where are the girls?” I ask, referring to Kayla, his daughter, and Amy, his ex.
“Somewhere safe,” he says. “Somewhere nobody will look.”
I nod. “And grandma?”
His face drops. “She’s at home,” he says, with difficulty. “Wouldn’t leave her place. Said the diner was too busy, and that she’d keep her shotgun loaded.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’m going to get her to change her mind,” he adds. “Stubborn old woman.”
That makes me feel relieved. She shouldn’t be in the path of danger because of me.
“I’m sorry I put you in this position, El,” I say, and I am so fucking sorry right now I feel like my heart might break in two.
He nods, staring at the densely packed trees that surround the house. Some of them are so tall, I can’t even tell where they end.
“Yeah, well,” he says, giving me a small smile. “It was always just a matter of time, right? Until they figured out what happened? I mean, that guy at the diner years ago—that was just a lucky fluke I was there, and that I was packing.”
I nod, a chill settling into my bones as I remember the Gypsy Brother who inexplicably stumbled upon me, the girl everyone thought was dead, his greedy eyes lighting up in delight as he probably counted the bonus Dornan would give him for forcing me into his car and taking me back to him. You look pretty good for a dead girl. And then he hadn’t been able to see me at all, because Elliot had shot him in the head and buried the body in the woods.
“Yeah, I guess.”
We sit there, silent for a little longer, as our tea turns cold.
“A baby, huh?” Elliot says, finally. I hear the anguish in his voice. The torment.
“Yep,” I reply awkwardly, unable to meet his gaze.
“I’m happy for you, Julz,” he says, patting my knee. “You deserve something good after everything.”
Is it good, though?
“And Jase is a good guy. As much as I fucking hate saying that, he’s proven me wrong.”
He chuckles to himself, shaking his head.
“What?” I press. “Some inside secret I don’t know about?”
He shrugs, flashing me a dazzling smile. “Nah. Just that, I never told you how I almost killed him once.”
This is news to me. “What?”
He smiles self-depreciatingly, taking a sip of tea. “Had the motherfucker lined up in the crosshairs of my sniper rifle. Finger on the trigger and everything.”
I feel sick.
“What happened?” I ask, not sure than I want to know.
“I breathed in,” he says casually. “I breathed back out, and my fucking phone rang.”
“Who was it?”
“It was Amy. She was calling to tell me she was pregnant with my kid.”
Oh.
He shakes his head in disbelief. “I packed that gun up faster than you could say Gypsy Brother, and I got the fuck out of there.”
Huh. His girlfriend getting pregnant three years ago might have ruined any chance of him coming back to me, the girl who waited ceaselessly for him, but inexplicably, it had given me another chance at life with Jason. And, of course, the baby I carry inside me now.
He stands, throwing the last of his tea on the dirt beneath the steps. “Tell that to your kid one day,” he says with an amused smile, offering me a hand up. “Make sure Jase hears every word.”
I raise my eyebrows as he lifts me to my feet. “You are such a shit stirrer,” I admonish, shaking my head at him.
“You better believe it,” he says, opening the door and ushering me back inside.
The next day, Elliot leaves. He wraps me in a tight bear hug before he gets into the old jeep with Luis. I can see the worry etched onto his face. And it kills me that I’m the reason it exists.
After giving me another dose of the cherry-flavored syrup later that afternoon, Luis informs me he’s lined up a doctor for me to see. A baby doctor. He hands me a crumpled piece of paper with a hand drawn mud map and an address that’s barely decipherable.