Part 2.

Rebecca

He rests his head on my chest and our heavy breathing synchronizes. Up, down, in, out. I comb through his tousled hair with one hand (I'm afraid that might've been my doing) and the other rests atop his forearm which drapes across me.

"That was..." he starts, but he doesn't have to try to find the words. One, because there are none in any dictionary in any language that could properly describe what we've just felt, and two, because I know what he's trying to say without him having to actually say it.

"Yeah," I answer.

"I've never felt anything like... until... Wow."

"We must've been doing it wrong," I offer up.

"Or with the wrong people."

He kisses me on the chin and I smile.

I've never felt this close to anyone before. And I know it's not a fair comparison given the... "supernatural" circumstances, but not even Phillip.

No, especially not Phillip.

"What're you thinking about?" he asks slowly, dreamily, and in his voice I hear the future.

"New Mexico," I lie. "I've never seen the mountains before."

He knows I'm lying; I can feel it. But he doesn't probe further. Instead he gives me the bad news I'd desperately wanted to believe was avoidable.

"We can't go back there, Becka."

I don't like what he says, but I do like how he says 'we'. Because I'm from there, too. Wherever he has been throughout all and any of his days, I have been there with him.

"I know," I sigh. "I just wish it could be that simple."

He props himself up on his elbow to look at me. I shiver at the immediate lack of body warmth, and I pull his flannel tight around me. Somehow I'd ended up wearing it, and he his tan coat over his plain white undershirt. I now lay atop the black blazer I'd stolen. I don't really remember how or when the switch was made, actually, but even thinking about our... previous engagement in a certain kind of activity... makes me fuzzy.

I'm snapped back into reality when he speaks. "We didn't really think this all the way through, did we?"

My heart picks up pace. I know this beat. They all have their own rhythm. This one indicates nerves. My mind flashes through everything that happened after boarding the train, what I could've done that would've changed his mind; what did I do; what didn't I do...

He reads my mind. "I wouldn't change anything that brought me here," he says, a rough hand cupping my cheek. "There's nothing for me there. This is where I'm supposed to be. With you."

I lean into him and press my mouth to his. I can't help it; he is so beautiful. He takes my face in his hand and lies himself down on his back, pulling me onto his chest. I can hear his heart and it sounds just as fragile as mine and I wonder how that can be; if everyone has a telepathic soulmate out there somewhere seeing through their eyes and they just don't talk about it, don't write about it; but no, this isn't a common occurrence. I know; I Googled it. But if this whole thing hadn't been predestined, then how could we possibly be this perfect of a fit?

If I know one thing for certain, it's that "meeting" Dylan has made me question everything I once believed was true about the universe. There is so much possibility.

I know because I have mine now. My wonderful, scruffy possibility.

My beautiful ex-con possibility.

"What are we gonna do when this train stops? Where are we gonna go?"

"I don't know," possibility answers honestly. "I hadn't completely thought of that, really. Or, like, at all." Possibility laughs nervously, and my head rises and falls with his chest, the roles now reversed.

"I don't care where we go," I say, which isn't entirely a lie. As soon as I put that fork in the lock I knew what I was signing up for. And as soon as I punched my husband and escaped from a rehabilitation center I knew that wherever we were going, it was going to be some place far away.

But the farther away from home we go, the farther away from my joint bank account and my clothes and my things, all of which will need to be shipped to me. And when I imagine the address they might be sent to, I realize something that I hadn't previously accounted for.

"You violated your parole."

His hands, which had been combing through my tangled hair (I'm afraid that might've been his doing) now stop abruptly mid-comb.

He does not sugar-coat it. "Yes."

"So you will be arrested."

"If they find me, yes."

"And I, as well."

"I really doubt he'll press charges. Not on you, at least."

"No, but the hospital might." I say, my voice shaky. Don't freak out, I tell myself. You just got him; don't freak him out yet.

"Can they even do that?"

"I don't know. I was under their care..." I close my eyes and take a breath. I'm not that person any more. Starting today. Starting right now. I open my eyes and he is studying me. I know he feels my anxiety. "I was nowhere near being free to check myself out," I explain. "I broke a lot of rules."

He sighs, short and to the point, and runs a hand over his face. "I don't wanna worry you," he starts, "but I stole a car to get to you from the airport. Didn't have a license to rent one."

My eyes go wide. I didn't even think about how he got to me. All I knew was that he did.

"The police chased me for a couple blocks," he admits, "but I parked in a junkyard and got away on foot."

I wrack my brain for a mental image to place with the description he's giving me, but I can't conjure up one. "I don't recall seeing any of that."

"Yeah, well, you were busy. And woozy. I also stole Bo's car to get me to the airport. After I sold my truck for a plane ticket."

I am at first horrified, but then very, very humbled. I know what his truck meant to him; it was one of the few material items he owned that was truly his. He gave up everything for me – his house, his truck, his lawful innocence – and I forget momentarily that shipping my things to myself or accessing my bank account could be the very things that send the both of us to jail.

"You did all that to get to me. Even after I broke up with you."

"That's the beauty of it, darlin'," he replies, and I can hear the smile in his voice. "You can't break off something that wasn't never together."

I am once calm; his joking demeanor sets my bones at ease. I reposition myself to lay flat atop him and rest my arms and chin on his chest, looking directly at him. He folds his arms behind his head and lifts up to see me.

"You're saying we weren't ever together?" I challenge.

"No, no," he insists. "That night when we...?" He lifts his brows. "It was totally casual." There is an unmistakable mischievous glint in his brown doe eyes.

"Hmm. That's too bad," I answer, "because I had a really good time that night." I feel my cheeks flush just remembering it. "It was probably the second most sensual experience of my whole life," I admit softly.

His brows lift again, curious. Challenging. "And what takes first prize?"

"About five minutes ago," I say and look him brave in the eyes.

My words work like a charm and he pulls my face to his, and when our lips meet, a low groan escapes from his throat, and I swear I'll let him have me again, right now, if he pleases. And a thousand more times, too. I am so in awe of this man.

To be fair, I was in love with Phillip. I still am, in a way. He was only doing what he thought I needed. To help me. But he was trying to save me from myself, and he was too late. A stubbly, blond-haired man from the desert beat him to it only a month prior.

Phillip was a safe love. A perfectly fine kind of love. The kind of love most people would kill for. Someone to grow old with. Someone to attend dinner parties and business events on the arm of. Someone to always take care of me when I couldn't take care of myself.

But with Dylan, it's exactly the opposite. It's everything I never knew I'd wanted but would've been too scared to try even if I did. A crazy, insane, impassioned, infatuating, maddening, overwhelming, all-encompassing kind of love. Dangerous. Wild. Free. The kind of love they write stories about.

"I really don't care where we go, Becky," he murmurs into my hair. "As long as we can keep doing this forever, I'll be happy."

Forever.

I sit straight upright.

"Becka...?"

I was supposed to be with Phillip forever. We made a vow, a sacred pact, and I am breaking it without so little a hesitant thought. Am I a terrible person?

I look down at the rings on my finger. Surprisingly, the facility had had the grace to leave me this one reminder of who I was as they stripped away everything else from my person.

I hadn't wanted anything big. I'd wanted simple, classic. But Phillip had gone for shiny and modern. And I'd cried happy tears and wore it anyway, because I'd loved him and believed he was more than I'd ever deserved.

I look at the rings for a moment too long and I feel Dylan swimming in the back of my head. I let him in, and then I let him watch as I peel the bands from my finger. I hold them up to our view for a moment, unsure of what to do with them. I do not deserve to wear them any more. Dylan does not deserve for me to wear them any more. I turn and place them inside his coat pocket, zipping it up.

When I meet his eyes, I expect him to be smiling, to see pride in them. But I see sadness.

"I'm so sorry," he says and he looks down at his lap. "I should've never put you in this position."

I'm unsure of which position he's thinking of, but I don't think he means the things I'm picturing, the likes of which make my face feel warm again.

"I should've let it go. I should've let it go and I should've let you go when you asked me to and I should've let you live out your perfectly fine life with your perfectly fine husband in your perfectly fine house with, like, real dishware, not the plastic stuff, and a fire place that works and those little throw pillows that drive me crazy because they literally serve no purpose but to take up space. Which was all perfectly fine until I fell in love with you and got greedy and I couldn't imagine a world without you but maybe I should've tried harder so you could be happy."

"Dylan..." I try, but the right words don't come. I have to assure him! Please don't send me back, I plead internally. I try again. "He thought I had schizophrenia, Dylan! He... he locked me up!"

"And now I've got you," he continues his spiel as if he hasn't heard a word of what I've just said, "and I've got no place to take you and no money and no job and no roof and nothing to offer you. Nothing."

I lean forward and cover his hands with mine. They are cold.

"We'll figure it out," I say, and I desperately want to believe it.

He finally looks me in the eyes, and his expression devastates me. "And what if we don't?"

"Hey," I say with a light squeeze of his hands. "Where's the Dylan that helped me escape from a mental institution, huh? And the one who helped me fix my car? And the one who danced with me alone in public?"

He smirks and my heart does the melting rhythm.

"I don't wanna screw this up," he admits, and my heart does the empathetic rhythm.

I raise my hand to his face. "I've made my choice," I tell him. "And now we'll both have to reap the consequences."

I'd meant that last part to be half-joking, but he is at once serious. He grabs at my hips and slides me to him, and my breath catches.

"And the benefits, I hope," he says, and my heart does the anxious rhythm.

I part my lips for him and his tongue meets mine, and I definitely won't be able to formulate any sort of plan or idea while he's touching me. But God, it's practically electric.

I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know if this train's going to stop and we're going to get off of it to a squad of waiting police vehicles ready to cuff us and take us away; I don't know if this train is going to take us as far north or as far east or as far west as land will allow it to take us, and we'll hop off and make a home somewhere new. I don't know if this train will ever stop and we'll have to jump from it just how we'd jumped on; I don't know if we'll have to change our names or pay some scumbag a heinous amount of money to give us fake ID cards, or if I'll contact Phillip and try to get my things or if Dylan will contact someone in New Mexico and try to get his; I don't know; I don't know; I don't know.

But what I do know is that all my life people have made me feel crazy or not good enough or both, but in this man's arms,

I feel like I am finally free.