One month later
“Another churro and cafe con leche, señora?”
I lift my eyes from the pages of my book and look up at the young waitress. She looks in her early twenties, just a couple of years younger than I am and she’s smiling warmly down at me as she clears my cup and plate and puts them on her tray.
It’s the middle of the afternoon on a cold winter day and I’m sitting in a heated patio with a view of the Plaça de la Sagrada Familia, enjoying tapas and reading what’s turning out to be a nail biter of a crime novel. Life is good.
“Why not?” I answer with a smile. “Thank you.”
I’ve been in Spain for three days and I think I might never leave. Life is so peaceful and relaxed here. Unhurried. Every moment feels like it can be savored.
It’s so different to the hustle and bustle of LA where I first went when I left London. I enjoyed the extravagant, over the top, fast-paced way Americans lived. I went to parties and fashion shows and movie premieres. During the weekend, I went hiking or swimming in the ocean.
When I felt like I’d seen it all, I went to Jamaica. I tried cliff diving in Montego Bay and smoked a joint – excitingly, my first ever – with a ride operator at a local theme park.
From there, I took a flight to Casablanca. I camped in the desert and ate the most delicious foods I’ve ever had in my life, making my way up the country to Tangier where I took a ferry to Malaga before eventually making it to Barcelona.
To resume what I’ve been doing since I’ve been gone — I’ve been living.
Doing all the things I dreamed of my entire life, crossing item after item off my very long bucket list. All while staying one step ahead of the people I know are looking for me.
I know I should be further away, that Spain is a little too close to England for comfort, but that’s what I’m hoping he’ll think. That his search will be focused on tiny remote villages in Thailand and not a major city a couple hours flight time away from him.
After what happened with Thiago at my house, I ran to Wiz in a panic and told him I needed to run. He helped me transfer a large sum of money into an account under his name and gave me unrestricted access to it. He used one of his contacts to get me a couple fake passports under different identities. He even set up an encrypted email address I could use to keep working remotely without being traced.
In short, he helped me disappear.
I didn’t tell him why I was running and, much to my relief, he never asked.
He thinks I’m hiding from my father. I know because a week after I ran, he told me he’d detected hacks on everything in my name – my old credit cards, my phone, my email, my social media – and that my father had put trackers on them which would ping him if I ever accessed them.
I didn’t correct his assumption, even though I knew who was really behind it.
Thiago and his men have been looking for me since the moment I left. It’s why I keep moving every week or so, to ensure that I never stay in a place long enough to leave a trail that could lead him right to me.
When I close my eyes at night, I can imagine those brooding eyes and the angry slash of his lips. How furious he must have been when he discovered I’d disappeared.
The way his fist probably balled up the note I left him before hurling it at the wall.
He must have hated that I vanished from right under his nose. He seems to me like a man who doesn’t appreciate his things being taken from him. And that’s exactly what he thinks of me as –- his possession.
He’ll eventually tire of looking for me and will find himself another bride. That’s when I’ll think about going back, because I can’t run forever.
So, good riddance.
And yet…
It’s frustrating, that ‘yet’, because why has he been on my mind so often since leaving?
“Here you are, señora,” the waitress says as she places a plate and steaming cup on my table.
“Thank you.” I reach for the cup and pick it up, warming my fingers as I blow softly on the surface. “It’s señorita by the way, I’m not married.”
She places the tray under her arm and straightens, giving me a smile. “Maybe not yet, señora, but judging by the size of your engagement ring, I’d say your fiancé wanted it made abundantly clear to anyone who speaks to you that you’re completely off the market,” she says with a cheeky laugh. “Buen provecho.”
She walks back into the restaurant, leaving me to stare down at the massive rock still adorning my left hand. My stomach flips like it always does every time I look at it.
I shouldn’t be wearing it.
It’s why I ran away in the first place.
The only reason I am is because it keeps other men away. They think I’m taken so they leave me alone when I’m out, especially at night. As a woman traveling alone, I need that additional security.
That’s it.
That’s the only reason, even though sometimes I feel like I still have the taste of him on my lips, intense and intoxicating as ever. Randomly, I’ll have flashes of his demanding mouth on mine and flush bright red, the temperature of my body skyrocketing out of nowhere. I swear I’ll hear echoes of his voice, throaty and effortlessly commanding, telling me he’s going to take what he wants and then doing just that.
He left a reddish bruise on the side of my throat that took weeks to disappear, but not before it taunted me every time I looked in the mirror. On more than one occasion, I found myself absentmindedly grazing against the sensitive flesh with unsteady fingers, thinking about how completely he had me at his mercy with just his tongue on my neck.
And, eventually, his fingers in my pussy.
I shift in my seat, ashamed that there’s a sudden rush of arousal coursing through me and not the discomfort I should be feeling. Thiago had deduced and known things about me that he couldn’t know, that no one has ever known because I’ve never dared to say them out loud.
Things I crave deep in my belly that are in complete opposition to the things I know I should want.
The relationships I’ve had in the past have been boring, bland, and predictable. So deeply uninspiring that they’re not even worth thinking about. Missionary sex under the covers, fumbling fingers barely and rarely getting me to orgasm, and rolling over and immediately falling asleep once the deed is done. The kinkiest thing I’ve ever done is having sex in the kitchen with my ass resting on the island.
Thiago blew all of my previous sexual experiences out of the water in twenty minutes, using two fingers and his tongue and not even letting me come.
Where my mind despises him, my body is in riotous opposition and hungers for him.
I hate it, hate to admit it even just to myself, but the truth is I ran because if he ever gets me alone again, I’m afraid I won’t put up a fight.
I ran because he thinks that he can take everything from me and that one encounter in the hallway proved that he absolutely could if he tried. Worse, that if pushed, I might actually just give it to him.
And here I am, still wearing his ring.
He’s right, I am foolish.
More foolish still, I find myself wondering if he’s at all involved in the search for me or if he’s running business as usual while his men do the hunting.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s not like I want to be found.
