The drive back to Beau’s hotel went quickly with the absence of traffic. On their way to Mulholland, there had been promise in the wind—now, just finality.
They took the exit for the hotel, and Beau pulled into a gas station and up to a pump. “I didn’t feed you tonight,” he said through her window once the tank was filling. “I’d planned on room service again.”
Lola shrugged. “We had the Cheez-Its.”
“Which is not all that bad of a dinner, but hardly fit for a queen.” He winked. “Since I doubt there’s French toast inside, how would you feel about gas station hotdogs?”
“Best with relish,” she said.
“Then relish you will get. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Lola watched him walk away, enjoying every second of his firm behind in blue jeans. She caught herself grinning—over hotdogs. It lit her up from the inside that eating hotdogs was such a normal thing to do, as if they had all the time in the world. She didn’t even particularly care for hotdogs, especially not ones that’d most likely been sitting on a rotisserie for the better part of a day. It was that she’d be having them with Beau.
But then she did start to think about the hotdogs themselves and how she actually was hungry, having eaten very little all night. Whenever she and Johnny took a trip, they’d stop for gas and sweets on their way out of town, even if they didn’t particularly need gas. Johnny would get M&Ms but her cravings came in waves. She never knew what she was in the mood for until she saw it all in front of her. That was why she’d be the one to go get the candy while Johnny filled up the tank.
Now she couldn’t stop thinking about chocolate, and Beau would have no idea what to get her. She didn’t even know herself. She unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of the car. He’d paid for so much so far—dessert would be her treat. Beau probably had an old favorite, like Johnny. Men were like that. They found something that worked and stuck with it.
She pulled open the gas station door, walked in and stopped cold. Beau stood frozen at the counter, and a large, bearded man held a gun to his head. Beau’s hands were clenched at his sides. The gas station attendant transferred cash from the register into a garbage bag.
“I told you, there isn’t a single thing in my car,” Beau was saying, his head slightly tilted as the barrel pressed into his temple. His eyes flickered to Lola and back. Slowly, he signaled with his hand for her to leave. “Everything’s on me. I have plenty of cash. I just need to reach in my pocket and get it.”
“Which pocket?”
“Back right,” Beau said.
Every beat of Lola’s heart was acute. Rabid. She ached. He wouldn’t hold her as she lay awake tonight. There wouldn’t be a heartbreaking decision to make in the morning. They had fought each other, themselves, those around them—why? For it to end this way? She would’ve run to him if she could move. Her mouth was open, but she hadn’t even been breathing.
“There’s nothing here,” the man said.
“Must be the left pocket.” Beau widened his eyes at her, nodded once and mouthed, Go. She barely registered that he was trying to distract the man from turning around.
“You’re fucking with me.” He reared back to hit Beau with the gun.
“I have it,” Lola cried out. She couldn’t even remember what she was supposed to have, her mind spun so fast. He wanted something. She would give it to him. Anything to change the picture in front of her—Beau, her strong, solid Beau, with a gun to his head.
The man whirled to her. “On the ground,” he said.
He waved the gun back and forth, and when it stopped on her, her scalp went cold. His matted gray beard matched his leaden eyes, matched the pistol aimed at her face. His oversized army-green jacket had holes.
“Down,” Beau ordered through his teeth. He gestured again, this time for her to lie on the floor. His dark eyes bore into her, willing her to submit.
She had to be brave. If she lay down, Beau would remain the target. She couldn’t have that. Her breath came short as she looked between them.
“Listen, bitch.” He put the barrel to Beau’s head again. “This will be you if you don’t get the fuck down.”
Beau thrust his hand into his front pocket. “She’s lying. My wallet’s in—”
The man cocked the gun and shoved it harder into Beau’s skull. “I told you not to move, motherfucker. Put it in the bag and do it slow.”
Beau slid it out and dropped it in with the rest of the money.
“Now you,” he said, nodding at Lola. “Throw your purse over here.”
As long as the gun was on Beau, she saw nothing else. All it would take was a slip of the finger, a burst of anger. “Not until you put the gun down.”
“Who the fuck you think’s in charge?” the man asked.
She held up her purse, waving it as if he were a bear and she had his dinner. The man was off—he could snap at any moment, but if he did, she’d make sure that gun was pointed anywhere but at Beau. Even if it was aimed at her instead. “If you want it, come take it from me.”
“Throw the fucking purse,” Beau said sharply.
Purse. Wallet. Money. Her brain began to thaw. “I have cash.” Her legs wobbled. She took a step back and raised her chin. “I just came from the ATM.”
He looked from Beau to Lola and back before walking toward her.
Beau lunged, but the man was fast. He spun around and trained the weapon on Beau again. He backed his way to Lola, feeling for her with the same hand he clutched the garbage bag in. She couldn’t tell how lucid he was. She didn’t want to test him, so she stayed where she was. He grabbed her shirt and pulled her in front of him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and jamming the cold muzzle under her chin, forcing her head up. He slid his hand down her stomach. “Give it to me.”
The barrel pressed into her throat when she swallowed. She tried not to cough and instead inhaled a wilting blend of urine, body odor and hard alcohol. Without moving more than she had to or looking down, she surrendered the purse.
“She and I are going to walk out,” he said to Beau. “If you want to keep her alive, don’t make any moves until I’m gone. Got it?”
“I lied,” Beau said hastily. He was below her line of vision, on her peripheral, but there was clear desperation in his voice. “About the car. And what’s in it. I can get you anything you want. I have more money than you can dream of.”
The man released the gun just enough for Lola’s head to drop. Beau flexed his hands in and out of balls, imploring her with his eyes. She couldn’t read him, and that made her stomach churn. She had no idea what he might do.
“How much we talking here?” the man smacked in her ear.
“Millions. All yours if you just let her go. I’ll go out to the car with you instead.”
Lola held her breath, sucking in her nostrils to prevent smelling anything.
He laughed. “Now I know you’re fucking with me.” He pulled Lola backward with him.
Beau, as if connected by a string, walked forward also. “Look outside,” Beau pressed. “That’s my Lamborghini. You can have it too. Outrun the cops, no problem.”
Lola didn’t dare check to see if the man looked.
The man whistled in Lola’s ear. “You weren’t kidding. Keys in the car?”
Beau patted his pockets. “Yes.”
“You stay here while we check,” he said, dragging Lola backward with him. “Everything’s good, I’ll let her go.”
“Leave her,” Beau said levelly.
“Nope. She’s my collateral.”
“The car is nothing.” Beau’s jaw clenched and unclenched, causing his face to contort. The gun was still on her, between her and Beau, putting them on opposites sides of danger. “I can get you so much more. We don’t have to get the cops involved. Just let go of her.”
Lola couldn’t hold her breath anymore, and she gagged.
“What’s wrong, little lady?” the man asked tauntingly. “You know, there’s one thing you’ve got that he can’t give me.” He squeezed her more tightly against him.
She’d die before she let that happen. Before she could gag again, she grabbed his forearm. “Let go of me.”
“Shut up,” he said with a hard shake.
Beau’s hands had stopped moving. His expression smoothed as any emotion drained away, leaving his eyes colder than she’d ever seen them. His back became unnaturally straight. “You might want to rethink who you’re pointing that gun at,” he said. “I don’t think you realize how much you’ve just pissed me off.”
A wave of panic crashed through Lola. He had the same indifferent look he’d had the night Johnny had gone after him at Hey Joe. It was the complete inability to predict his next move that terrified her—not that he’d do anything to jeopardize her, but that he wasn’t thinking of his own safety at all.
Beau strode forward, each step longer than the last. The man pushed the gun into Lola’s throat then pulled it away. It wavered in the air a split second as he seemed to hesitate. He pointed it at Beau and shot. Lola screamed. Shoved back into a display stand, she lost her footing and fell as it crashed around her. Beau was at her side in an instant, yelling at her, but all she heard was the reverberation of the gunshot.
Frantically, she reached up and felt his chest. “He shot you?”
He grabbed her arm, checked her over and left her on the ground. He ran back to the counter and lunged over it, reaching for the attendant.
“Beau,” she said lamely, unsure he could even hear her. “What are you doing?”
Beau grabbed the kid by his shirt and pulled him forward. He was tearing something from the guy’s hand—a gun. He was going after the man. Dread rose up her throat.
He bolted for the door. She scrambled to her feet, hurtling into his path. “It’s just money. It’s not worth it,” she cried.
He went to move around her, but she grabbed his shirt in two tight fists. Now that she had him back, she couldn’t risk losing him again. “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”
“It’s not about the money,” he said, his face bright red, his chest heaving. “I won’t let him get away with this.”
“I need you here,” she said. “Don’t abandon me.”
He glanced anxiously behind her. “I can’t just do nothing. I’ll come right back.”
She couldn’t shake the thought that he’d been shot. Her chin wobbled. “You might not come back.” Her strength seeped away, leaving her knees weak. His arms automatically went around her waist, and the gun pressed through the back of her T-shirt, cold even through the fabric. “Let the police handle it. Stay.”
“He deserves to pay,” Beau said through clenched teeth. “You’re asking me to let it go? People don’t just get away with this. He could’ve killed you, Lola. He deserves to run for his life—from me.”
He was like a wolf separated from fresh meat with only Lola in between. His heartbeat was strong under his chest, and all his muscles were tensed as if he might break into a sprint at any instant.
He wanted payback. Why couldn’t he see the gift they’d been given? A second chance? He would risk his life to make an insane man pay—for what? They were both unharmed. She shook him by his shirt. “I don’t deserve to lose you. Not after all this. I need you here where I can see you and touch you. If you go, I go with you.”
He opened his mouth, trying to speak but nothing came out at first.
“If you go, I go,” she repeated.
“But he…and you…” His face closed. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance? Why didn’t you just do what he said?”
She would take all of Beau’s anger if it meant keeping him there in that building. Her fingers loosened with her relief. “Why didn’t you let him take me outside?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “You know why.”
“Then you know why I couldn’t leave you here.”
There was a word for that, but Lola couldn’t let it form in her mind. If she did, she’d never see clearly again. They stared at each other, both breathing deeply.
He detangled from her finally and went to turn away, but reached back and took her arm. “Do not leave my side.” He walked them up to the counter where he placed the gun down but didn’t release it. He kept his other hand on Lola. The attendant was on the phone with the police.
“Tell them we can still catch the guy,” Beau said, glancing at the door. “And to hurry the fuck up.”
“Beau?” Lola asked.
“Not now. I have to do this.” He let her go and took the phone right out of the kid’s hand. “Is someone on the way?” he asked and waited. “Every second that passes, he gets farther away. I don’t even know—”
Sirens sounded out front.
“Never mind,” Beau said, dropping the receiver.
He took two steps before the attendant called after him. “Dude, my gun. You go out there with that and they’ll turn you into Swiss cheese.”
Beau rubbed his forehead tensely and looked at his hand.
“Put it down,” Lola said. “He’s not coming back.”
He slid it across the counter to the attendant. “Stay here,” he said to Lola. He didn’t move a moment, then took her shoulders firmly. “Do you hear me, Lola? Don’t try and be brave. Just stay put until I come get you.”
He was afraid. Now that her sense had returned, she was too. She nodded quickly, breathlessly. “I won’t move.”
His fingers loosened, but he wouldn’t stop looking at her. “You really fucking scared me, you know that? This is why I never stray from the plan—not ever.”
She searched his face. “What plan?”
“There’s always a plan, Lola. Tonight was about you and me, and that’s why I wanted to stay in the hotel room. Just be with you. This is all my fault for not sticking to the plan.”
“But it was my idea,” she said.
He pulled her against him hard and hugged her. He buried his face in her hair. “Goddamn it,” he whispered.
He released her all at once and strode out of the convenience store. The attendant was already in front. She stood frozen to the spot. Her breathing hadn’t calmed. Her heart felt like it was bottoming out.
She’d almost lost everything in minutes. Her life. Her future. Their future. Beau. She shook her head. He wasn’t everything. He was just a man she’d spent two nights with. A man she’d already been planning to say goodbye to in a few hours.
She’d risked her life for that man. For a man she’d never see again after tonight. And he—he had done the same by not letting her out of his sight, even to save himself.
She’d almost lost him in minutes. He was everything.
There was a word for that—it was love.
The car dipped as they entered the hotel’s underground garage. The gun’s cold metal was still under Lola’s chin. She wanted Beau’s touch to replace it. To replace the last hour of being separated from him as policemen questioned each of them. Lola rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. She’d stopped shaking, but she was jittery.
Beau pulled into a parking spot and shut off the car. “In the morning, we’ll—” He stopped.
What, go get a bite to eat? Give the credit card companies a call? Pick her up a replacement cell phone? That wasn’t their life. Their life followed the sun’s schedule, and it would be waking up soon. “In the morning, we’ll nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”
They were silent. The police had asked if Beau was her boyfriend. Where they’d been. Where they were going. Why they needed a hotel if they lived in Los Angeles. The dashboard in front of Lola blurred and doubled. She breathed in and out.
What would they have said if she’d told them the truth?
“We’re not what you think, Officer. He’s paying me to be here right now. In this gas station. I’m being paid for this.”
She didn’t want Beau’s money. She could give it back and not leave in the morning, but then there was Johnny. Johnny, who hadn’t protected her. He hadn’t known if Beau would hurt her, or if she’d come home in one piece. He’d sent her off into a potentially dangerous situation—twice. He would’ve let the man with the gun take her outside to save his ass.
She undid her seatbelt.
“Lola?” Beau asked.
She put a knee over the console and climbed onto him. He didn’t protest, just took her hips as she settled into his lap. She put her hands on both sides of his face and kissed him. He was solid. Real. Immovable. He tasted salty. One of them was crying.
“It’s okay to be scared,” Beau whispered. “You don’t have to be strong all hours of the day.”
“For you.” She was trembling again, but this time it wasn’t because of the gun. She couldn’t say goodbye to him. She wouldn’t. She’d walked into the gas station. He’d had a gun to his head. It was branded into her heart. His stubble scraped against her fingertips and her palms. She might’ve never felt that again.
“I was scared for you,” she said, her tears sliding down both their cheeks. “Scared something would happen to you.”
His arms tightened around her. “We’re both safe now,” he said in a humming, soothing voice. “I’ll keep you safe.”
He had needs too. She kissed his lips, his cheek. “What about you? Who will keep you safe?”
“You did, Lola.”
She shuddered. If she had saved him, it was to protect herself. She couldn’t live without knowing if all of her life had been leading up to this moment. She stayed in his lap, dug her fingers into his face and released. She fought herself.
“What is it?” he asked, his eyebrows heavy. “We’re running out of time.”
She reached for his fly to undo it, but stopped. Sobs racked her body. She fisted his shirt, stretching it. There was everything, and there was everything else. Beau had remained solid through it all. Beau had been strong and unwavering. Beau was hers. Nobody was going to take him away from her.
She clung to him. “I’m falling in love with you.”
He stilled completely. It was dark, but his eyes were green as they looked up into hers. She felt his chest again, as if checking for a bullet wound. He slid his hands down her back and into the seat of her pants, pulling her against him. Their lips met fast and hot like flames licking at their faces, every touch gasoline on the fire. He opened her jeans, yanking them down over and over, trying to get to her. She had to lift her knee to get one pant leg off so he could angle upward, his own pants barely undone, to find his way inside her. He took control of her hips, pushing her down on him. There wasn’t even time to moan, to think, to do anything but feel him hard and filling her.
“Look at me and say it,” Beau said.
She found his eyes with hers. They weren’t words, just breaths. “I love you.”
He pulled on the neckline of her T-shirt, grabbed her breasts. She arched into his hands, throwing her back against the steering wheel. The horn honked and her jeans ripped somewhere and she was coming as hard as he was thrusting up into her. He groaned louder and louder until he also came.
She reached out to grab onto anything. Her palm connected with the cold window, her other hand landing on his heaving chest. They were real things, unlike love, unlike fear, which she couldn’t hold.
The car was closing in on her. She opened the door and would’ve tumbled out if Beau hadn’t caught her waist. She slapped his hands away and stood. It took her three fumbling tries to get back into her jeans. She ran both hands through her hair. “Fuck,” she screamed. It bounced off the gray, concrete walls. Nothing had ever seemed as dire. She loved two men, but she loved them differently. With Johnny, it was in a way that she’d let him go before she returned with only part of the heart that had belonged to him. With Beau, her love wasn’t that selfless. It was an annihilation of her senses. A conquest, a theft of her entire self. She squatted between two painted white lines and pulled hard on her hair. “I’m so fucked,” she said between hitched breaths, rocking back and forth.
A car door slammed, echoing around the garage. Beau walked up next to her.
This had to be her moment alone. She deserved to do this on her own for the way she’d led everyone into this mess. She could’ve ended it all with a firm, simple no. “Go away. I can’t do this right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I mean it,” she said.
“You’re in the middle of a parking spot.” He leaned down to help her up, but she jumped to her feet. He had tricked her. Pulled the wool over her eyes. It was the only explanation. She hadn’t even tried to keep love out of it, because love hadn’t been an option. It had blindsided her completely. She shoved him backward. “I said go. I hate you.”
He took two large steps and grabbed her wrists before she could push him again.
“I hate you for this,” she said. “You ruined everything. We were fine before you. We were happy.”
“You said it yourself—you wouldn’t be here if that were true.” He forced her against his chest where she broke down and bawled. He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back with his large hand.
“Nobody has ever made me feel so alone,” she said.
He pulled away slightly. “I make you feel alone?”
She’d learned her lesson as a kid when her dad had walked out on her and her mom—the only person she could rely on was herself. Not even Johnny or her mom. But she couldn’t see beyond tomorrow, beyond Beau, when she’d have to go back to a life that had been fine before him. “I could always take care of myself. I’ve never needed anyone.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I haven’t even left yet, and I already feel alone.”
Even she didn’t trust herself. Just yesterday, it’d been Johnny she’d loved. Nothing could erase that, but their love had stopped growing somewhere along the way—not because it hadn’t been nourished or tended to, but because from the start, it could only get so big.
What she felt for Beau was new, but already it seemed as though it could reach a terrifying size. It couldn’t be trimmed, monitored or kept. It was a vine that had the potential to overtake everything in its path. Lola didn’t know which of the two was the right kind, only that after glimpsing the possibility of her and Beau, a stunted love with Johnny wouldn’t be enough anymore.
Beau covered her hair with both hands. His grip was firm, but his words were soft. “I don’t want you to feel alone.”
She looked up finally. “What do you want me to feel?”
“Loved.”
“Johnny loves me.”
His eyes darted between hers. The garage was silent except for the one rapid heartbeat between them. He opened his mouth and shut it. He put a hand on her cheek. “Lola.”
He said her name so thickly, she could almost reach out and touch it. Her fingertips tingled. She was back in the drugstore as a teenager about to commit a crime. She wouldn’t stand in the way anymore. She wanted him. She’d chained it up inside early on, but it was coming loose. If Johnny had fought for her at all, Beau had fought harder.
His eyebrows gathered as he frowned down at her. “Sometimes I think you can see through things other people can’t. You see me. You make me powerful, but more,” he paused, swallowing, as if the words were fighting within him, “you make me powerless.”
Powerless. That was what she’d seen in his eyes when she couldn’t read him. It wasn’t that he’d been asking anything of her, but that he’d been unable to do anything for her, and Beau thrived on his power.
“And I don’t want to put you in that car at sunrise,” he said.
“You don’t?”
“No, but I have to. It’s our agreement.”
“I don’t care about the money,” she said. “I love you. I love him. Tell me what to do, Beau. I’ll do it.”
“Okay.” He was dependable. He made decisions in her best interest, not his. Even when he commanded her, he did it to give her things she hadn’t known she wanted. He smoothed his hand lovingly over her hair until he was cupping the back of her head. “Here’s what you’re going to do, Lola. You’re going to go home. You’re going to tell Johnny it’s over.”
Involuntarily, she curled her hands harder into his T-shirt. They were two distinct concepts in her mind. There was loving Beau, and there was ending it with Johnny. They’d been two mutually exclusive ideas, one she was submitting to and one she hadn’t seriously entertained. Beau wanted to merge them. “Just like that? Over?”
“Isn’t it?” he asked. “How can you be with him after this?”
She shook her head. “How can I do that to him?”
“I told you once, you can’t sacrifice yourself to make him happy. You know what you want, but somewhere along the way, he helped you bury your instinct. Go there again. What does it tell you?”
Her heart swelled. Johnny liked Lola’s edge, but it was true. He preferred her a little dulled. Beau, on the other hand, wanted what he’d been asking for all along—her. He hadn’t even put one day between meeting her and making his proposition. Within an hour of their sidewalk encounter, he’d told her she had his attention. His assurance was in his actions. Maybe he’d known all along. Maybe this had always been his plan. It was the reason she’d been pressing him for. He’d chosen her because he was a man who knew what he wanted.
“My instinct tells me that Johnny and I have history,” she said, “but that he’s not my future.”
“And why not?” he prompted.
“Because you are.”
