Page 36 of Tar City
“You noticed,” he says.
I glance at him. “Hard to miss.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“It’s not.”
He huffs something that might be a laugh.
I shake it off. “So what do you write? Stories?”
“No. More like poems.”
I let out a short breath. “Okay,” I say. “That I really didn’t see coming.”
“Poems aren’t all soft,” he says. “They can be… rough. Messy. Sometimes it’s just easier than saying it straight.”
“Wow,” I say under my breath. “It’s true what they say. You never really know what people are carrying.”
I don’t realize I’m still holding onto him until my fingers shift. I feel his skin where his shirt rides up, damp with sweat, my fingers pressing into his tight muscles. I start to pull back as soon as I catch what I’m doing, but his hand closes around mywrist and puts it back where it was. My heart kicks harder, but I don’t move.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’ll probably end up working for my grandfather anyway. Family business.”
“What’s the business?” I ask. “I know you guys basically own the city, but…”
“Real estate,” he says. “That’s what they call it now.”
“I’m sure you could do both,” I say. “If it comes to it.”
He shakes his head. “Enough about me. What about you?”
“My plan, well, my dream,” I say, “is getting into an academy. Any academy. As long as it’s far away from here. I just want to get out.”
“You will,” he says.
We start moving again, slower now. Up ahead, there’s something that wasn’t there before. A faint strip of light. I squint at it, not sure if I’m imagining it. “Is that—” I start.
“Yeah,” he says.
I let out a long breath, my shoulders dropping a little as we keep walking. For the first time since we climbed down here, it feels like we’re actually getting out. But we don’t hurry up; if anything, we slow down. I notice the way our steps drag a little now, like neither of us is in a rush to reach it. My hand is still in his. I’m very aware of it, the way his fingers are wrapped around mine, the way he hasn’t let go.
The closer we get to the exit, the harder it is to move towards it. Jax slows a few steps before the opening. I stop with him, close enough to see a strip of the night sky.
“You don’t belong here,” he says, pulling me in a little closer. “You belong somewhere clean,” he adds, glancing down at our hands before looking back at me. “Somewhere safe.”
I look down, not sure what to do with that. We stand there for a few minutes, neither of us moving, as if stepping out will end something we haven’t even figured out yet.
“Ladies first,” he says.
The moment breaks as I pull myself out of the tunnel and onto the platform.
It doesn’t take long for trouble to find us. There’s a man by the vending machines with his hood pulled low, but he’s not buying food or even looking at it, and something tells me he’s not waiting for the train either. My eyes are already searching for somewhere else to go, somewhere that isn’t straight past him, and my shoulders pull in slightly like that might make me less noticeable. I keep my gaze forward, but I’m watching him, catching every small shift out of the corner of my eye, waiting to see if he’s noticed us.
He has. The man turns, and Jax is suddenly in front of me. I barely stop myself from colliding with him as his hand shifts, pulling the knife from his back pocket.
“Walk away,” Jax says firmly.
The man doesn’t stop and instead takes another step toward us. Jax swallows and tries again. “Seriously. Go.”
