Free The Cold Kiss by John Rector Page A

in bed, naked, and when she saw me she said, “What happened? Are you okay?”
    I didn’t answer. Instead, I crossed the room and climbed on top of her, pushing her back on the bed.
    “Nate?”
    I kissed her.
    She fought me at first, then she kissed me back.
    I reached down and moved her legs apart.
    “Wait, your hand. You’re bleeding.”
    I held her down and pressed into her.
    Sara inhaled, sharp, and dug her nails into the back of my neck. I drove into her, hard, over and over.
    I felt her breath against my skin, hot and sweet.
    “It’s ours, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s all ours.”
    There were tears on my face, running down, mixing with my blood, covering us both.
    I closed my eyes.
    “Yes,” I said. “It’s all ours.”
    She moaned, and her legs squeezed tight around me.
    I thought about the ocean.
    I thought about blue skies and lazy palm trees leaning softly into a smooth yellow sun. I thought about warm nights on an empty beach, Sara next to me, staring up at a shatter of stars.
    We had more money than I’d ever imagined.
    We could do anything we wanted.
    We were free.
    Yet I couldn’t stop crying.

Part II

14
    I woke up sweating.
    Someone was knocking on the door.
    I sat up and tried to clear my head. My heart was beating hard, and I could taste something sour at the back of my throat.
    The knocking came again, louder this time.
    Sara rolled over and said, “Who is that?”
    I started to tell her I didn’t know, then she pushed the covers away and ran toward the bathroom with her hand over her mouth. I didn’t think she was going to make it in time, but she did.
    Whoever was outside knocked again.
    I looked at the gun on the nightstand then got up and reached for my pants on the floor. I took the gun and slid it into the back of my belt then opened the door.
    Butch was standing outside, smiling.
    “Good morning, Minnesota,” he said.
    He had on a ripped red flannel jacket and a red hunter’s cap with earflaps. There was a wrinkled cigarette in his mouth and he smiled around it.
    “How’d you sleep?”
    “No complaints,” I said.
    “Good to hear.”
    I looked past him and saw the snow had been cleared off the parking lot. I asked him about it.
    “Half of it, anyway.” Butch pointed to the building across from us and said, “My nephew has one of those snowplow attachments for his pickup. The idiot ran it into one of the concrete parking barriers and snapped the damn mounting.” He shook his head. “Surprised you didn’t hear it. I thought he was gonna wake the dead.”
    “Your nephew is staying over there?”
    “Lives there,” Butch said. “He’s lived here, on and off, since he was a kid. Helps me out around the place, day-to-day maintenance, that kind of thing.”
    I thought about the man I saw standing out there the night before, smoking his cigarette, watching me. I still wanted to believe I’d imagined it all, but I couldn’t.
    “Anywhoo.” Butch took another drag off the cigarette then flicked it into the snow. “I stopped by to let you folks know the road is still closed. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I put together a breakfast over in the office. Everyone’s invited. We’ve got a small kitchen with a few tables and chairs set up. The food ain’t much, but we got enough to get us by.”
    Behind me, the sound of Sara throwing up carried through the thin bathroom door.
    Butch frowned.
    “How’s your friend holding up?”
    It took me a moment, then it came to me.
    I smiled.
    “She’s better than she was last night,” I said. “Didn’t need a hospital after all.”
    “Well, that’s good.”
    “You must’ve been right,” I said. “A good night’s sleep seemed to help.”
    “It’s amazing how often it does.”
    He stood at the door for another minute, neither of us speaking, then he thumbed back over his shoulder and said, “Well, I need to keep spreading the word.”
    “You get a lot of people in last night?”
    He shook his head.