Free Drive by Karina Gioertz

what this news will do to my family? The kind of pain my mother will suffer thinking that I’ve died? No! I will not be the one to make her suffer like that! Not after everything she’s already been through!” she shouted at him as he stood up from the bed and slowly came toward her. She physically fought him as he tried to place both of his hands onto her shoulders this time.
                  “Get off of me!” she hissed, using both of her hands and the weight of her entire body to shove him in the chest, but her attempts against him were almost laughable, as he stood there unmoved, solid in spite of the pain she inflicted on him due to his already injured shoulder. To make matters worse, Sawyer firmly gripped her by both wrists, bringing her struggle to an end.
                  “Stop fighting me, Jordan. Don’t you think I know what this means? Believe me, I do! I haven’t talked to my father since before my mother died…and she passed while I was off working some case that consumed my life so completely, I didn’t even find out about her death until six months after it happened! God only knows how she felt those last months wondering if she was leaving me or coming to see me again. And my father…I’m sure he gave up on me a long time ago. I would have…but no matter how much regret I feel or how much I wish it was different, I know that it can’t be. Not now, not as long as I do the work that I do. And you can’t either. Things are different now, Jordan.” He sighed heavily, slowly loosening his grip on her. Tears were welling up in her eyes and he could barely stand the way they pierced through him as though she wanted him to feel every last ounce of her agony.  He did. The knowledge of that frightened him more than anything. He had spent years shutting off his feelings. Building emotional walls so steep, he could be certain they’d protect him from ever getting emotionally involved with his mark, no matter how much they treated him like family. This had come at a cost of course, one being that he never felt connected to anyone, criminal or otherwise. He had given up any ideals of ever having a steady woman in his life, let alone ever having a family, a long time ago. He had been certain that his heart had gone so numb from the choices he had made, it would never beat for anyone but himself. Then Jordan showed up. From the first moment he’d seen her, she had clouded his judgment, so much so that for the first time in his career he had found himself at someone else’s mercy – hers. Something he was starting to think he was going to have to get used to.
    ***
    Jordan watched Sawyer’s face as he tried to hide the pain behind his deadened expression. It didn’t matter what he did. She had seen all she needed to see the second he looked down into her tear streaked face.
    “I can’t just let them suffer like this for no reason,” she pleaded with him, but Sawyer just turned his back on her and walked away.
    “Let them suffer Jordan… you let them suffer, you let them live.”
    She stood there staring blankly at the TV, no longer taking in any of what the reporter was saying while tears quietly continued to run down her cheeks. She knew Sawyer was right even though it all felt so incredibly wrong. When she finally managed to pry her eyes from the screen she searched the room for Sawyer, but he was nowhere to be seen. Surely, Jordan would have heard if he had left the room. It took her a second to clear her head enough to take note of the sound of water running. It was coming from the shower. Relieved, she dragged her feet over the shabby old carpeting toward the bathroom. The door was only leaning against the doorframe so she rapped it once with her knuckles and then entered without waiting for his invitation.
    “There’s something I still don’t understand…why do they even think I’m dead in the first place? Do you think the people after you left some sort of a body