Page 37 of Run

Twelve

Giovanna

“You done?” Vincent asked.

I pushed the plate that held my half-eaten breakfast away and nodded. We’d stopped at a chain restaurant off the highway and had the most awkward breakfast possible, one I was more than ready to be over.

We stood and left and got back into the car. His question had been the extent of our conversation since the day before. After the dressing room, he had driven well into the night, pulled off at a roadside motel, and slept for a couple hours. Now we were back on the road, but almost no words had passed between us.

I couldn’t say he’d even looked at me since then.

Which left me in a state of confusion, hurt.

I was still trying to process what had happened yesterday, contemplating what would happen when I got home, but neither of those was most prominent in my mind.

Instead I thought about him, tried to understand what he did to me, what he was feeling. It was an unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling. Before, when I’d been with him, we’d been completely in tune, our emotions in sync.

Now there was nothing. A chilly coldness, a detachment that was so different than the emotion I was used to from him. The seething anger, the explosive passion.

He treated me as if he felt nothing for me, treated me like this really was just the job, and I didn’t know what to do with that. Nor did I know what to make of what had happened at the bar and then with Tony. He’d killed those men without blinking but had spared Tony. What did it say about me that his restraint was more unnerving than his violence?

Nothing good, I was sure, but I was confused nonetheless.

Because Vincent was completely icing me out.

Part of me said that was good. My own emotions were almost overwhelming, so trying to deal with his as well, interpret what he might be thinking, was a challenge I wasn’t sure I was up to.

But…

I hated having something hanging between us. It reminded me so much of the past, where Vincent and I were always pushed apart by circumstances beyond our control, my need to be normal, whatever that meant, clashing with the violent realities of our lives as they actually were.

After I’d left, I had felt so empty, so lacking all that time, and had convinced myself it was fear, or maybe just the need to adjust to a new life.

But it wasn’t that.

I had been missing him, and only now was I beginning to see how much.

The grim, solemn silence in the car was almost overbearing, so I looked out the window, watched the scenery as it passed. Several hours after we’d gotten on the road, I saw a sign that perked me up.

I glanced at Vincent, saw that same distant expression on his face and decided a chance to break this horrible tension was worth risking his indifference.

“Vincent, can we stop?”

“No. I want to keep moving,” he said.

I felt a momentary stab of disappointment at how eager he was to be away from me, but I ignored it and continued on.

“Come on. At the next exit there’s a truck stop that has 250 kinds of hats!”

Vincent’s lips curled at the corners and he looked at me with amusement lighting his eyes. “I didn’t even know there were 250 kinds of hats,” he said.

I shrugged. “Me either, but now we get to see them all!”

He thinned his lips, his brow furrowed, but I smiled when he put on his blinker and got off the highway when we reached the exit.

It was funny that something so trivial excited me so much, but as we got closer I was almost ebullient. When he parked, I practically leaped from the car, not even allowing the stiff newness of the jeans I wore or the unfamiliarity of the cheap shoes to slow me.

And Vincent kept up with me stride for stride.