One Week - By Nikki Van De Car Page 0,51

and I knew that we should have, but you're just so…” Jess starts getting agitated again. “You have absolutely no sense of self-preservation, and it drives me fucking crazy, because somebody has to protect you if you're not going to protect yourself, and I swear to God, Bee, if anything happened to you I don't know what I—”

I grab Jess by the shoulders and kiss him. And for once, he doesn't push me away. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest, and I wind my arms around his neck, and I feel like I can't breathe but I don't care.

We stand there in the middle of the road paying no attention whatsoever to whether or not a car is coming and are probably in more danger than we ever were with Mr. Mackey, but when Jess lifts his head and I try to catch my breath, I don't want us to ever move.

And then it starts to rain. At first it's just a few drops, and I laugh softly and wipe one off of Jess's eyebrow. He kisses one off of my temple. But then the rain gets heavier…and then it gets biblical. I gape up at the sky, and within moments, we're completely soaked.

Jess reaches down and takes my hand. “Come on!” he yells over the roar of the rain.

We start running up the road—running where, I don't know, since there's nothing out here—but we can't just stay out in this. And then I see where Jess is headed. About five hundred yards away, there's some kind of RV trailer over at the edge of a dirt road that heads up in to the cornfield. We run over to the trailer, shielding our eyes, and Jess yanks on the door. It's locked.

“You're the expert on breaking-and-entering,” Jess yells. “How do we get in?”

I stick out my tongue at him and look to see if there are any windows open. I run around to the other side of the trailer and find a small window over the back that looks like maybe the lock isn't in place. “Come lift me up!” I call.

Jess hoists me up, holding my hips as I try to shove the window open. It's pretty small—I'm not even sure I'll fit. I punch the window with my elbow. It swings open, and I gesture for Jess to lift me higher. He shifts his hands to my thighs and I pull myself through the window, and promptly fall in headfirst. Thankfully, I land on a bed—the back of the trailer is apparently the bedroom—and jump up to go let Jess in. He slams the door behind him, and we stand there in the middle of the trailer, dripping.

I start to giggle from the absurdity of it all, and Jess leans in and gives me a quick kiss. “I'll go find some towels,” he says, and heads off into the bedroom to see if there are any in there.

I take a moment to look around. Although it obviously hasn't been used in a while, the trailer is clean and neat. There's a kitchen, a little table to eat at, a living room complete with couch, chair, and TV, a bathroom, and the bedroom I dove into. Altogether, it's probably only about the size of two roomettes, but it feels like an entire house, just in miniature. I love it.

I go to the little window next to the door and look out at the rain. It's beating so hard on the roof I can barely hear Jess moving around as he looks in the cupboards tucked into the walls. Every moment of the past five days has been strange, but this feels outside reality. I'm in the middle of Iowa somewhere, and I've broken into some stranger's trailer, and I don't want to be anywhere else in the world.

I jump as Jess wraps a towel around my shoulders. I pull it tight around me, and grab his hands and wrap them around my waist. He kisses the back of my neck. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

I smile and shake my head. “Are you?”

I feel him shrug. “Not really. But we left Martha's snacks in Mr. Mackey's car.”

“No!” I turn around to face Jess. “Are you okay? When did you last eat?”

“I'm fine,” Jess chuckles, and rubs my shoulders. “We'll need to figure something out by breakfast, probably, but I should be okay until then. Maybe there's something in the kitchen.”

“So,” I say slowly. “We're