The Chemist

She judged the position of the sun. “Soon. Fifteen more minutes, and I think it will be dark by the time we meet the main road.”

“I know I’m in terrible trouble and probably deserve, I don’t know, to be in solitary confinement or something, but do you think I could kiss you until it’s time? I’ll be more careful with your face and your clothes, I promise.”

“Careful? That’s not very tempting.”

“Sorry. It’s my best offer currently.”

She sighed with mock reluctance. “I guess I haven’t really got anything else to do.”

He took her face in his hands, placing his fingertips delicately again to avoid her injuries, and when his lips touched hers this time, they were so soft there was barely any weight to them at all. She still felt the buzz, the electricity under her skin, but there was an odd kind of comfort to the very gentleness of it. It was like before, like back in the kitchen at the ranch, only a little more cautious. Still, she remembered the morning vividly, and that shifted things. She considered changing the tempo, twisting into his lap and wrapping her legs around him, but she hesitated. It felt so nice just as it was. Her fingers found their way to his curls, as was rapidly becoming her habit.

He kissed her neck, lightly tasting the places where her pulse beat beneath her skin.

He whispered into her good ear, “One thing concerns me.”

“Just one thing?” she breathed.

“Well, aside from the obvious.”

His mouth returned to hers, still careful, but this time more exploratory. It had been a decade, nearly, since anyone had kissed her, but it felt longer. No one had ever kissed her like this, with time slowing down and her brain stopping and all the electricity…

“Do you want to know what it is?” he asked a few minutes later.

“Hmm?”

“The thing that concerns me.”

“Oh, right. Sure.”

“Well,” he said, pausing to kiss her eyelids, “I know exactly how I feel about you.” Her lips again, her throat. “But I’m not entirely sure how you feel about me.”

“It’s not obvious?”

He leaned away from her, still holding her face, and stared at her, curious. “We seem to share a level of attraction.”

“I’ll say.”

“But is there anything more for you?”

She stared, not sure what he was looking for.

He sighed. “You see, Alex, I’m in love with you.” He searched her face, analyzing her reaction, then frowned and let his hands drop to her shoulders. “And I can tell that you’re not buying that, but there it is. Despite what my recent behavior may have implied, sex is not my end goal here. And… I guess I’d like to know what your goals are.”

“My goals?” She looked at him incredulously. “Are you serious?”

He nodded gravely.

Her voice sounded sharper than she’d meant it to when she answered. “I have only one goal, and that’s to keep both you and me alive. Maybe, if I can do that long enough, we’ll actually have a reasonable expectation of life beyond the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Should we ever be in that happy position, I can think about having other goals. Goals imply a future.”

His frown spread from his mouth to his eyes. His brows pushed down and together. “Are things really that bad?”

“Yes!” she exploded, her hands clenching into fists. She took a deep breath. “I thought that was obvious, too.”

The sun was setting. They should have been on the move five minutes ago. She jumped down from the Humvee and whistled for the dogs. Einstein bounded past her eagerly, ready to be back on the road. She went to pick up Lola, but Daniel was there first.

Alex stretched and tried to focus. She felt decently rested and would probably be fine driving all night. That was all that mattered. Just making it through the night without garnering any more attention than she had to. Sending Kevin’s e-mail, and then getting her little traveling circus into a less flamboyant vehicle. That was the limit of her ambition.

They drove in silence for a while. It got dark while they were still on back roads. When they eased onto I-49, Alex relaxed a little. There hadn’t been very many cars, and everything they had seen was old and fit the countryside. For now, she was fairly certain that no one knew exactly where they were.

She knew she should be concentrating, but the dark road with the steady flow of anonymous traffic was monotonous, and she couldn’t help wondering what Daniel was thinking. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet. She thought about turning on the radio, but that felt sort of cowardly. She probably owed him an apology.

“Um, I’m sorry if I was rough back there,” she said, the words sounding very loud after the long lull. “I’m not good at this people stuff. There’s really no excuse for me. I’m a full-grown adult – I should be able to hold a normal conversation. Sorry.”

His sigh didn’t sound exasperated; it was more like relief. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed. My lack of focus landed us in this position. I will get it together.”

She shook her head. “You can’t think of it that way. You’re not responsible for this. Look, someone has decided to kill you. It happened to Kevin six months ago and it happened to me a few years before that. You’ll make mistakes, because it’s impossible to know what is or isn’t a mistake until it’s made. But mistakes don’t mean you’re guilty for what is happening. Never forget that there is a real human being who decided to put his agenda ahead of your existence.”