Chapter 44: : Chapter 44

destination are wild.

It’s hard to focus when you’re laughing as hard as we’ve been.

Since getting in the van, we haven’t kept a straight face. Her laugh as she teases me about the ass grab at the gay bar is lighting up any darkness I ever could have wished away, igniting me with something so much deeper than just lust for this woman.

I love seeing her smile. I love being the one to make her smile. I love that she does this thing when she laughs, where she cups her hand around her face, her thumb touching the side of her nose, trying to conceal the smile, but it breaks through regardless.

I love her quirks, the strange things that make her different that she probably hates about herself. It’s all of those things that make me fall even harder than I ever thought possible.

We find the secret spot, driving through a wooded, secluded gravel road, one that led us deep through the woods until it finally opened up into a clearing.

It’s a campsite. An old campsite that has a picnic table, set with a firepit and logs ready to burn. But that’s not what gets me. It’s the open view of the ocean steps from me. It’s the private sandy beach that appears to go on for miles. How she found this, I’ll never know, but it’s literally the perfect place to get away when you need to calm your busy mind. I see why it works for her.

Upon exiting the van, Han walks over to the sand. Without a second thought, she strips herself of her clothing; her crop top falling to the side of her as her hands work on the buttons of her shorts. She looks at me over her shoulder, giving a little smile, but not one that’s overtly sexual by nature. No, it’s more the look of a wild animal finally living in their environment, thriving and feeling every bit alive.

She walks naked into the water before diving under the surface. I follow her, stripping myself of my shirt, bouncing on one leg as I attempt to pull the tight jeans off of my ankle. She comes up out of the water, her eyes finding mine as she laughs in the distance at my embarrassing attempts to strip myself. Seriously clumsy and uncoordinated. I see her smirking at me as I finally walk in towards her.

Closing the space between us, I find her body beneath the water, her little head the only part of her above the surface of the dark waves. She bites the corner of her lower lip, her eyes focused solely on mine. Wrapping her thighs around my hips, her hands naturally slip around my neck. We silently smile at one another before my forehead rests down on hers.

Without warning, I plunge us both beneath the surface. Her scream; captured by the water as I submerge both of us entirely. Pushing back through the surface, I wipe the water off my face with one hand, catching her expression. With her cheeks puffed, she spits a stream of water at my face. I reach out, dunking her again, before we’re both laughing uncontrollably. She fluffs my hair off my forehead before I shake it out like a mutt.

“Jerk,” she says with narrowed eyes.

“Bitch,” I reply with a smirk.

She grabs a fist full of hair at the top of my head; her elbow resting on my shoulder as she hovers her lips centimeters away from mine. I tilt my chin forward, trying to seal my lips to hers when she pulls back.

“Say it again,” she snarls, pulling my hair harder until my mouth drops open.

My lip curves into a grin, the pain, causing my dick to swell. I love her feisty ass. “Bitch.”

The beautiful curve of her lip emulates mine as I press forward again, sealing us together. The softness mixed with the warmth of her mouth, contrasting with the cool water surrounding us, sends me into a blissful mix of sensations. I line myself with her entrance, feeling only natural that we connect in every way possible. She arches her back, assisting me in finding the place we come together. Slipping inside her beneath the water, we both gasp a little. Her arms tighten around my neck and our foreheads rest together, our lips parted as the steady increase in our breaths mirror one another.

“I didn’t know how much I needed you,” she whispers against my lips with her eyes cast downward at the water, moaning when I pull her shoulders down to meet my thrust. “Until you were here, in this space.”

I groan at the feeling of her warmth tightening around me. I think of her here alone, and the thought literally drives me insane with this need to protect her and her little heart.

“I’m never letting you go,” I whisper back, my eyes finally capturing her timid ones, giving her all the promises she needs to know my truth. “Never.”

You’d think after a night of dancing, drinking, ocean sex, beach sex, van sex, that you’d be exhausted and ready to spend the morning sleeping in, being lazy, and eating your weight in fast food.

But not Han.

At the crack of dawn, I feel a rubber boot kicking my shoulder. My left eye barely squints open while the right remains sealed shut. I lift my head, seeing the rubber boot and follow it up to an exposed knee, to an exposed thigh, and further up to a girl with distressed jean shorts, an oversized, bleach-stained Nirvana t-shirt and hair, appropriately in messy pigtails.

“Time to go,” she says simply, smacking me twice on the ass.

“But I don’t wanna go to school, mom!” I groan into the pillow.

She straddles my lower back and starts massaging my shoulders and neck. I groan more, loving the pressure she’s applying in all the right places. Feeling my cock wake up before me, I roll beneath her until she’s now straddling my erection.

“Kai,” she says my name as a warning.

I bite my bottom lip, nodding, letting her know it’s happening whether she tries to deny me or not, as I grab her hips, rubbing her up and down my length. She gives me a little eye roll, smiling as she leans back to take off her boots, giving in.

“No,” I say firmly, grabbing her arm. “The rubber boots stay.”

“You gangster, you,” she says before I pull her lips to mine.

We hit the road, driving for about twenty minutes as she sips on the coffee she made us and I look around the van, wondering what in the hell we’re about to do.

I tried to eat a granola bar she offered me for breakfast, but instead, I found myself sneaking off to go vomit in the woods. My body is killing me internally, screaming at me to fix it with a quick snort. My headache, begging for one last pill. And yet, I persist. I’m probably an idiot for it. I’m sure once I get back I’ll start up again and this will have been for nothing.

I groan at the thought, making Han look over at me.

“Where are we going, and why so early? You know I’m practically a vampire, right? I glow in the early morning sun,” I say, trying to save myself.

She rolls her eyes at me, then says, “You wanted to see what I do. Well, this is it.”

Before I can ask another question, she slowly pulls the van over onto the side of the road, the tires crumbling through the gravel in the ditch. There’s nothing around us. No one.

“Han,” I say, wondering what she’s doing.

She hops out of the driver’s seat and makes her way to the double doors on the side of the van near me. She grabs the white barrels, pulling them apart, before lining the interior with the large blue tarp.

“Grab the bucket for me,” she instructs as she pulls down the shovel from the hanger on the ceiling.

I’m going to help my with own murder?

“You’re not really dressed right, but it’s alright. I didn’t explain well,” she says, eyeing my black joggers with the zippers everywhere, my new vintage Madonna t-shirt, and my crispy-clean chucks.

I was trying to look fly for my girl.

I hold my arms out, looking down at my outfit. “My bad. Thought you’d think I was sexy.”

She grins, cocking her hip as she leans against the shovel. “You are sexy.”

“Say it again.” I reply immediately.

“You’re so sexy, Kai!” she screams out, her voice echoing in the woods surrounding us. “Especially in Madonna.”

“Chill, girl, you’re starting to get clingy,” I retort with sass, causing her to roll her eyes at me.

She throws the oversized white bucket into my chest, making me grunt.

“Clingy and aggressive,” I groan.

“Why Madonna though?” She cocks her head, putting gardening gloves over her hands.

“I thought we established this.” I pinch the shirt by the shoulder, shaking it as I talk. “I have a thing for older women.”

Following her lead, I walk around the front of the van, my eyes darting all around me, ready to get shot in the back of the head or possibly eaten by a damn mountain lion out here. We walk a few more steps before I see it.

A dead possum lies on the right side of the road. Its head must’ve been run over because there seems to be an absence of a skull. The body is bloated, and flies and maggots are already festering.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say beneath my breath.

I can’t even say I’m surprised by this realization. It makes almost too much sense to me, so much so, that I’m kind of disappointed in myself for not immediately knowing this is what we came out here to do. I’m slow as fuck without my addys.

“Hold the bucket please,” she says in a sweet tone as she drags her shovel along the grey asphalt, walking her skinny toned legs over to the roadkill. Scooping it up, she brings it over towards me. The dead animal is teetering back and forth on the shovel and I’m sure it’s going to fall on me and my freshly washed chucks.

“Fuck,” I say, twisting my face as I hold the bucket out for her to drop him into it. “This is nasty, Han.”

He lands with a thud, rocking the bucket in my grip as the flies disperse.

She places the shovel down against the road again, leaning on it with her palm on top of the handle. “One down, a few thousand to go.”

How do we spend our day? Why, picking up roadkill, of course. We drive the highways, slowing and stopping every time she sees something that looks pancaked to the surface of the asphalt beneath us.

“Aren’t there people who are actually paid to do this? Like, the government or some shit?” I ask, sighing as the vehicle slows again. I’m on the verge of vomiting, but this time from the smell of rotting carcass in a bin behind me. Whatever she thought she saw wasn’t dead, so she continues driving. “Plus, shouldn’t we just let nature take its course with these animals? Maggots gotta eat too.”

“First of all, they don’t do it for the reasons I do. They treat them like trash. Like their lives didn’t matter. Even though the only reason they died was because we invaded their forests. It’s our fault they died. None of this is natural.”

“So…you collect roadkill, and…then what? Tell me you don’t cook it and give it to the homeless. They have enough problems. They don’t need worms coming out of their asses to top it all off.”

“No, Kai, I don’t cook them and give them to the homeless,” she replies in an annoyed tone. “The dead ones I give a proper burial.”

I tip my head to the side, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Is this even legal? Where the hell are you burying this collection of dead animals?”

“On Larry’s old farm.”

“Naturally.” I nod, stretching my lips into a tight line, not understanding at all.

“Look, you don’t have to understand it. And, truthfully, I don’t give a fuck if you do,” she snaps, suddenly angry. She sighs, swallowing down her emotion before calming herself down and saying, “This is just something we did together.”

As soon as she says the words, I sigh and look over at her with sorrowful eyes. I know who ‘we’ is now. My heart cracks in half as her eyes gloss over. She’s right, I don’t need to understand it, I just need to be here. With her. I want to say something else, but her gaze is peeled on the road through the windshield.

“Shit,” she curses under her breath, swerving roughly until she meets the side of the road again, putting the vehicle in park.

She races out of the van, leaving her door open and the van still running. I quickly follow, wondering what it is she sees, until I come up beside her, looking down at the tragic scene.

A squirrel lies in the middle of the road. His back must be broken because he’s just dragging his hind legs that are dangling behind him. The feet and legs appear to be crushed, and he’s struggling to use his front end to walk off of the black, scalding pavement. His eyes are darting wildly and he’s panicking even more at the sight of Han approaching.

“Aw, fuck,” I say, running my hands through my hair, feeling awful for the little guy.

There’s not a chance in hell he’s going to survive. By the look of the blood coming from his bottom, it seems the internal damage must be severe, on top of the probable nerve damage to his back.

“It’s alright little guy,” she says softly, pouring a little water from her water bottle out on the pavement near him.

He leans down, diving right into the cool water, drinking it up abruptly.

“Aw, he’s drinking!” I say excitedly. “He likes—”

BANG!

My mouth drops open as my eyes bulge from my face. Before he could realize what even hit him, Han brought the shovel down on him hard. Ending his life in one quick swing. Fucking. Brutal.

I stand there, my mouth gaping at the now dead squirrel, then back up at Han, who’s resting on the end of the shovel again, staring off into the distance. We sit like that in silence for a moment that feels like an eternity. From the angle I’m set behind her, I see the corner of her jaw tighten as her chest slowly regulates.

“Helping someone cross over when they can’t help themselves could be considered the greatest form of compassion.” She turns to face me, an image of the soulless girl of her past appearing before me. “But it still kills a piece of the living to do it.”

She turns her head again and continues staring down the long, winding road before nodding to herself and scraping the squirrel off the pavement with the shovel, walking back towards the van.

I stand still, following her with my eyes as she puts him into the bucket and hops back into the van. I stare at her silhouette through the windshield as she starts it up.

I won’t even pretend I didn’t feel every part of that sentence in the deepest part of my bones. I haven’t even taken in a breath of air since the words passed her lips. The chill forces the hairs at the back of my neck to stand up, a river of emotions flooding through me as I’m hit with the significant weight of her reality. It’s heavy. Like the weight of a thousand worlds.

The most alarming part is knowing her statement wasn’t about animals at all.