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If Jasha is ever to turn around and give this a chance, I’m going to have to be the bigger person and give him a chance first. I’m going to have to trust him, and that means doing what’s right for both of us, even if it’s difficult.
I have to tell him that we’re going in the wrong direction.
My stomach drops as I come to this realization. The dread is strong enough to where I could probably talk myself out of doing it, but it wouldn’t help us. Being stranded somewhere without fuel won’t save us, and what’s more, it will make it so that Jasha never wants anything to do with me again.
And that’s only if we survive.
I sigh, looking at my lap and trying to muster the strength to speak up. There’s no easy way to say it, so I might as well just come clean.
But just as I open my mouth, ready to admit the truth, Jasha’s phone buzzes, and he jumps out of his seat. “I have to answer this,” he mumbles, making a quick exit from the cabin.
And my chance to turn things around and save the day is lost, like it was never there to begin with.
7
Jasha
Ianswer the phone, pressing it to my ear so hard that I can feel Nikolai’s voice rattling around inside my head. “I’m on my way.”
“Good,” Nikolai replies, letting out a sigh. “I was starting to get worried. You were supposed to call me.”
“I ran into some unexpected company,” I reply, looking over my shoulder at the cabin that currently contains my worst nightmare. If only she would’ve been on the pill when we met, none of this would’ve happened.
But she was right, too. I should’ve worn a condom.
“What company?” Nikolai asks, his voice growing stern. “Jasha, if you start killing people over these jewels, you’re going to attract a world of trouble that you’re not prepared to deal with.”
“Relax, I only killed one person,” I reply, as though that’s an achievement. I promised Nikolai I wouldn’t kill anyone, but he knows me. There’s no way he actually expected me to do this that cleanly.
Nikolai sighs again, this time out of obvious annoyance instead of relief. “Just tell me it wasn’t the engineer. You need him to steer the train to Texas since you refused to learn how to drive a train before you decided to steal one.”
“You know why I did this, and why I couldn’t wait. And no, I didn’t kill the engineer.Sheis alive and well. I had to kill the guard, and that’s all. The conductor is walking the tracks where we dropped him off an hour ago.”
“Fair enough. What are we doing with this engineer when you get to Texas? It would’ve been better if you found someone who knew how to drive a train and brought them with you. Now we have to kill her, and –”
“We’re not killing Lola,” I blurt much louder than I intend. I pull my shoulders up to my ears and move further away from Lola’s cabin.
“So, this engineer… she has a name?”
“Of course, she has a name,” I whisper frantically. “She has a face too, and a body.”
“What kind of body?”
“Literally perfect. Curvy, pale, acts like a virgin but fucks like a whore.”
“TMI, man,” he replies with a slight smile in his voice.
“You asked.”
“I didn’t ask for that level of detail, and I’m not sure I want to know about what you’ve been doing for the past hour when you were supposed to be calling me,” he replies, returning to that dry tone he uses when he wants to get back to business.
But I’m not quite ready to. Lola has a hold on me whether I want her to or not, and I need to at least introduce the idea that she’s here to stay for the foreseeable future to Nikolai. He doesn’t have to know about the baby, but I do want him to know that we have a past.
“Okay, so there’s something else I need to add,” I begin, looking out the window. It’s very dark now, and I can’t see anything but the frost on the glass. “I was screwing around with Lola when I got on the train. That actually happened a few months ago. Small world.”
“Or not. How do you know she’s not with the Italians? She’s driving their train, after all.”
“Not possible,” I say, though it does create a spark of suspicion in me. I’ll need to question her more thoroughly when I get off this call.
