“Baby, it’s OK,” he soothed. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I fought back tears of confusion. He saved me. But how? Dex was leaner and meaner than ever before. I had felt and seen those muscles on him. They were firm and hard but compared to the fallen meathead, he was in a different class. There was no way someone of Dex’s stature, no matter how newly buff, should be able to take on a man of Mitch’s size.
I swallowed hard and tried to calm my heart. My shaking was slowing down, as Dex held me in place, stroking the back of my head with gentle pressure.
“Baby,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
I pulled my head back and looked up at him, blinking my tears away.
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he said, rubbing his thumb under my eyes. He took his fingers and lightly traced my cheek where I had hit the tree. “This is swelling up.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said, ignoring my cheek. “I didn’t think he was just going to…flip out like that.”
He frowned and closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I should have known…I was watching him. I kept seeing the way he was looking at you. As soon as we brought the llama to the woods, I just had this feeling and before I could do anything he whacked me on the back of my fucking head. Thank fuck I woke up in time, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if…”
“I should have said something,” I admitted. “He was coming onto me a few times before.”
Dex’s eyes sharpened. “What?”
I looked away at Mitch’s body. He was still breathing and still out cold.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
I chewed my lip, feeling the pain in my cheek creep up to my head. “I didn’t want you to get upset. You would have called off the whole thing.”
“You’re damn right I would have!” he yelled. I flinched in surprise. “Perry, you should have told me.”
“Then the show would be over.”
“Fuck the show!” he said, throwing his arms out. “I don’t care about the damn show. I care about you and only you. You’re everything to me. Nothing else even comes close.”
He came back and placed his hands on my shoulders, holding me firmly. He eyes roamed my face, and he winced every time they passed over my cheek. “We’ve got to leave and leave now. We’re going back to Rigby’s and then we’re going home. To our home. Got it?”
I nodded dumbly. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Come on, we can’t chance him waking up again.”
We scampered back to the campsite and grabbed as many things as we could, shoving them into our backpacks. The space blankets, flashlights, dried foods, walkie talkies, waterproof matches and extra layers of clothing were all we could fit. We decided we had to leave the llamas behind or they’d only slow us down, but just as we were running out of the campsite, we swung up by the llamas and let them loose of their leads. They trotted away from us, then stopped at the edge of the forest and began to graze. I was sure one day they’d find their way back home. They had time that we didn’t.
Dex took the opportunity to get the map off of Mitch. He approached the slumbering giant like Indiana Jones snatching a relic. I held my breath, my grip on the rifle tight, until Dex’s fingers ripped the map out of Mitch’s back pocket. The man began to stir and we both took off running into the woods, trying to find the path we had come on.
We didn’t have much luck and Dex didn’t want us running around in the open while we looked for the path in. So we headed straight into the middle of it, stepping over rotting logs, uneven ground and brushing past a million branches that pulled at our clothes and hair. We were lucky it was morning and there was enough light in the undergrowth to see but it was hard to look straight ahead when you had branches threatening to poke your eye out.
“I think we’ve lost him,” I said after a while, gasping for breath. Dex didn’t slow.
“Dex, please, I don’t think he’s following us.”
“You can’t be too sure,” he said without looking behind at me.
“But we have both guns,” I pointed out. I was gripping the rifle still and he had the shotgun. We made sure the safety was on both of them, knowing how easy it was to trip and have a major accident.
“We have guns but he knows this place like the back of his hand. And we’re definitely lost.”
My stomach flipped. “Don’t say that.”
He shook his head, still marching forward, brushing past branches and being careful not to fling them at me. “We’re lost, kiddo. Once we get out of the woods though, we might be able to find the way back.”
“We should have taken his compass,” I mumbled.
“It was in his front pocket.”
“Do you think he sabotaged the walkie talkies?” I asked, something that had been on my mind for a while.
“I don’t know. I don’t think any of this was planned, at least not by him.”
I mulled that over. We walked some more, my knees tired from stepping, my shoulders aching from the backpack.
“Dex?”
“Uh huh?”
“What happened to you?”
Finally his pace slowed and I was able to catch up. He still didn’t look behind at me, though his head was cocked, thinking things over.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the same anymore…” I said quietly. “Who are you?”
A beat.