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Valentina.
She barely asked me any questions—if, according to barely, she meant five in a row within ten minutes. Why was I on the run? What was I doing on that road? Who was I running from and why? Most of the questions she didn’t even wait for me to answer before she filled in the blanks herself. Some of them eerily accurate, as if she had been inside my head, while others were so far off that I might have laughed if my body didn’t feel like a bruised, frozen carcass. I didn’t give her anything to ponder on. I just sat there, pressing myself against the seat, gripping my own hands to stop them from shaking, my head splitting open from the aftershock of everything I had just done.
The music had gone considerably lower now, the screaming vocals fading into a dull thrum, almost as if she realized how much they were rattling inside my skull. My ears were still ringing, but at least I could hear myself breathe again. We had long left the highways, the streetlights fading behind us as the darkness thinned. I caught flashes of signs as she drove—welcome boards to different neighborhoods, the occasional deserted gas station. Trees lined the road like eerie silhouettes, the branches shaking under the cold wind that cut through everything, even the car. I was still freezing, still trembling, my body locking up from the cold, but Valentina didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care.
She was too busy talking. About me. About how she had seen the news everywhere. How there was a whole goddamn debate online, people breaking into two sides—one half calling for my immediate execution, the other treating me like some modern-day Bonnie without Clyde. She said she had thousands of followers, thousands of haters. Some people were obsessed with me, the way they obsessed over every criminal on the run. Said some of them, mostly guys, were making thirst posts about me. I almost choked on my own breath when she read out some of the comments, completely unfiltered, completely uncensored.
“‘I’d let her ruin my life,’” she quoted, her Italian accent making it sound like a joke. “‘I’d commit crimes just to be on the run with her. Shit, I’d let her stab me if it meant she’d look at me for longer than two seconds.’”
I blinked at her, my stomach curling in something twisted. Horror, maybe. Disgust. I wasn’t sure.
She kept going. “‘Bro, she killed a cop and still looks hot. I’m so confused right now. Is this what love feels like?’” She laughed, then, shaking her head as she tapped her fingers against the wheel. “Some people are fucking insane, no? But, eh, it is what it is. The world is like this.”
I stared at her, unsure if I was supposed to respond. I couldn’t believe it. People thought this was a game. Like I wasn’t out here, my body sore and aching, my lungs tight, my entire life crumbling into something I couldn’t even recognize anymore. People were sitting behind their fucking screens, making memes about me, arguing over whether I deserved to be free or deserved to rot in a prison cell. Some of them were waiting for me to get caught just so they could say they saw it happen in real time.
I swallowed, pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, my fingers digging into my lap.
Valentina sighed, leaning back into her seat, her platinum blonde fringe falling just a little into her sleepy eyes. She looked like she hadn’t cared about anything in years.
“All the elderlies just want you dead already,” she added. “They say you are a disgrace. A walking disaster. That this is what happens when you let ‘the youth run wild.’” She rolled her eyes, smirking. “Guess they’ve never met me.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. My mind was still spinning, my entire body still locked in that state of cold, hard panic that hadn’t left since I fled. The bruises felt heavier now, my ribs aching. I dropped my gaze, staring down at my own hands, at the cigarette pack between my fingers. I didn’t even remember grabbing it, but there it was. I had smoked when I was younger, when I was a teenager, but it had been so long. Years. I didn’t know why I was looking at it like I needed it now. Like maybe it could fix something. Or maybe I just needed to feel something that wasn’t the pounding in my skull or the weight in my chest.
Before I could even ask, Valentina shifted, one hand still on the wheel, the other already stretching out toward me, holding a lighter between her fingers.
“Go on,” she said, that same knowing smirk pulling at her lips. “You look like you need it.”
I hesitated for only a second before I took it. My fingers shook as I flicked the lighter, the small flame coming to life, casting an orange glow against my face. I lifted the cigarette to my lips, inhaled, felt the burn slide down my throat, thick and familiar. The first drag made me wince. The second made me shudder. The third settled inside my lungs like I had never quit.
I exhaled, my lips still quivering. The taste coated my tongue.
Valentina just hummed, tilting her head as she glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “You still haven’t asked me why I picked you up,” she pointed out, her accent curling around the words.
I swallowed, lowering the cigarette just a little, my voice rough as I murmured, “Why?”
She shrugged, that smirk never leaving. “I just did.”
I turned to look at her fully, frowning just a little. She didn’t look nervous. Not even slightly unsettled. She was talking to a fugitive—someone whose face was probably plastered all over the news—and she wasn’t even blinking.
She seemed amused, if anything. Excited.
“What?” she said, noticing my expression, her blue eyes gleaming in the dim light. “You think I should be scared of you?”
I didn’t answer, but something in my face must have given away my thoughts because she laughed again, shaking her head, one hand tapping against the wheel like she was keeping beat with a song that wasn’t playing anymore.
“I like thrill,” she told me, her accent thickening just a little. “Besides, who wouldn’t want to side with a fugitive?”
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