Part 1.

Dylan

The box car shuffles atop the tracks and she falls away from me, one foot crossing behind the opposite ankle, and she trips backward. I lunge forward and reach out for her, but I am too late. She hits the floor and rolls over, face down, and her shoulders rise and fall, and I think she might be crying. I try to connect to her but my mind is too frenzied to focus. I am at my knees beside her, and I peel one of her shoulders off the box car floor and roll her back over. She is laughing.

She brings her hands to her face and pushes her bangs back. She sits up and I place a hand on her back for support. She's been on a lot of medication lately and I find that, even though she's safe and we're finally together, I'm still worried.

She gasps for air and I concentrate just enough to connect with her and then I am laughing, too. She feels mad, the crazy kind, and frenzied as well. But there's another thing I feel. Something that makes my heart practically leap up and out of my chest. She feels joy.

I take a seated position next to her because there's no way I'm letting her stand again. Balance will come in time as the drugs wear off, but probably not as a stowaway in a moving train.

Our joined laughter slows to chuckling and my face feels wet and I realize she's crying. I put my rough hands to her face and wipe the tears with my thumbs.

"Oh, I haven't laughed like this in ages," Rebecca says.

I smile at her, her face still in my hands, and she smiles back at me. I want to tell her that I love her, but I know that she knows – she can surely feel the hollow ache deep in my gut, the insanity of my heartbeat, the tingling her touches bring – so I don't have to.

And then her hands are on my cheeks, softly caressing the whiskers on my chin, and my eyes flutter closed. I feel what her hands on my face feels like; I feel what my hands on hers feels like; I feel what her face feels like through my hands; I feel what my face feels like through hers. And I feel all of it at the same time. It is extraordinary and terrifying and maddening and overwhelming and all-encompassing. And I wonder how we, or anyone for that matter, were ever able to settle for an experience any less than this.

The box car bumps again and we both fall backwards onto the icy wooden floors. I'd underestimated just how cold it'd be here, but I'm at the moment unsure if the shivers I feel come from the cool air or from Rebecca's touch.

Rebecca's touch.

We lay on our sides and facing each other, and her fingers roam from my face to my ears to my neck and down to my hands and back up again. Every tiny bit of exposed skin she can find, she traces. And I realize, without peeling my eyes from hers, that my fingers do the same to her.

Her skin – so soft, so cold, milky white, porcelain. And mine – tanned and dried out from the blazing New Mexico sun, rough like leather, calloused from working, stubbly from my lack of proper hygiene. But although she is cold to the touch, I can feel that she is warm inside, so I know she doesn't seem to mind the imperfections of my skin. She seems to enjoy them, in fact.

I honestly thought I couldn't want her any more than I already did, but being able to feel how badly she wants me as well proves to me how wrong I was.

Oh, I was so wrong.

I take the initiative and crash into her, and every time our lips meet it's like getting a jolt of electric shock right in the mouth. I feel what I feel, and I also feel what she feels, and there's really no way to describe it other than that it's utterly and completely mind-blowing.

She tugs at my coat, and although it's twenty degrees out, I protest not. I shrug it off completely and her tiny fist moves to the tail of my shirt. Her fingers slip beneath it and crawl up my torso and everything inside me is screaming. Her arm moves up and around my side, pulling my shirt up with it, and she grabs at my back muscles. I feel as she feels them rip and curl as my shoulder moves along with my arm and my hand as it trails atop her hip and thigh.

All too soon, she removes her hand. She uses it to pull her shirt up to reveal the bare skin of her hip, and she yanks my arm, pulling my hand from her face, and places it atop her skin. I squeeze her hip and she pulls her mouth from mine and gasps, her eyes rolling back into her head. I feel her smooth hipbone beneath my palm and I feel my sandy palm on her hipbone. I feel my eyes wanting to roll back as well, but I don't let them. I want to be here for this moment, all of it. For the first time in months, I actually want to be where I am.

I move my hand over her stomach, her hip, her side, and up her back. I press my palm into her and she claws at my back and this time it's me who gasps. Her fingers climb over to my abdomen and they rise and fall over the muscles achieved from doing countless sit-ups in a square cell to cure my unending boredom. Her hand continues up to my chest and my hand follows suit up to hers.

"This is so much better than last time," she breathes out with a heartbreaking smile.

"Wait 'til you see what happens next," I answer.

She accepts my challenge.

She opens up to me like a flower in bloom, any remaining hesitance dissipating into the chilled New Hampshire air that we're zipping through. I want to touch her everywhere, all at once, and I try to. And she lets me try. She encourages me, even, with the little sounds she makes and the way she grabs at my hair and pulls at my clothes. I move my mouth from hers and when my lips meet her neck she clenches a fistful of my hair and arches her back and rolls over, pulling me on top of her, and I'm going to go crazy; I swear it.

I'm crazy for this girl.

Everything speeds up then, her fingers fidgeting frantically at the buttons of my flannel, her breath hot in my ear, repeating my name:

"Dylan, Dylan, Dylan..."

I'm going to come undone; I swear it.

Her mouth is on my neck then, and she opens my shirt and runs her hands over my bare chest, and I can't take it; I can't take it; I can't take it...

I kick off of the floor and roll over onto my back, pulling her on top of me. I push my arms beneath the stolen coat and wrap them around her tiny frame. Then, because that isn't enough, I run them back down and under her shirt and back up again. Down her sides, up her sides, over her shoulders. But it's still not enough. I need to feel her skin touching mine – I crave it.

I want to rip those depressing hospital clothes off of her and throw them across the car, but I know she'd be cold. I slowly start to push the coat from her shoulders, but although it's really inhibiting activities, one small notion of discomfort from her and I will resign. She surprises me, though, by pressing against my chest and pushing herself off of me. Her eyes never leave mine as she shrugs the coat off, wide and blue as winter, and it drives me wild. She drops it to the floor and comes back to me, and I feel the goosebumps rising on her arms. But I have to touch her; I need to touch her.

I sit up and reposition her onto my lap. I reach for my coat and she moves her mouth to my neck, my ear, my shoulder, and this time my eyes do roll back into my head a little. I lay the coat out flat and shift her over and lay her down atop it. Her eyes become lazy, and I can feel how tired she is. But I can also feel how badly she wants me, and this, in turn, makes me want her even more.

I ease the hem of her shirt up and press my lips to her stomach. She gasps and the muscles of her abdomen contract and release beneath my mouth. I move my kisses upward and pull the hospital shirt up as I go. Her breathing is heavy and ragged as the hem reaches her neck and my kisses her chest. I sit back to gaze upon her, and my God, she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

"My God, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, Becky Porter."

Her hands come up to my face and she closes her eyes and her lips part, and I think this is an invitation. But as I move towards her mouth, the most beautiful words come out of it and stop me short.

"I love you, Dylan."

All of time and space is suspended.

"I know I denied it for too long, and I'm sorry."

A single heartbeat, but at this point I cannot tell whether it is hers or mine.

"But you're in my head; how could I not?"

A breath.

"How could I not love you?"

There is no more Phil; there is no more Giddons; there is no more Bo and Jack. Sure, these things will come back in time – when this train stops and we hop off in Anywhere, U.S.A.; when my P.O. finds out I'm gone and puts out a warrant for my arrest; when Phillip sends out a search party for Rebecca and pays a lot of people a lot of money to bring her back and put me behind bars when he finds out who I am, if he even suspects I exist yet. When we have to figure out what to do about money, about clothes, about my drivers license, about a roof to put over our heads.

But right now, none of these things plague me. Right now, there is only us.

I crawl atop her, hungry. Her chest pressed to mine; her lips molded to mine; her tongue tangled with mine; her hands in my hair. We are no longer two; we are one creature of new sensation, with no tangible beginning or end. Her fingers find my belt buckle.

"This is gonna be so weird."