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Nicholas

When they arrest me…

The handcuffs are tight around my wrists but the pain doesn’t come close to the pain that’s surging through my heart. It’s as if Olive stuck an ice pick right through it, splintering it into a million little pieces.

I try to breathe but topple over in pain. The seat in the back of the cop car is vinyl and it feels cool against my body. I look out of the window.

The FBI agents and the local police officers are swarming around my recreational vehicle. I force myself to take another deep breath and search through them for Olive.

Where is she?

Where did they take her?

If only I could get a glimpse of her, then I’d know for sure if she had betrayed me.

Or will I?

They are only here because of her. It was she who has turned me in. It was she who led them here.

At first, I had my doubts about her. I wondered if I should trust her.

I had betrayed her, so what would make me think that she wouldn’t betray me as well? Still, after talking to her on the phone, I got the sense that she believed me.

I run over every word that we said to each other, first on the phone and then in person. I look for clues that she might have been lying, but nothing comes to mind.

It was so nice to reconnect with her. It was so wonderful to hold her in my arms again. I had missed her so much, maybe I had just convinced myself that she was telling the truth.

I close my eyes and imagine my lips on hers.

Her mouth is soft and inviting and everything that she has always been. Was it all a lie? Was our whole relationship nothing but fiction or was it only a lie at the end?

Was this her way of showing me how much I had betrayed her?

It starts to snow.

Big thick flakes fall from the sky. Somebody brings me my coat and boots from the RV. Someone else helps me put them on. Three cops crowd around me as they carefully unlock my wrists, fearing that I’m going to make a run for it.

But I won’t. It would be a suicide mission.

They want to arrest me but they are willing to shoot me.

I may have committed other crimes, but I never killed anyone, let alone my partner or my ex-girlfriend. And I’ll be damned if I let them say that I did, let alone kill me for it.