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Alex jerked awake in my arms and cried out, startling me out of the light slumber I’d fallen into while I was holding him.

I instinctively reached for him, but he pulled out of my reach. I sat up and looked around the room. “What? What’s wrong?”

“The house is on fire! Mike’s dead! He k-killed h-him!”

Should have given him the whole dose…

“Shhh, baby. Relax. What are you talking about?”

“The h-house! I was in it! It w-was b-burning. He t-t-to he t-took m-me!”

Alex started to hyperventilate. I walked over to him slowly and put my arms around him.

“Baby, everything’s fine. It was just a bad dream. You’re safe.”

He pulled out of my grasp and got up off the bed. He looked down the length of his body and then around the room.

“Where are w-we?”

I raised an eyebrow. “We’re at my house? We came back here last night after the police station. You told me you didn’t want to go back to Westing House, so I brought you here.”

Just keep your tone nice and even, show obvious concern. He’s still really groggy.

Alex shook his head, and my pulse rate felt like it suddenly doubled. “N-no! We went b-back to the h-house and you w-went to w-work!”

I slowly got off the bed and took small steps across the room, not wanting to spook him.

“Alex, I didn’t go to work. I called my captain right in front of you.”

Alex looked around the room again and then shook his head. “It was a d-dream?”

“We’ve been here all night, Alex,”

I said, trying to keep my tone as soft and comforting as possible. “We stopped at Westing House to get my car, and you packed a bag. We got here and I made you some soup. You drank about half of it and then passed out.”

I gestured towards the half-empty bowl of chicken noodle soup that was lying on the nightstand next to his cell phone.

Alex stared at the bowl for what felt like an endless minute before rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. He took another long look around the room as his eyes began to water.

“Alex?”

He closed his eyes tight and shook his head back-and-forth slightly. When he opened them again, he looked up at me and tears began to fall. I held my arms open and he rushed into them, burning his face against my chest as he sobbed, and sobbed.

You’ve got him…

When his voice had gone hoarse and he didn’t have any more tears left to shed, he looked up at me through wet clumps of long lashes. “I w-want t-to l-leave.”

“You want to go back to Westing House?”

I asked, injecting just the right amount of confusion into my voice.

Alex shook his head, “I w-want t-to leave f-forever. I d-don’t want to b-be here any-m-more.”

I brought my hand up and wiped away the wet streaks across his cheeks and lifted his chin up. “You want me to take you away?”

“Y-yes.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“W-where n-o one can f-find us.”

“I’ll take you anywhere, Alex.”

I leaned down, closing the distance between us, and kissed his mouth. “Get dressed.”

I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and pulled up my banking apps. I transferred everything in my checking and savings into my anonymous accounts in case the FBI decided to try to freeze my assets when they couldn’t find us after the smoke cleared.

Literally. Ha!

I walked into the spare bedroom and closed the door behind me. I slipped into my private room and hurried to unplug the chest freezer and pulled it out away from the wall to reveal the safe. I typed in the day, month, and year of Alex’s birth into the small keypad and the door popped open. I pulled the duffel bag out and confirmed that mine and Alex’s new passports were still in the bottom. They were, along with Maine driver's licenses that matched the names on the passports. We’d figure out where we were actually headed later, but for now, I’d just get us to the cabin and go from there.

I pulled the stack of letters between my parents, and the Polaroid camera out and stuffed them down into the bag. I took one last look around the room. A moment’s glance through Alex’s history, a warm appreciation of his past now that I had become his future. Some small part of me knew that I’d never see this shrine again, but I pushed it down sternly. Grown men put away childish things, after all. Despite myself, I reached up and grabbed the first blurry Polaroid I’d ever taken of Alex and stuffed it down into the bag before leaving my private sanctuary forever.

When I walked back into the bedroom, Alex was coming out of the bathroom. “You have everything?”

I walked over to my dresser and threw a few of everything in the duffel bag, leaving half of my clothing behind. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t attached to any of it.

“I j-just need a phone charger,” he said.

I stood upright and faced him. “I think we should leave them here.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “W-what?”

“If you really want to disappear, Alex, I would leave your phone here. We’ll get new ones somewhere else. I don’t want there to be any chance of Tom finding you.”

Alex shuddered when I said his name.

Exactly the reaction we were hoping for…

Alex gave me a blank stare and then giggled loopily. My god. The poor thing might really have lost his mind.

“Alex?”

“S-sorry, spaced out. Yeah, you’re r-right. Phones s-should stay.”

I took my phone out of my pocket and tossed it into the middle of the bed. I walked over and cradled his face in my hands, “I’m in love with you, Alex. And I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe and make you happy.”

Alex smiled up at me. “I love you, too.”

That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I kissed him, long and fierce, until I felt myself begin to thicken between my legs.

Don’t have time for that!

I pulled back, grabbed a screwdriver, and knelt down to the floor. I jammed the head of the screwdriver down between the floorboards at the foot of the bed and pulled one of them up. I set it aside and reached down into the gap and pulled out the bags of cash and began filling what room was left in the top of the duffel bag.

Alex’s eyes went wide as he watched me, “Holy shit!”

“I don’t like banks,”

I shrugged.

“Where did all that c-come from?”

“I’ve been saving it for a rainy day,”

I told him with a smile as I zipped the bag closed. “Ready?”

Alex grabbed his backpack off the bed and followed me out of the room. I pulled his coat off the hook by the front door and handed it to him. “You sure you wanna do this?”

Alex buttoned his coat and looked over at me. “Yes.”

I’d never heard him sound so sure of anything, actually.

It was still well before daybreak when I opened the garage door and backed out into the street. All was quiet, save a small sniffle from Alex.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have started the car and let it warm up for a few minutes before we left.”

I reached over and turned on his seat warmer, closing the vents on my side to push more of the warm air on him as I headed towards the highway. I had ? of a tank of gas, and wouldn’t need to stop anytime soon. The faster I could get us out of town, the better.

“Do you need a drink or anything, babe?”

I asked him as I turned towards the interstate. Alex didn’t verbally respond, he just shook his head as he continued to stare out his window, his body slightly turned to the side. Ten minutes later, and he had fallen back asleep, his forehead resting softly against the cool glass.

I changed into the middle lane and set the cruise control. I adjusted my seat a bit and rested my hand gently on Alex’s knee, getting as comfortable as I could for the over four-hour drive that was the last thing separating us from our happy ending.