“Yes.”
She flushed with pleasure. “What happens after they jump?”
“We find a house with a phone, and I make some calls.”
He stretched out on his back in the cool sand, and she curled up beside him. He offered his arm as a pillow. Although his undershirt was damp with sweat, she didn’t seem to mind.
“Do you want children?” she asked.
“What?”
“Children. Do you want them?”
He’d considered and dismissed the idea a long time ago. Some kids who’d been raised in dysfunctional families couldn’t wait for the chance to have their own children and raise them right. Ian wasn’t one of them. “I’m not the parent type.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“You know whatnotto do, yes?”
He’d had an entire childhood of what not to do. “I wanted a family when I was a kid. I wanted Adam’s family.”
“What were they like?”
“They were happy. They loved each other. Whenever I was hungry, they fed me. I stayed with them an entire month when I was fifteen.”
“Why?”
“My mom got arrested for drug possession, and a social worker came to visit. She said I needed adult supervision, so Adam’s parents agreed to take me in while my mom was locked up. But they didn’t want to adopt me or anything.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons.” He’d heard Adam’s parents arguing about it one night. “They didn’t have the room. His little sister had a crush on me.”
Her lips twitched at this. “How old was she?”
“Thirteen. And incredibly annoying.”
She laughed, squeezing his arm.
As a teenager, he’d resented Raquel for her girlish infatuation. It had caused problems between Ian and Adam’s father, who hadn’t trusted Ian not to touch her. Ian had avoided Raquel like the plague—until she’d grown up. In college, they’d had a short, meaningless fling, but he didn’t tell Maria that.
“My mother had me when she was eighteen,” Maria said.
“No wonder she looks so young.”
“I want to have kids later, when I’m thirty and already old.”
He’d be thirty in two years, and he didn’t feel old. Maybe he’d change his mind about being a parent. Some of his friends had done that after falling in love and getting married. Raquel was a mother now. Pregnancy looked good on her, actually. He pictured Maria with a rounded belly and felt a strange twist in his chest. Half panic, half longing.
The sound of an approaching train had him scrambling to his feet. She grabbed the sign she’d made and climbed out of the gulch.
It was go time.
