Chapter 1: The Frontier's Maiden Voyage
The Taco Bell sign buzzed like a dying wasp, its pink and orange glow spilling across the cracked asphalt in sickly pools. Miles killed the engine and listened to The Frontier shudder into silence. The old RV ticked and sighed, cooling down after six hours of highway. He'd named her three days ago, right after handing over the cash to a guy with a handlebar mustache and questionable dental hygiene. She was a 1983 Fleetwood Southwind, all beige stripes and brown shag carpet and a water-stained ceiling that looked like the state of Florida.
She was perfect.
Miles grabbed his leather journal from the passenger seat and flipped to a blank page. The pen was cheap, stolen from a motel in Flagstaff, but it worked well enough.
Day One: Left Phoenix at noon. Cried a little at the city limits. Not ashamed. Sold everything I owned for $4,200 and a handjob from the lady at the storage unit office. Okay, the handjob was free. The $4,200 was for the RV. The Frontier and I are going to be very happy together.
He capped the pen and looked out the windshield. The rest stop was nearly empty. A single semi idled in the truck lot, its driver probably asleep in the cab. A picnic table sat abandoned under a flickering sodium light, and beyond that, a bank of payphones that hadn't worked since 2007. The desert stretched in every direction, black and indifferent.
Miles stretched, cracked his neck, and stepped out of the RV. The night air hit him like a wall—cold, sharp, carrying the faint metallic tang of sage and dust. He breathed it in and felt something loosen in his chest. This was it. This was the thing he'd been chasing. The open road, the unknown, the possibility of absolutely anything.
He walked toward the restroom building, boots crunching on gravel, when he saw her.
She was sitting on the curb near the payphones, still as a statue. A wedding dress pooled around her like spilled milk, the fabric dirty at the hem, the veil torn and hanging limp from her hair. Mascara streaked her cheeks in dark ribbons. She looked up when she heard his footsteps, and her eyes—God, her eyes were the color of Gulf water on an overcast day, gray-green and stormy—fixed on him with a kind of exhausted defiance.
"You look like shit," Miles said.
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I mean, comparatively. For a bride. You look like a bride who's been through some shit." He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Which, I'm guessing, is accurate."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed—a raw, broken sound that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You always this charming?"
"Only when I'm nervous. And I'm always nervous around beautiful women in wedding dresses at rest stops at midnight. It's a thing."
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing mascara further. "My car died. Tow truck's coming in the morning. I've been sitting here for three hours."
"In that?"
She looked down at her dress. "Yeah. In this."
Miles glanced at the semi, then at the empty parking lot, then back at her. "It's forty degrees out here. You want to come sit in my RV? I have coffee. And a blanket that smells like my grandma's attic, but it's warm."
She hesitated. He saw the calculation in her eyes—the risk assessment, the weighing of danger against comfort. He didn't blame her. A woman alone at a rest stop, a strange man offering shelter. It was the kind of scenario that ended badly in every true crime podcast he'd ever heard.
"I'm Miles," he said. "I'm harmless. Mostly. I have a journal full of bad poetry and a deep fear of confrontation. You could probably take me in a fight."
Something shifted in her expression. The corner of her mouth twitched. "Delphine."
"Delphine. That's a good name. French?"
"Louisiana French. My family's been in the oyster business for four generations."
"An oyster farmer. In a wedding dress. At a rest stop in the middle of the desert." Miles grinned. "This is already the best story I've ever heard."
She stood up, brushing dirt from her dress. She was tall, almost his height, with broad shoulders and strong hands that looked like they'd done real work. Not the soft, manicured hands of the women he usually chased. These were hands that knew rope and salt water and the guts of an engine.
"Lead the way," she said.
The Frontier's interior was a time capsule of questionable decisions. Brown shag carpet, orange plaid upholstery, a wood-paneled fridge that hummed like a dying refrigerator. Miles had hung a string of fairy lights across the ceiling, which gave the whole thing a weirdly romantic glow. He hadn't planned it that way. He'd just found them at a thrift store and thought they looked cool.
Delphine climbed in and looked around. "This is..."
"I know."
"It's like a serial killer's den, but make it cozy."
"That's exactly what I was going for."
She laughed again, and this time it sounded real. Miles poured two cups of coffee from the thermos he'd filled at a gas station outside Tucson. Black, no sugar. She took it and sat on the floor, her dress bunching around her knees.
"So," Miles said, settling onto the bench seat across from her. "You want to talk about it, or you want to drink coffee and pretend you're not wearing a wedding dress?"
She took a long sip. "I'm not married."
"Okay."
"I was supposed to be. Today. The ceremony was at six. I made it to the altar and then I just... couldn't."
Miles nodded slowly. "Cold feet?"
"More like a full-body allergic reaction." She set the cup down and pulled her knees to her chest. "His name is Richard. He's a good man. Stable. Boring. He wanted me to sell the oyster farm and move to Baton Rouge. Said it was time to grow up."
"And you didn't want to grow up."
"I didn't want to shrink." She looked at him then, really looked at him, and Miles felt something twist in his chest. "I've spent ten years rebuilding that farm. My husband died six years ago—boat accident—and I picked up the pieces and I made it work. And then Richard comes along and tells me it's not enough. That I'm not enough. That I need to be smaller so he can be bigger."
"Sounds like a dick."
"He's not. That's the problem. He's kind and he's patient and he's everything I'm supposed to want." She shook her head. "But I don't. I want the farm. I want the mud and the salt and the smell of oysters at dawn. I want to be exhausted and dirty and alive."
Miles set his coffee down. The fairy lights flickered above them. Outside, a truck rumbled past, its headlights sweeping across the windows and then gone.
"That's why you ran," he said.
"I ran because I couldn't breathe. I got in my car and I drove and I didn't stop until the engine died." She laughed, but it was bitter. "And now I'm here. In a serial killer's RV. With a stranger."
"Not a serial killer."
"Jury's still out."
Miles leaned forward. The air between them felt charged, electric. He could smell her—something floral and something else, something underneath that was sweat and exhaustion and salt.
"You want to know what I think?" he asked.
"Not really."
"I think you're not running from Richard. You're running toward something. You just don't know what it is yet."
Her eyes met his. Held.
"You don't know me," she said.
"I don't need to."
She moved first. He would remember that later—that she was the one who closed the distance, who grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down. Her mouth was hot and tasted like cheap coffee, and she kissed like she was drowning and he was air.
They didn't make it to the bed.
The shag carpet was rough against his back, and the fairy lights swung above them, casting dancing shadows on the ceiling. Delphine straddled him, her wedding dress bunched around her waist, her thighs strong and sure. She wasn't wearing anything underneath—a fact he discovered when she hiked the dress up and settled against him.
"Jesus Christ," he breathed.
She laughed, low and dirty. "You talk too much."
"Sorry. Nervous. I mentioned that."
She shut him up with her mouth.
His hands found her hips, her waist, the curve of her ass. Her skin was warm and damp, and she moved against him with a rhythm that felt like the ocean—push and pull, ebb and flow. She broke the kiss and threw her head back, her hair falling in tangled waves, and he watched her face as she lowered herself onto him.
The first thrust stole his breath.
"Fuck," she whispered, and then she started to move.
It was frantic and messy and utterly without grace. The RV rocked slightly with each thrust, and Miles grabbed her thighs to steady her, his fingers digging into her flesh. She didn't seem to mind. She rode him like she was trying to exorcise something, her hips grinding in circles, her teeth clenched.
"You feel—" he started.
"Don't talk."
He didn't.
She leaned forward, her hands planted on his chest, and the new angle made her gasp. He could feel her tightening around him, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. The dress brushed against his stomach, silk and dirt and something that smelled like dust.
"I'm close," she said, and her voice cracked. "I'm—"
He reached down and pressed his thumb against her clit, and she came apart above him. Her whole body shuddered, her mouth open in a silent scream, and Miles watched her face—watched the way her brow furrowed and her lips parted and something raw and desperate flickered behind her eyes.
He followed a moment later, his hands on her hips, his breath ragged in the close air.
For a long beat, neither of them moved.
Then the semi outside blew its horn—a sharp, sudden blast—and they both flinched.
Delphine climbed off him and sat on the carpet, her dress still bunched around her waist. Miles stared at the ceiling, his heart hammering.
"That was—" he said.
"Don't."
"Okay."
She pulled her dress down and hugged her knees. The fairy lights flickered. Outside, the truck pulled away from the lot, the rumble of its engine fading.
"I'm not going back," she said.
Miles turned his head to look at her. Mascara streaked her cheeks, her hair was a wild mess, and the torn veil still clung to her shoulders.
"To Louisiana?" he asked.
"To Richard. To Baton Rouge. To any of it." She swallowed hard. "I need to go east. My aunt has a place in Wilmington. I can stay there. Figure things out."
"You need a ride."
"I need a ride."
Miles sat up. His back ached from the shag carpet, and his head was still spinning. This wasn't how he'd planned his first night on the road. This wasn't in the journal. But then again, nothing ever was.
"I'm heading east," he said. "Eventually. I don't have a plan."
Delphine looked at him then, and he saw something in her eyes—not gratitude, not affection, but something closer to recognition. Like she was seeing him for the first time, and he was seeing her, too.
"Good," she said. "Neither do I."
He grabbed his journal and wrote one more line before he forgot.
Day One: Picked up a runaway bride. Her name is Delphine. She tastes like coffee and salt and trouble. I don't know where we're going, but I think that's the point.
Day One bled into Day Two somewhere outside El Paso, the sun cracking the horizon like an egg yolk, spilling orange and pink across the flat Texas nothing. Miles drove with one hand on the wheel and the other wrapped around a gas station coffee that tasted like burnt regret. Delphine slept in the passenger seat, her wedding dress traded for a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt that hung loose on her frame. She'd washed her face in the rest stop bathroom, scrubbing away the mascara, and without all that mess she looked younger. Sharper. Like a knife that had been hidden under too much decoration.
She woke when he hit a pothole.
"Where are we?" Her voice was gravel and honey.
"Somewhere between nowhere and nothing. You hungry?"
She stretched, and the t-shirt rode up, revealing a slice of stomach, the curve of a hip. Miles forced his eyes back to the road.
"Starving," she said.
They stopped at a diner that had probably been a Denny's in a previous life. The sign outside said "Rosie's" in peeling red letters, and the parking lot was half-full of pickup trucks and one minivan with a bumper sticker that read "My Other Car Is A Horse." Miles ordered pancakes. Delphine ordered a burger and a side of bacon and a chocolate milkshake.
"Breakfast of champions," he said.
"Breakfast of women who haven't eaten in twenty-four hours." She bit into the burger and moaned. Actually moaned. Miles felt it in his spine.
"You want to talk about it?" he asked.
"About what?"
"Any of it. The wedding. The running. What happens when we get to Wilmington."
She chewed slowly, considering. "You always this nosy?"
"I'm a journalist. Well, I was. Before I sold everything and bought an RV."
Delphine raised an eyebrow. "You were a journalist?"
"Freelance. Wrote for some alt-weeklies. Covered local politics, music, the occasional murder trial." He shrugged. "It paid the bills. Barely."
"Why'd you quit?"
Miles poured syrup over his pancakes, watching the amber liquid pool in the crevices. "Because I woke up one day and realized I was writing about other people's lives because I didn't have one of my own."
"That's either profound or pathetic."
"Little of both."
She smiled. It was the first real smile he'd seen from her, and it transformed her face. Made her look softer. More dangerous.
"Richard proposed six months ago," she said. "We were at a restaurant in New Orleans. Fancy place. White tablecloths. He got down on one knee and everyone clapped and I said yes because that's what you're supposed to do, right? That's the script."
"But you didn't want to."
"I wanted to want to. Does that make sense?" She stirred her milkshake with her straw. "I wanted the life he was offering. The stability. The house in Baton Rouge. The Sunday brunches and the dinner parties and the vacations to Destin every summer. I wanted to be the kind of woman who wanted those things."
"Instead you wanted oysters."
"Instead I wanted mud and salt and the smell of the bayou at sunrise. I wanted to haul traps with my hands and feel the burn in my shoulders and know that I built something from nothing." She looked out the window. A semi rumbled past, shaking the diner slightly. "Richard called me selfish. Said I was choosing a dying business over a future with him."
"Was he wrong?"
"No. But he wasn't right either." She turned back to him. "The farm is my future. It's the only thing I've ever been sure of. And if that makes me selfish, fine. I'd rather be selfish than hollow."
Miles finished his pancakes. He didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say.
They drove through the afternoon, the landscape shifting from desert to scrubland to something that almost looked green. Delphine fiddled with the radio, settling on a classic rock station out of Lubbock. She sang along to "Free Fallin'" in a voice that was rough and off-key and completely unselfconscious. Miles found himself smiling.
"You know all the words?" he asked.
"I know all the words to every song Tom Petty ever wrote. It's a condition."
They stopped for gas outside Abilene. Miles filled the tank while Delphine went inside to use the bathroom. She came back with a bag of beef jerky and a pack of cigarettes.
"You smoke?" he asked.
"No. But you look like you want to."
He laughed. "I quit three years ago."
"Then why'd you buy them?"
"Because I'm an asshole. Give me one."
They sat on the curb, passing the cigarette back and forth, not talking. The sun was starting to sink, painting the sky in shades of rust and gold. Flies buzzed around the gas pump. Somewhere a dog barked.
"You're not like I expected," Delphine said.
"What did you expect?"
"Another guy running from something. Another sad man in an RV trying to find himself." She took a drag and handed it back. "But you're not sad. You're just... restless."
"Is there a difference?"
"Yeah. Sad people want to go back. Restless people want to go forward." She stood up and dusted off her borrowed sweatpants. "You're going forward, Miles. I can tell."
They got back on the road. The sun disappeared completely, and the darkness settled in like a blanket. Delphine reclined her seat and closed her eyes, but she didn't sleep. Miles could tell by the way her breathing kept changing.
"Tell me something true," she said.
"Something true?"
"Anything. Just something honest."
Miles thought about it. The road stretched ahead, and the headlights cut through the dark, and the Frontier hummed along like she'd been doing this her whole life.
"I'm afraid I'll never find what I'm looking for," he said.
"What are you looking for?"
"I don't know. That's the problem." He gripped the wheel tighter. "I keep thinking the next town will have it. The next woman. The next sunrise. But so far, nothing."
"That's because you're looking outside yourself."
"Are you always this wise?"
"Only when I'm avoiding my own problems." She opened her eyes and turned to look at him. "Pull over."
"What?"
"Pull over. There's a rest stop coming up."
He saw it—another one, illuminated by the same sickly sodium lights, the same cracked asphalt. He pulled off the highway and parked in the far corner of the lot. The Frontier's engine ticked and cooled.
Delphine unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed over the console. She straddled him before he could ask what she was doing, her thighs bracketing his hips, her face inches from his.
"I want to feel something," she said. "Something that isn't fear or guilt or regret. Can you help me with that?"
Miles swallowed. "I can try."
She kissed him hard. It wasn't like the first time—not frantic, not desperate. This was slower. Deliberate. She kissed him like she was memorizing the shape of his mouth, the taste of cheap coffee and cigarettes on his tongue.
He pulled her closer, his hands sliding under the t-shirt, finding the warm skin of her back. She wasn't wearing a bra. Hadn't been since the rest stop. He'd been trying not to think about it for six hours, and now he didn't have to.
She ground against him, and he felt the heat of her through the thin sweatpants, through his jeans. His cock was already hard, straining against his zipper, and when she reached down and palmed him through the denim he let out a sound that was half groan, half growl.
"Back seat," she said.
They tumbled into the back, a mess of limbs and fabric, the fairy lights swinging above them. She pulled his shirt over his head. He tugged the t-shirt off her, revealing her breasts—small, firm, the nipples already hard. He took one in his mouth and she arched into him, her fingers tangling in his hair.
"Fuck," she breathed. "Fuck, that's good."
He kissed his way down her stomach, past her navel, to the waistband of the sweatpants. He pulled them down and she lifted her hips to help, and then she was naked beneath him, all that golden skin and the dark triangle of hair between her thighs.
He spread her legs and looked at her. Really looked. She was wet, glistening, and when he ran a finger along her slit she shuddered.
"Don't tease," she said.
He didn't.
He buried his face between her legs and ate her like she was the first meal he'd had in weeks. She tasted like salt and sex and something sweet underneath, and he licked and sucked and fucked her with his tongue until she was gripping the edge of the bench seat and moaning loud enough that the truckers in the lot could probably hear.
"That's it," she gasped. "Right there, right there, don't stop—"
He didn't stop. He slid two fingers inside her while he worked her clit with his tongue, and she came with a broken cry, her thighs clamping around his head.
He climbed back up her body and she grabbed his belt, yanking it open, unzipping his jeans. She got her hand around his cock and stroked him—slow, firm—and he had to close his eyes to keep from coming right then.
"Condom," he managed.
"Glove box."
He found one, rolled it on with shaking hands, and then he was pushing into her, and she was so tight and so wet that he had to stop halfway just to breathe.
"Move," she said.
He moved.
It wasn't like the first time. The first time was a collision—two people crashing into each other and holding on until the impact was over. This was different. This was slow and deep and deliberate. He watched her face as he fucked her, watched the way her lips parted and her eyes went half-lidded and her breath came in short, sharp gasps.
"You feel so fucking good," he said.
"You too. God, you too."
She wrapped her legs around his waist and he went deeper, hitting something that made her nails dig into his shoulders. He fucked her harder, faster, the RV rocking with each thrust, and she met him halfway every time, her hips rising to meet his.
"I'm gonna come," she said. "Don't stop, don't you dare stop—"
He drove into her and she shattered again, her body clenching around him, and Miles let go. He came with a groan that started in his chest and ended in his throat, his face buried in her neck.
For a long time, neither of them moved.
Then Delphine laughed—a soft, breathless sound—and ran her fingers through his hair.
"That was something," she said.
"That was everything."
She kissed his forehead. "You're a romantic, Miles Callahan."
"Guilty."
He pulled out and disposed of the condom, then collapsed beside her on the narrow bench seat. The ceiling of the RV was still water-stained. The fairy lights were still flickering. Somewhere outside, a truck horn blared.
"I called Richard," Delphine said.
Miles turned his head. "When?"
"At the gas station. While you were filling up."
"What did you say?"
"That I wasn't coming back. That I was sorry. That I hoped he'd find someone who wanted the life he was offering." She stared at the ceiling. "He cried. I cried. It was a mess."
"Are you okay?"
"I will be." She turned to look at him. "I told him I was with someone. A journalist in an RV. He said I was having a crisis."
"Are you?"
"Probably." She smiled. "But it's a good crisis."
They lay there in the dark and the quiet. Miles felt something settle in his chest—something he'd been chasing for years without knowing what it was. It wasn't love. It was too soon for that. But it was something. Something real.
"Wilmington's about two thousand miles," he said.
"I know."
"That's four days. Maybe five."
"I know."
"You could stay. After. For a while." He said it to the ceiling, not to her. "If you wanted."
She didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was soft.
"Ask me again in four days."
He turned and kissed her shoulder. "Okay."
The Frontier settled around them, creaking in the wind. Outside, the desert stretched on forever. But inside, in this little bubble of shag carpet and fairy lights and the smell of sex, Miles felt like he'd finally found something worth holding onto.
He just didn't know what it was yet.