He looked back over his shoulder. “Get a condom from the box in the backpack.”
Instead, Joe felt the familiar fullness, the soft stretch. Strange, still, how what for so long had just been work could become so much more when it happened with the right partner. Joe breathed slowly and relaxed into the sensation.
Devin nudged Joe’s knee up and leaned over his back. “I expected you to argue.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I know what I’m doing. No condoms.” And then Devin was right there, his breath on the nape of Joe’s neck, his fingers replaced by his dick. One hand splayed on the bed in front of Joe’s face, the other clutched at his hip. Devin groaned. “Fuck, it’s been too long.”
Almost two months. Joe arched his back a little, shifted to let Devin in. Oh, God. There. Just like that.
Devin thrust slowly, his hips rocking, filling Joe and backing away. In and out, that hand on Joe’s hip holding him still, keeping him steady and safe, and Joe let go, let the rhythm of the act bear him away. They kissed sloppily, again and again, reaching and connecting, drifting apart.
When Devin’s movement grew erratic and he put all his weight on Joe’s back and his hand left Joe’s hip for his dick, Joe was ready. Devin’s big body hot and heavy on top of him, ragged, low moans in his ear, the crashing, insistent fullness inside him, and that hand, jerking and stroking just right.
Joe cried out when he came. Didn’t care if people heard. Seconds later, Devin’s soft cry was muffled in the meat of Joe’s shoulder. They collapsed together, liquid bones and stuttered breath.
“Love you, papi.”
He felt Devin’s grin in his hair.
“I love you, too. I always will.”
Joe nestled in and held on tight.
TWENTY-FOUR
The last miles passed quickly. As the highway led through populated suburbs, Joe kept his shoulders straight and his head held high. Nine years he’d spent dreaming about Minneapolis. Wondered and hoped. Now here it lay, its outskirts stretched out before him like a mirage. So many people, walking and biking and riding mechanized scooters and skateboards on and off the highway. Homes with lights on. Businesses with flashing signs. Hotels. Clothiers. Restaurants. Theaters. Anything he’d ever imagined.
This was what he’d expected, way back in Purcell, after crossing the border into New America. People and opportunity and just...life, as green and robust as the fields they’d seen on the way here. And both the city and the fields so different from the dead, dry misery of Austin.
In the middle of the highway, a line of people stood on a fenced-off ramp. The ramp led to the mouth of a long, opaque tube that stretched as far north as Joe could see. At the beginning of the ramp, a faded red sign read, “Start here” in big, loopy letters. Next to the sign, a gray-haired woman sat on a stool and pointed a VICE-shot at anyone who came near her. Despite her threatening posture, Joe watched a couple of groups approach her, then after a brief exchange, get into line on the ramp.
“We should check it out,” Joe said, nudging Devin as discreetly as possible.
Devin nodded. “Flix, walk with me.” He strode confidently to the gray-haired woman and exchanged a few words. His hands tensed, and he half-turned back to Joe. Before he finished the motion, he seemed to change his mind and instead pointed toward the line.
The woman’s face turned to stone. She shook her head and spit on the ground at Devin’s feet.
His face redder than Joe had ever seen it, Devin grabbed Flix’s elbow and stormed away. He stopped a foot from Joe and exhaled so heavily that the breeze from it ruffled Joe’s hair.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“Háblame en español,” Flix interrupted, his hand closing around Joe’s wrist.
“It was that bad?” Joe kept the conversation in Spanish and hoped Devin or Peter would at least understand enough not to complain.
“He asked about the line,” Flix said. “It’s to get into the dome.”
“So?”
“Do you see the goddamned dome?”
“Of course not. I assumed we’d have a several-mile wait.”
“Try fourteen.” Flix jerked his eyes toward Devin. “He tried to bribe the old lady to get ahead in the line.”
“I take it that didn’t go well?”
“She told him to go fuck himself.”
Joe could appreciate the sentiment. He spoke to the group in English. This wasn’t his decision alone. “Are you ready to begin the last part of the trip? Flix says the entry to the dome is fourteen miles of waiting. If there’s no other way in, we’re going to have to be patient.”
“I’m ready,” Peter said, his eyes sharp and trained on the point where the tube disappeared on the horizon.
Joe was sure Devin and Flix were ready. “Aria?”
Aria hesitated. “I just...” She shook her head and gestured all around.
Joe got it. She was the only one who hadn’t chosen this path. All that stuff with the Sons, equality and fairness, taking back what had been stolen from them — Aria was a believer. Life might be hard out here, and there might be prejudice, but inside that dome their treatment could be a whole lot worse.
“You can choose to stay behind,” Joe said. “I understand.”
“No.” Aria grimaced, and for a moment, the resemblance to her sisters was so clear. “Lili and Navarro trusted you. So do I.”
“Thank you,” Joe said.
They walked back to the woman at the tube’s entrance, where the line on the ramp had whittled away. Joe let loose his most charming smile. “Excuse me, ma’am. Is this the fastest way into the dome?”
The woman regarded Joe with milky, narrowed eyes. “You white?”
Hating
