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They reach the trailer at sundown, the cart she'd stolen forgotten in the dust miles back. She drove the most of it, felt his eyes on her back the whole way from where he was sat with the kid, big arm curled around a small-shouldered frame.
Arlen watched the gauge as it emptied on the dial, felt the frown form, burning, between her shoulderblades.
"We're out of gas," she said lamely, unwilling to turn around and face Miami in the cart behind her. An icy sensation crept up her spine and she hunched instinctively away as he rose from his seat, but he made no move to touch her, benign or otherwise.
"Let's go," he replied shortly, drawing Honey from her seat with a gentle hand. "We should make it before nightfall."
Arlen watched him, imposing figure rendered more human by the little girl hanging off his hand. His right hand. Arlen wondered, faintly, if he was one of the motherfuckers who ate her arm. If the small family split her between them. She followed the pair, leaving the cart to gather dust for another gullible batcher to find, just like when she'd arrived herself. Maybe this time, she'd be the one on the other end of the knife.
The trailer itself was a surprise. The paintings, she expected--what with Miami's notebook--but the comfort it exuded caught her offguard. She could kind of see how a kid could have survived here; even thrived in a fantasy world built and guarded by the scariest monster around. With a furtive glance at Miami's cleaver, security obviously wasn't much of an issue. He turned, as if sensing her scrutiny, put off by the way she stared.
"You sleep here," Miami frowned, gesturing to the battered couch. "Don't go near her bed."
"Jesus, the hell did you think I brought her back t'you for?" Arlen squinted at him. "Are you seriously warning me not to kill your kid?"
"I don't know. Yes." He answered each question succinctly. "You said you like it here?" His voice lowered dangerously, and she glared back to avoid flinching as he continued. "Like that. That's how it's gonna be."
She watched him stride through the trailer and deposit Honey on a heap of blankets that looked vaguely like a cot, and then pointedly draw a ragged curtain between them with a sharp look. She could hear him soothe Honey into sleep, murmuring almost inaudibly. The room divided, Arlen stood awkwardly for a second, unmoving. The tentative ease of the campfire was behind them now, and whatever feeling she thought he'd looked at her with then seemed as elusive as the streets of Comfort itself. Her knee itched.
Arlen walked to the window and peered venomously at the few forms of the Bridge people she could make out in the dying light, half wanting to pull out her gun and get a little reimbursement for her dissected body. Miami's quiet murmurs stilled her hand and instead she listened, trying to tease the meaning of his words from childhood Spanish lessons in elementary, way before her life had hit the shit. She could, eventually, hear "darling" or "baby", but maybe he was saying something else with his face. Miami was weird like that.
He emerged some time later, Honey asleep, Arlen staring at the paintings to distract herself from how out of place she felt. Her knee itched in her prosthetic and she shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to take it off even with Miami around in case more bridge crazies tried to visit. The portraits were intricate. Honey, superimposed over the moon, rabbit resting in her hands. Arlen thought of the campfire, of returning a daughter lost, and the way Miami hadn't snatched his hand away from her. She turned to him as he approached, uneasy and unwilling to admit it. He looked at her intently, tilted his head.
"That's my kid," he said, by way of explanation.
"I figured," Arlen chewed her lip. "A little trust wouldn't hurt."
"You don't trust people here. It's amazing you aren't dead already," he stared at her and she felt caught in a sheer drop, a coaster without any brakes. A ravine with a pack of wolves waiting at the bottom.
"I didn't wanna leave you in that cave, before." Arlen admitted. If she was telling the truth now, might as well go for broke. "And I hated you right then too."
"It didn't change nothing." His eyes seemed weird suddenly. Arlen looked back up at him and felt the air leave the room.
"Well I don't no more, got it?" She rolled her eyes, trying to lean back and away from him just a little, just enough to relieve the pressure in her head. "I gave you back your kid, and all, so you can cut the shit."
"Why?" The dangerous tone in his voice was back. "You were safe."
Arlen squared up, expecting him to back off. She fingered her belt loop, nerves blaring. Miami moved closer instead, looming in a way that his face was all she could see. Hot breath stirred her hair, and his. She felt pinned, more than in the cave, more than when she was high out of her mind wandering the desert, held like prey or so much a weapon by his eyes.
"I don't...I dunno." She watched him right back, as ever, trying not to be the first one to break.
"I can guess."
Miami leaned in and kissed her. She felt her brain and all her blood and her lungs give out inside her, the backs of her eyes pounding like the music the Dream used to play. Her stomach twisted hotly and she let him slip hands around her waist, her back, finally. When he pulled away from her, hand loose around her wrist, she followed him down to the couch--and read his number, neatly inked behind his jaw, the next morning from where she lay gathered in his arms.
"I don't really have plans anymore," Arlen said eventually. He looked across the battered cushions at her with surprisingly soft eyes; brown and gold in the early morning light, they looked molten like campfire. Like staring down the barrel of a gentle gun. "I wanna know yours."