At the top of the hill, the scene spread out before me with depressing majesty, a blank canvas of farmland and sky—not a building in sight. My feet slowed to a trod but didn’t stop altogether. There was nowhere to run to.
Gravel crunched beneath my feet. Then louder as the truck rolled up beside me. A hiss as the brakes halted its motion, then the door opened.
“Get in the truck.”
I glanced up at him. He didn’t sound mad, even though I’d clearly disobeyed. He even looked handsome if intimidating up high in the cab, those intense eyes. Maybe the creepiest part was how unaffected he seemed after beating up grown men, almost killing them.
Maybe he had killed them. Maybe that was what cleaning up meant.
I kept walking. With a shudder, the truck rolled forward to catch up with me.
“Get in the fucking truck, Evie.”
I stood still, thinking. It felt important, that moment. Even though I didn’t have a choice, there was a pull toward him or away. At some point those men should have walked away from me—from him. But they didn’t and they’d lost. Was that me? Fighting a fight I couldn’t win, only to get bloodied from my efforts?
Though if I imagined myself the loser, the one wielding the punches was just life, just fear. If I looked at it from just the right angle, it seemed like Hunter could be my defense. He’d certainly figured out how to combat the inevitable.
Swallowing hard, I walked to the back, waiting for him to open the heavy back door. I just knew he’d put me back there as punishment, and I wanted it. I wanted to crawl onto the thin mattress and sob.
Instead he opened the passenger side door to the cab and gestured me inside.
With my arms wrapped tightly around my middle, I walked to the front. Climbing inside exposed all sorts of new hurts in places that had been too blank with shock. I shivered in the seat, feeling cold and dirty and alone. Worst of all and completely irrational, the hurt of betrayal panged in my gut. As if he should have protected me from them. From myself.
He got in the driver’s side and started the truck without looking at me. We’d gone fifteen minutes before the tears began falling in earnest. Another five before broken cries tore from my chest, unstoppable. I hated him for not putting me in the back, where he wouldn’t bear witness to my pain.
He pulled over and shut off the engine, magnifying the gasping sobs I couldn’t hold in.
“Are you hurt?” he asked hoarsely. “Do you need to go to a hospital?”
“As if you would take me,” I spat.
“Do you need a doctor?”
A doctor? Sure, I needed a psychiatrist. I’d probably need daily sessions for the next ten years just to make sense of everything that had happened to me with Hunter, then another ten years for everything that had happened before.
I shook my head tightly. A hospital wouldn’t help anything. I didn’t even care about getting away anymore. It was all a big joke, freedom. Trapped at home or trapped out in the world. Would it help to get strapped to a hospital bed? Not at all.
The sobs threatened to tear me apart. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go on this way. I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop. I wrapped my arms around my waist as if holding myself in.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m sorry I…I’m sorry I let them touch you. I should have been there. Should have known you’d try to run.”
A cry hitched in my throat. He’d caught onto the same perverse responsibility that I had, the implication that he should protect me even while we both knew he could hurt me.
Incredulity had a calming effect. “Don’t you see how messed up this is?”
No, I didn’t need to be afraid anymore. The worst had already happened—almost happened. And the truth had become clear when those men were on top of me.
I trusted him.
So I rephrased the question. “Don’t you see how fucked up this is? That you beat up those guys for…for…” Here my courage deserted me. “For what you did,” I finish lamely.
I saw the ripple in his throat as he swallowed. He looked less menacing in a side profile. Or maybe that was just the grief in his eyes. It didn’t look new. It looked ancient, as if it had always been there. In fact, I thought it had been, and I’d been too wrapped up in my own sadness to notice his.
“So what do you want?” he asked. “You want me to let you go?”
I said nothing.
He gestured angrily out my window. “So leave. Get the fuck out.”
Tears sprang in my eyes. Wasn’t this what I wanted? Okay, in my fantasies I was dropped off closer to civilization. But even barring that, I wasn’t sure I could get by without him. I hated the helplessness, but in this moment, with my flesh still warm from cruel hands, I hated even more the thought of wandering.
What was the point? Niagara Falls wasn’t a person. It was just another place to be alone.
He sighed. “Let me keep you a little bit longer. You can take some time to recover. Then we can talk about what to do next.”
“Are you giving me a choice to leave?”