before running away. The woman who watched life go by. Who watched her freedom get ripped from her. Who watched herself get smaller and smaller every minute.
“How did you end up at the trailer park?” he asked, as if he could see inside my mind. The pictures there I couldn’t get rid of. “What are you so scared of?”
I shook my head. The answer to everything he was asking me was no. No, I would not tell him. No, the things we’d done did not give him the right to all my secrets. No, he could not bully it from me.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t push.”
He seemed stunned that I’d asked. And he rocked back, a little. Our entrenchment not as deep as I’d thought.
“Okay.”
I felt a threatening softness toward him at his capitulation. It wasn’t his nature and it didn’t come easily.
He poured himself a cup of coffee, ate the leafless strawberry I’d been playing with. His fingers were wide and blunt, the nails cropped close. White calluses covered the tips.
I still wanted those hands on me. I still wanted to know what it would be like to be touched by him.
“I’d like to go home,” I said.
“Do you? Do you really want to go home?” That voice, that soft, dark, rough voice that led me places I’d never imagined I’d go.
His eyes were hot on my body. He’d been thinking the same thing I had. He still wanted more of me. Despite everything.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to see me,” I said because I could feel all of this turning. I was getting swept up again by him and heading toward water that was inevitably going to be over my head. “You ended it because I said I wanted to see you. I didn’t even mean it, I just wanted it, and you said we couldn’t talk to each other anymore. And now you want me to stay?”
“I do.” I opened my mouth to argue but he held up his hand. “And no more lies, Annie—you want to stay too.”
I did, but hadn’t I been reckless enough? Wasn’t it time to go back to being Annie McKay?
“No. I need to find out if Ben is okay. If Joan—”
“Call.”
“What?”
“Use the phone…Call…what’s his name at the desk?”
“Kevin. He’s your employee, isn’t he?” My words were wasps, stingers out. I wanted to touch him and wound him. Every breath I pulled into my lungs sizzled. Burned.
Anger was no stranger to me. I lived with anger. A low-level seethe every minute. An anger I’d had to swallow over and over again. Because while I might be angry, I couldn’t show that anger. Showing anything but a bland and smiling face would get me hurt.
Never, not with my mom and certainly never with Hoyt, had I been allowed to behave this way.
Childish and petulant. Pissy.
It was fucking revelatory. A delight. It felt like I’d unbuttoned a pair of too tight pants. Pants that had been suffocating me.
“It’s a means to an end, Annie. Easier to keep an eye on Ben.”
“Why do you need to keep an eye on Ben? Were you related to that girl in the fire?”
“Why are you twenty-four years old and never touched yourself before?”
He was not going to pull a single punch. If I stayed, it was open season on my secrets.
From his back pocket he pulled out a phone and looked up a number before handing it to me. “Call him. Make sure your friends are okay.”
I pressed call on the screen and walked back toward my room.
“Flowered Manor RV Park.” It was Kevin.
“Kevin,” I said. “It’s Annie. I’m calling to make sure everything is okay.”
“Well, we got some power lines down because of the storm, but other than that everything is okay.”
“Last night…Ben?”
“He’s fine. Came in this morning before the rain to get a newspaper. Grumpy as a cuss. But that’s usual.”
“And Joan?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
“The guy on the motorcycle?”
“I heard about that. No sign of him this morning. Where are you?”
“I’m…” Christ. Where am I? “At a friend’s.”
“You have friends?”
“Very funny. But that guy last night…he didn’t do anything?”
“He was loud, apparently. Caused some trouble and then he left.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You stay dry,” he said. “And indoors. Not fit for man or beast out there.”
“Thank you, Kevin.”
I hung up and cowardly felt like hiding in the room.
Because Dylan wanted me to stay and I…I wanted to stay. Well, that wasn’t the total truth. My body wanted to stay. And my body ached for him. I felt like