I wondered what he thought when he came home from his run, thinking to find me asleep in his bed, to wake me, shower with me, take me to breakfast, like normal people, like a couple starting out. Instead, he came home to find his house wide open and trashed, me gone.
One date and he said there was a him and me. He was so sure about it. He was so f**king sure he’d made me sure. For twenty minutes, I’d felt good and clean and free.
God, how I wished that could be true.
It didn’t last, couldn’t last.
Here I was, unshowered, in a stinking motel, on the run with a criminal, my pretty, designer clothes dirty, no longer my armor. Hank would take one look at me and wonder what in the hel he was thinking. I wasn’t what he thought I was. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
I felt a single tear slide down the side of my eye when the door splintered and crashed open.
Bil y jerked awake and came away from the bed and I rol ed the other way as the lights went on.
rol ed the other way as the lights went on.
“Fuck, Roxie, run!” Bil y shouted but I had no time to run.
There was nowhere to run. They were in the door, cutting off the only escape route.
There were two men, with guns. I felt momentarily stunned. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a gun, except in a holster carried by a uniformed cop.
Bil y charged, I shook free of my daze and tried to make a dash. One went after Bil y but I didn’t see what happened because the other one came after me.
Thanks to my f**king, shithead, so-very ex-boyfriend, I was hindered by tied hands, wrists rubbed raw by being bound for two days.
I fought al the same.
He easily overpowered me and forced me into the bathroom, cuffing me by one wrist to the pipes under the sink. I was shouting and he shoved his handkerchief in my mouth, tying it in place with a cord he ripped from a lamp in the bedroom. This al took him less than a minute, he was a practiced hand at this crap.
Then, without looking back, he entered the grunting, scary scuffle I heard in the other room. No one outside heard me scream before I was gagged, or, it was the kind of place where they ignored it. The scuffle stopped or moved but one way or another, the bedroom went completely silent.
I sat under the sink, tense and waiting but minutes ticked by and no one came back for me.
* * * * *
So, there I was, my worst fears had come true.
Bil y’s stink had settled on me.
I could even smel it.
Part Two
Chapter Nine
A High Price
I heard movement in the other room, barely, just a rustling.
I knew someone was there, maybe someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
I kept quiet and held my breath, unsure of what to do. I didn’t want the men who took Bil y to come back and get me. I didn’t think they were good people who were there to explain that Bil y had won some magazine’s mil ion dol ar sweepstakes and just got real y carried away with the excitement of it al .
I saw the shadow when it hit the doorway and, without thinking, I scooted further under the sink.
“Fuck,” the shadow muttered.
Then the bathroom light flipped on.