and shake my head, “No. Thank you though. I told Dan I’d stock the shelves for him tonight, his latest victim quit on him.”
“Wonder why that is?”
I shrug because I honestly don’t know. Dan is the local grocer and sure he can be creepy as hell, but he doesn’t bother me and he pays in cash. That’s enough of an incentive for me to stay.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t say a whole lot of anything to me when I come in,” I add.
“Well, be careful walking these streets alone,” Paul reminds me.
He reminds me of this every time I leave the clinic. It almost makes me smile and it would if it didn’t remind me of my past. My father never told me those things. In fact, he’s the one that would send me out into that hell we call earth. I’ve learned over the last few years that not everyone is like him. They aren’t all out to use you for their own purposes.
As I walk toward the store I get the feeling that I’m being watched. It isn’t the first time I’ve felt it and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I shake it off and tell myself that it’s just my nerves. When I think about it too much I become paranoid. I know what I did will eventually catch up with me, but for now I’m safe.
I walk in and find Dan leaning over the counter. His head comes up when he hears me and his eyes meet mine.
“You’re early.”
“Yeah. The clinic closed a little early tonight. I think Paul was tired.”
I don’t talk to Dan very often. It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to the man, he just doesn’t talk much and I’m okay with that. Less talking means more working.
Dan nods his head and I smile in return as I start walking to the back room. I grab the boxes, stack them up, and then start unloading them. There are days I can’t seem to keep my mind on the present, and that’s why I love having this job. I’m forced to have to focus on what I’m doing and that makes any images I might have, go further into the recesses of my mind. I don’t need that kind of life, I don’t deserve it, or maybe I do. It’s hard to tell where one line ends and another one begins these days.
I continue to work in silence long after Dan has left for the night. He trusts me to close up the store, and for that I’m grateful. I don’t know anyone except for Paul and Dan that trust me that much. They probably shouldn’t. If they knew me, the real me, the person I used to be, they wouldn’t trust me with their cats, but they don’t know, and that’s the way I’m going to keep it. No one needs to know the me I used to be.
I finish and lock up as I had out the back door when I feel someone’s presence behind me. Just as I’m about to turn around a hand wraps around my waist while another wraps around my mouth. I’m jerked back into a hard body as my heart hammers in my chest.
They found me. They know I’m here and now I’m going to die. Those are the thoughts on a loop in my head when warm a breath whooshes over my skin.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” a deep voice whispers.
For some stupid reason my body heats just from hearing his voice. He could be a killer or one of my father’s men, but right now he’s just a man holding me closely to him. What is wrong with this fucked up head of mine?
“Who are you?” I ask when the hand slowly moves away from my mouth. I should scream, but feeling his warmth so closely I don’t. It’s almost familiar in a way.
“What does it matter?” he whispers.
Why is he whispering? He presses into me and I can feel his hard on. My insides tremble as thoughts of being raped shift through my mind.
“Please just let me go,” I beg, my voice shaky.
“Not a chance. Now walk,” he demands softly.
I start walking, but he doesn’t take his hand away from me. In just a few short blocks we’re back at the clinic. My stomach trembles. How does he know that I stay here? Who is he?
Too many thoughts are jumbled in my brain when he reaches into my pocket