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I can hear her in there even with the window closed. “No. Not today. Come on, baby…” She tries again, then again, but all she gets is the same clicking noise.
“Looks like you’re going to need a ride,” I call out, propping an elbow on the roof of the car and watching while she tries again and again. “You’re wasting your time.”
She didn’t lock the door, so I throw it open now and lean in until she has to lean away from me. “Let’s go. I’ll take you homeif that’s where you need to go so bad.” I want to see where she lives—no, I need to. I need to see for myself.
“No. You don’t have to do that.” She’s holding onto the wheel with both hands like that’s going to help her. Like I couldn’t rip the fucking wheel off the column if I felt like it.
She yelps when I pull her out of the car—not that it’s hard to do, since she weighs practically nothing. “Stop! Why are you doing this?”
“Shut up,” I mutter in disgust, throwing her on my shoulder before kicking the car door shut. “You’ve wasted enough of my time today.” I must be feeling merciful because of those bruises. I can’t believe I let myself feel sorry for her even for a minute.
She tries to fight as I carry her to my truck, but it’s a waste of time. “Now. Here’s how it’s going to happen.” Once I have the passenger door open, I throw her inside. Right away, she makes like she’s going to kick me because she has obviously lost her mind.
With both hands, I slam her against the seat hard enough to make her yelp again. “Either you’re going to sit here and behave yourself, or I’m going to tie you the fuck up. And I’ll decide when you’re untied, got it? Which way is it going to be?”
I can see the wheels turning in her head. Weighing her options. She’s stupid enough to think she has any. “Fine,” she whispers. I could become addicted to the sound of her resignation.
“You’ll have to show me the way,” I tell her as we pull out of the parking lot. “I don’t spend a lot of time on the poor side of town.”
“Who said that’s where I live?”
The fact that she can ask me that makes me laugh. “I’ve seen your car. Your clothes. You can’t afford to live in the dorms.”
“Fine, whatever.” She’s chewing her lip when I look at her from the corner of my eye. “Turn right at the light, then left three blocks up.”
I knew it would be bad. I didn’t think it would be as bad as what we eventually pull up in front of. If nobody told me people lived here, I would assume the apartment building was abandoned. There are three boarded-up windows, weeds all over the place, overflowing garbage bags lining the front wall maybe a foot deep. I can smell it from inside the truck even with the windows rolled up.
“This is it?” I’m having a hard time believing it. She’s trash, everyone knows that, but it looks like somebody bombed the place. Like it shouldn’t be legal for somebody to pay for the experience of living here.
And she must, since the second I’m in park, she jumps out of the truck and runs across the broken sidewalk. I watch in shock as she runs inside and disappears into the shadows.
9
WREN
Why does everything keep getting worse?
I can hear Briggs’ feet pounding up the stairs behind me as I reach my front door. Why does he have to do this? Like I’m not nervous enough about going home in the first place. My nerves make me fumble with the keys, but I finally manage to find the one that fits into the deadbolt lock above the doorknob.Hurry, hurry. I turn it with shaking fingers and burst into the living room, which is messy as hell but thankfully empty for now.
The timing couldn’t be better, since Briggs’s footsteps are louder than ever by the time he reaches the landing and starts jogging down the hall. I only catch him out of the corner of my eye before shoving the door closed.
But not fast enough. “What are you hiding?” he asks in that joking way he has, like I’m so far beneath him. He wedges his body between the door and the frame, making it impossible for me to close it. “What, are you hiding something in here?”
With a grunt, he shoves hard enough that I stumble backward and almost fall on my ass when the backs of my legs hit the coffee table. Now he can stroll in like he owns theplace, walking in and shutting the door before turning around to observe.
Right away, his nose wrinkles, his face screwing up in disdain. Somehow, this is worst of all. Worse than the fear of him forcing me into a blow job. I feel even dirtier than I did then. Exposed, like a raw nerve, and the pain pulses with every rapid beat of my heart.
“Wow. This is… even worse than I imagined, which is saying something.” His gaze lands on the empty beer bottles still lying around—I wasn’t exactly in the mood to clean up when I rushed out of here this morning. I was too busy being grateful to get away from Brandon and whatever it was he had in mind. He touches the toe of his shoe to one of those bottles, making it clink against the one next to it. “Feeling thirsty?” he asks with a laugh.
“They aren’t mine.” I feel a little smaller every time he reacts to something he sees. The sagging sofa. The scarred coffee table. The faded curtains over the windows.
I don’t have any reason to be embarrassed. He should be embarrassed for bursting in here uninvited. This place isn’t much, but I pay for it, and it’s my home. “My roommate’s going to be home any minute,” I tell him. When I hear the little tremor in my voice, I tighten my jaw and grit my teeth because, dammit, I can’t let him have that power over me. “You better get out of here. He’s gonna be pissed.”
“You’re not allowed to have visitors? That doesn’t sound like a roommate. It sounds like a jailer.” He doesn’t bother waiting for a response, and my heart sinks further when he crosses the room, throwing a single disgusted look toward the tiny kitchen before going down the hall.
“You have to leave! I didn’t ask you to come up here. I don’t want you here. And since you hate me so damn much, you should be in a hurry to get away from me, right?” I’m babbling, desperate. Alone. The truth is, I don’t know when Buck will comeback—or whether it will be Brandon, instead. Either way, when that happens, I need to be in my room, behind a locked door.
“Oh, fuck. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.” Briggs walks into my room and flops down on the foot of the bed, laughing by the time I join him. “When I was a kid, I had a dog with a little house in the backyard. I’m pretty sure it was bigger than this.”
