God.
His words scared her so much. But she found herself nodding because she desperately wanted to believe in him. More than she’d wanted to believe in anything in a long, long time.
“I’ll try.” It was all she could say.
“Good girl. Best thing you can do is try to talk to me. I get that’s hard. But the one thing you shouldn’t do is lie to me. If you’re scared or hurt or you need me. And you also shouldn’t break the rules.”
Rules? What rules?
“Don’t worry about that right now, though. We’ll go through them. Now, why did you want me to stop?”
Why had she wanted him to stop? Why would she ever want him to stop? She couldn’t remember.
Oh wait.
That’s right.
“My car.” She pointed at it.
“Yes?”
“I need to . . .” She managed to get her hands up in the air and mimed using a steering wheel.
Wait. Had she seriously just done that? She slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand.
Idiot.
“Whoa. Hey, stop that. No hitting yourself. That’s a rule. You are not allowed to harm yourself.”
Really? It was just a slap on her forehead. She’d had a lot worse. And she really had deserved it. Who started miming things instead of actually speaking?
Fools. That was who.
“And I happen to think it was cute the way you pretended to use a steering wheel.”
Wow. He was a good liar. She’d actually believed him for a moment. Of course, she couldn’t look him in the eyes so that probably made it easier for him to lie to her.
Hmm. She wished lying was her superpower. Or being able to tell when people were lying. Then she wouldn’t have boughtthose jeans last week after the sales lady told her that they made her butt look spectacular.
Huge.
They made her butt look huge.
There had to be some trick to that mirror in that store too, because she’d looked at least a whole size smaller.
And now she had a pair of jeans that she couldn’t wear and really couldn’t afford to replace.
“But you’re not driving your car in your condition,” he added.
Her condition?
What was he talking about?
Maybe he thinks you can’t drive because you can’t get your words out properly.
All right. She understood how he’d reached that conclusion. She’d have to convince him otherwise.
“I have a driver’s license.”
