She turns around again, and I’m pleased when her eyes spend a long moment looking me over, head to toe, slowly—appreciation is rife and apparent. She likes what she sees. A lot.
Her appreciation is a momentary distraction.
“Let’s go,” she says, turning and marching out.
Reluctantly, I follow.
I do so feeling a sensation I’m largely unfamiliar with and mostly immune to: fear.
3Stitches, Gunshots, And Car Chases, Oh My
Annika
There’s an office on the third floor of the building, down the hall from a command center where the security cameras feed into, monitored, I’m told, by Anjalee. The office is fairly large, an interior room with no view of the outside. There’s a large desk littered with paper and folders and clipboards and a computer monitor. On one wall, near the desk is a small cabinet, inside of which are hooks with identical key fobs, each one with the distinctive Mercedes-Benz logo. He takes one. Hanging from a nail in the wall next to the cabinet is a clipboard with a plain sheet of printer paper, on which are scrawled dates, times, and initials—a sign-in-sign-out sheet for company vehicles. Chance scrawls the date and time, glances at the back of the key fob—there’s a sticker with a numeral 4 on it, which he adds to the sheet beside the date, along with his initials.
“All right, let’s go.” He hands me the key fob and leads me back down and through the service corridors to an exit that opens to the side of the club. A wide tarmac separates the building from a row of identical boxy Mercedes-Benz SUVs. There’s also a vintage motorcycle parked with them, as well as an older model Wrangler with a lift kit and large tires.
I blip the lock button on the key fob, and one of the SUVs, four in from the left, flashes its lights with a blip of a horn. I climb into the driver’s side, realizing this is no normal, off-the-lot Mercedes. Even for the luxury brand, the seat leather is seriously upscale, quilted black leather with red contrast stitching. When I press the pedal and hit the start button, the aggressive snarl of the engine which greets my ears tells me what’s under the hood is far from stock as well.
Chance settles into the passenger seat, levering his seat backward to accommodate his muscular bulk as well as his height, and even so his head nearly brushes the ceiling. “They don’t make cars for men like me,” he grumbles.
“Seat belt,” I say, clicking mine into place, and then tossing my cane and Patagonia on the rear bench.
He eyes me, but tugs the belt across his torso and clicks it in, tugging the strap once more to keep it loose, holding it away from the duct taped-in-place makeshift bandage. His jaw is tight, his body posture tense.
I pull back out of the spot and angle for the parking lot exit. I drove Alvin’s truck here, so I remember where I’m going. Once we’re on the main road with the bright lights of Vegas ahead of us, I glance at him. “You okay?”
“Fine.” His voice is hard, quiet, low.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” I try to make it light.
“Just get to the hospital.” Not looking at me.
Not looking at anything. Staring into space, jaw clenching spastically—I catch this in the occasional pool of light as we pass under streetlights.
“Chance.” I look at him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why do I have to stay near you at all times?”
No answer.
I suspect I know the answer, though. Do I dare voice my suspicion? It’s inviting deeper questioning in return, inviting more conversation. And I’ve proven I have verbal diarrhea around this man, which is a bad thing. I feel safe with him, which should be good, but is actually bad, becausefeelingsafe doesn’t mean Iamsafe with him. I’ve learned that the hard way.
I’m torn. Ripped apart, really. I’m attracted to him in a major, major way. Physically, even mentally. He’s easy to talk to. He’s a good listener. He has a way of pulling things out of me without even trying, and I feel like if anyone could “get” me, it’s him. I sense it, his deep understanding of me.
But I’m broken.
Emotionally, I’m a fucking train wreck. I don’t know how to trust him. How to trust anyone. I trusted Grandpa, and that was it. Now he’s gone and there’s no one.
Telling Chance my history wasn’t an act of trust. It’s just information. Just facts. You take one look at me, the story is there. The knee, especially. Fortunately and through what feels like, most days, a lot of pure luck, I got clean of the meth before it had a chance to really fuck up my appearance—the teeth, the skin sores, all that shit. I was going down that path, though. And I know with a certainty as rock solid as I know my own reflection that if I go back to it, I’ll never, ever get clean again.
And Chance was a hundred percent right when he said the deliveries are a fucking nightmare of temptation. And honestly, only the fact that I haven’t figured out a way of stealing any without getting caught has kept me clean so far. I live in terror every single goddamn second of every single goddamn day that I’ll relapse. And being in a car with that fucking satanic shit? It’s pure hell.
I look at Chance, and he’s scratching at a spot on his jaw, under his beard. I know the look on his face, visible in snatches and glimpses. I know the way he’s idly scratching, even now, clearly years past the physical addiction and recovery.
“Stop.” I reach out, grab his wrist, pull it away.
