My heart sinks. It’ll be harder to run from here in daylight, with the sun baking the landscape.
I shield my eyes and peer out.
It wouldn’t matter if it was still dark. There are two men sitting under that tree. From this distance, it’s hard to see what they’re doing, but it looks like they’re gulping down bottles of beer. They’d see me if I tried to run now. I shove the window shut.
Escape will have to come later. After I’ve eaten. Maybe if I drink lots of water, it’ll help me last longer running in that heat, but I’ll have to leave before noon, before it gets even hotter.
When I do run, I’ll have to make my way back to the city somehow, or I could end up lost. But I’ll have to keep an eye out. Deacon Jacob is still out there. That’s the one bright side of Spider having taken me out of the city. I’m surrounded by desert. It’ll be a lot less likely anyone from His Holy Peace will find me out here.
Unsure what else to do, I step out of the tub, straightening my shirt and skirt. I’d thrown them both back on before climbing into bed, and they’d twisted and bunched up in the night.
I look longingly at the bathtub. I’d give anything for a shower, but it wouldn’t wash away the stain last night’s sin has left on my soul, will it?
It bothers me that I can’t bring myself to shower, to use the shampoo or soap that’s hanging from the showerhead without permission.
The instinctive need to show respect for Spider’s belongings in spite of his actions makes me feel weak. Last night’s debauchery should wipe away any such altruistic notions, but life in the Colony has ingrained it into me that you never take anything without permission.
My chest constricts. The irony is not lost on me. Taking something that didn’t belong to me is what landed me here in the first place.
A banging on the door to the bedroom makes me startle.
“Wake wakie, sunshine,” Pip calls.
I sigh and cross the bedroom, opening the door.
“Get cleaned up and I’ll take you for breakfast in the barroom,” Pip says. “Spider’s orders.” He hands me an unopened toothbrush and a comb. “He said there are some women’s clothes in his closet if you wanna change. Underthings are in one of his drawers somewhere.”
“Thank you. Wait…where is Spider?” I ask when he turns to leave.
When he looks at me, I instinctively lower my eyes, twisting my hands in front of me. As soon as I catch myself, I throw my hands behind me and meet his youthful grey gaze head-on. It’s surprisingly easy.
“He’s out. He put me on babysitting duty, so you’d better behave or it’s both our asses.”
“May I have a shower, please?” I suppress the urge to call him sir.
“Whatever. Just be ready in fifteen. Spider should be back by then.”
I go back into the room and shut the door slowly, processing my reactions to the young man.
The urge to defer to him as a male was hard to shut down, but it wasn’t as difficult to look at him as it is with Spider, and it wasn’t as hard to hold back the honorific, either.
If Pip is close to my age as I’ve guessed, he’s is at that age where, in the Colony, females would have to address him with sir or, when appropriate, by his last name. A year or two less, and they wouldn’t have to use the formality. It’s unsettling to realize why it’s easier to break the habit with him. Spider has a…presence of command that makes it feel wrong not to. It’s almost a kind of pull.
I shiver, not wanting to consider that too closely.
Fifteen minutes. The expectation that he see me when he arrives makes my heart speed up. I hate that it isn’t all from trepidation over what he might have planned.
After a quick shower, I brush my teeth and comb out my hair, then look for the girl’s clothes Pip mentioned.
A studded denim skirt that doesn’t look long enough to cover anything private hangs in the closet, along with a white halter top. It’s the only girl’s clothes in there. Looking at the outfit, my stomach tightens, realizing why Spider has them.
These belong to a woman who was in his bed.
I put my head back, forcing down an absurd pang on jealousy and toss the clothes on the bed. Why do I care who he shares his bed with?
I hunt for a pair of panties and bra in his dresser drawers. There’s no bra, but there is a pair of black lace panties with the price tag still on them. They look like the expensive kind I’ve seen women wear in the strip club. Spider must have bought them for Halter Top Girl after their little tryst and she never wore them.
So I’ll be wearing panties that were a gift to one of Spider’s floosies. I slap them on the bed, my blood boiling.
As soon as I’m dressed, I look at the mirror above the dresser. Mortification colors my cheeks.
The halter is little more than a strip of cloth that hides my boobs, and I can make out my nipples through the fabric. The studded skirt barely covers my backside.
“Seriously?” I find my sneakers and yank them on. “He expects me to go around looking like a harlot?”
It shouldn’t bother me to dress like this after a week of wearing that uniform at the strip club, but it does. That was a job. This is different. Dressing like this is too much like giving him an invitation.
I never thought I’d miss the drab, formless dresses of the Colony, but I do now.
Pip meets me at the door and walks me down to the barroom a few minutes later.
There’s only a handful of men in the room, two playing billiards off to the side, and another sitting at the bar talking to the girl behind it who serves him a beer. Another girl, a blond one who looks a few years older than me, sits on a chair against the wall, watching the guys playing pool. A man with silver hair captured in a ponytail is moving around in an office to my left. There’s a door on the other side of the office leading outside, and he paces in front of it, a phone to his ear while he talks.
Those bikes still hang from the ceiling on chains.
Despite the ruckus I heard when I woke up, the place is quiet. I think I hear a TV playing in a room down the hall we just went through, but the ones in here are off, thank heavens. At least there’s no one in here watching porn like last night.
At the front of the room is the only entrance to the place I see, the one Spider took me through last night. There’s no one near the door. My muscles tense.
“Don’t even think about it,” Pip warns, squeezing my arm.
My eyes snap up to his. His expression isn’t mean, just matter of fact. He looks tired, his face wan, but his eyes are still sharp.
Pip is skinnier than a lot of the men here, and he doesn’t have the same hardened, dangerous look as them, but I’m not fooled. He has good muscles, and he’s probably still faster than me. He’d be on me before I got two steps, and I’ve seen the way he defers to the others. He’s loyal to them. He’d do what he had to in order to keep me here.
Besides, he has a gun in a holster on his hip, partly hidden by his leather vest.
There’s no point in trying to convince him I wasn’t thinking of escaping, so I remain silent.
“Have a seat.” He nods to the stools along the bar. “Someone’ll bring you some breakfast.”
“When will Spider be back?” I ask quietly.
His grins. “Later.”