“Why won’t you tell me?” I ask softly. “Maybe I can help. You won’t know unless you try.”
He snorts.
“Why is that so ludicrous? Because I’m too young? Not strong enough? Because you’re wrong.” I circle the hood, strangely exhilarated. “I think you want to tell me. I think you could use an ally. Somebody you can talk to. Somebody who cares.”
A scoff. “And you’re that person?”
I feel like my breathing is larger than my body. He has a hundred pounds of pure muscle on me, but I have this wild idea that I could fight him, and I could win. “Yeah, I’m that person. Tell me I’m wrong. Tie up my hands and shove me in the trunk. Do everything awful.”
His eyes flash. “Don’t tempt me, sweetheart.”
My heart swells wide and bright like I’m the sun, too. That’s how I feel right now. Not a plant that can live or die by someone else’s whim. I’m burning all on my own. There’s a way in which I feel Stone brings out the best in me. I want to do that for him—more than anything I’ve ever wanted. “I’m tempting you, Stone. I’m in your face right now, challenging you to let me in.”
He wants me to be afraid of him. It would be so simple. A slap in the face. A twist of my wrist. He could hurt me so easily, but he won’t. He’ll stand there, looking fierce and unholy in the bright midday sun, completely at my mercy.
That’s when I realize that he’s the plant. The one denied light too long.
He’s the one dying.
“Get in the car,” he says. He makes his voice hard, but I hear need. Desperation. “Now,” he growls loudly. His words seem to echo back from the brick structure and the 18-wheelers and the line of trees far away. They bounce around us, fierce and pained.
I put my hand on his arm, feeling the tremors in him. “Tell me what happened,” I whisper. “You said you take care of your guys, but who takes care of you? I think you want to tell me.”
Something shifts in him. I have the sense of gears in his head turning, a decision being made. His voice, when it comes, is pure threat. “You think you know what I want?”
Instinct sends me back a step. Another. I wasn’t afraid of him in the car, despite his threats. Wasn’t afraid when I challenged him in a deserted parking lot. When he was made of marble, I was safe.
Not anymore.
He’s all man, flesh and blood, fury and heartbreak. “I—I—” I stammer.
“News flash—you don’t.” He takes a step toward me, fire in his eyes. “Now you know what’s going to happen here? We’re going to get back in that car, and you’re going to go back to your school uniforms and your ridiculous little-girl dreams. This was a mistake, and this—” He points from him to me to him to me. “This is not happening again. Not ever.”
I ball my fists so tightly my fingernails dig into my palms. My fists are the only part of me not trembling.
“Get. In.” He points at my car.
The world seems to tilt. I shake my head—that’s as much as I can talk right now. I could drive while I was orgasming, dangerous as it was, but now? I’m turned inside out by the ferocity of his words, the cruelty of his regard. I barely know which way is up.
I straighten my spine, compose myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned how to do over the years, it’s appear perfectly polished when I’m crumbling inside. “Fine,” I say. “After a stop in the ladies’ room. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sure. You go ahead. You go on to the ladies’ room.” He says it with disdain, like he really hates me. Maybe he does. He doesn’t want to see me ever again.
I turn and head across the walkway toward the shabby rest building, black patent leather shoes smashing over the clumps of ugly weeds that strain up through the cracks in the cement.
What was I thinking? Trying to connect with someone like Stone. He’s so much older than me, and worlds different. How could I presume to be able to understand him or help him, much less have him want me in any real way? To imagine I’m anything more than a distraction. Insubstantial. One of the hors d'oeuvres passed around at my parents’ parties. Instantly forgotten.
My eyes are bleary with tears when I finally step behind the cinder-block wall that marks the entrance to the ladies’ room. Half the lights are smashed out, making the row of metal restroom doors look ominous, some shrouded in near darkness. There’s one window high up, the screen clogged with leaves and dead bugs, probably.
My imagination conjures pictures of tired mothers with hyper daughters. Do they mind how run-down the place is? Or does it seem like part of the road-trip experience? My mother would lose her mind before ever stepping one foot inside. The only family vacations we had were to five-star resorts. First-class seats and private suites. More about proving a point than enjoying each other’s company.
Water drips from the ceiling to a gray puddle on the floor. I step around it and go to the sink, run the water and splash some on my face. I don’t actually have to pee; I just need to pull my head together. Will I be late to class? I don’t know. I can’t even think about it.
I grab a towel from the crooked dispenser, telling myself it’s better this way. Better than sparkling bathrooms with luxury seating and perfect tile, potted palms thriving under skylights. More real.
There’s a creak from the direction of the door.
I ignore it. I know it’s not Stone. Coming after me to apologize or whatever is the last thing he’d do. And I’m hardly in the mood to fake-smile at another traveler.
Probably just a female driver from one of those trucks outside. I splash more water onto my face and gaze up into the mirror.
And freeze.
There’s a huge man looming behind me, whiskery cheeks and a grizzly brown beard under a seed cap. His jeans jacket is cut off at the sleeves to reveal a torn T-shirt over massive tattooed arms. “Fifty bucks,” he says. “For five minutes of those pretty lips.” He’s on me in a flash, hands on my hips.
I jerk away from his grip, moving sideways. “No, I’m not…”
He thinks I’m a prostitute.
“Didn’t anyone tell you that little whores can’t be choosers?” He grabs my hair and pulls me back and shoves me down in front of him. My knees smash into the cold hard floor. I try to scream for Stone, but the man is squeezing my cheeks with his fingers so hard that I feel every ridge of my teeth, cutting into the sides of my mouth, and all I can do is grunt and cry.
Wet seeps into the thin fabric covering my knees. I try to scream, try to push him away.
“Fifty bucks. That’s some six hundred bucks an hour. More than a little bitch like you deserves.”
He has his zipper down. The musky, moldy smell is suffocating. I push against his tree-trunk-like legs as he fumbles with himself.
“Don’t like the looks of me? I’ll teach you not to like the looks of me. I’ll stuff your little lips so full my cock’ll be coming out your ass—”
That’s the last word he gets out before he’s jerked backward. The motion is hard. Furious.
Stone. He crashes the man headfirst into the hard cinder-block wall. There’s a yell. A crack.
I fall to my hands and knees, panting, reeling from what almost happened. From what did happen. A stranger had his hands on me. The dark, shadowy vision of him looms in my mind.