After all my paperwork was signed and I was given the hospital’s okay to leave, Jane had snuck both Holly and I out of the service entrance. We’d climbed into Holly’s Peugeot and hightailed it out of there without being seen. Or, at least, I thought we’d gone unnoticed, but if I was correct, the headlight tailing us belonged to Elijah.
“Okay, I don’t want to alarm you but I think we’re being followed,” Holly said glancing between her rear- view and my stoic face.
“I know.”
“Should I pull over? Make him grovel on his knees?”
“Just drive.”
“What the hell happened? Two hours ago you were pledging your love and preparing to hand over your virginity with a big red bow and now you’re avoiding him?”
“We didn’t have an accident.”
“Yeah, I got that much. What’s with the super secret squirrel act?”
“Elijah used to belong to the Hell’s Angels.”
For a moment I think she’s hasn’t heard me properly but then her screech of, “GET THE FUCK OUT!” fills the car and I want to cry, but I think the Endone’s numbed my brain cells, too. Suddenly, all I want to do is sleep away this nightmare and wake up healed and as far as possible from the shit storm Elijah’s dragged me into.
“We were chased and sideswiped, held at gunpoint. One of them tried to rape me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Are you alright?”
“I wish,” I whisper, and feel tears finally prick my eyes until I’m sobbing again like I was on the side of that road.
“Ana, what should I do?” Holly asks and I almost laugh, because in the fourteen years we’ve known one another I’ve never heard her sound so serious and afraid.
“Just keep driving.”
“You wanna go home?”
“No. Dad will flip if he sees Elijah and I fighting on the front lawn with me looking like this. Take me to your place, please?”
“Of course.” She looks at my shirt, the one Elijah had taken off once my jacket had been cut away and insisted I wear home. I can almost hear the wheels turning in her head. “You said tried? They didn’t, did they?”
“No. Elijah stopped them.”
“Of course he did,” she mutters and then clearly, after she’s thought some more about it she asks, “How?”
I turn and give her a look that pretty much says, “Don’t ask” and she doesn’t.
Elijah follows us all the way to Sugartown. He never once tries to overtake, or to force us to pull over by cutting us off. He drives straight past his motel and follows us down Holly’s street all the way to her driveway where he disappears as the automatic roller door slides down behind Holly’s Peugeot, separating us from the rest of the world.
“You head on up to my room.” Holly gives me a fragile smile. “I’ll sort him out.”
“Thanks,” I say, and wipe at my tears before opening the car door and standing on shaky legs.
Holly’s house is newer than mine and built in a much nicer neighbourhood. It also has a garage adjoining the house and, as I climb the stairs, I’m thankful I don’t have to walk outside and right past him. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to keep running from him tonight. I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s the god’s honest truth. I’m afraid I’d melt into a puddle the minute he placed his hands on me, so I hurry up the stairs and duck into Holly’s bedroom where I gently slide the window overlooking the front lawn open.
Thankfully, Elijah had the sense to wait for one of us to come to him and hasn’t tried banging down the front door to get to me, but he’s certainly not quiet when he says, “Where the hell is she, Holly?”
“You can’t be here.”
“I’m not leaving until I see she’s okay.”
“What the hell makes you think she’d be okay after something like that?”
“She told you?”
“Yeah, dumb-arse, she told me. She tells me everything. Including the fact that she was about to cash in her V-card tonight for your sorry arse.”
He sighs and squats down on the driveway, lacing his hands behind his head. “I gotta see her. You gotta let me talk to her.”
“No. You’re lucky I’m not calling Bob, you shithead.” She sighs and grasps the collar of his jacket, yanking his face back to hers. “You have to go home and let her deal with everything she’s seen tonight. If she wants to talk to you after she’s had time to absorb it all, then Ana will come to you. Until then, you back the fuck off and leave her the hell alone.”
“Yeah, okay,” he mutters, but I wonder whether he’s really absorbing anything she just said. He runs a hand over his face, hangs his head and stares at the pebbled drive. He looks so lost standing there, like a little boy. I lean forward in the darkness and, for a minute, I swear he sees me because he stiffens and then lets his head fall back with a shaky exhalation.
“Holly,” he says as she’s walking away, “how’s her head?”
“Her head is fine, Elijah. It’s probably feeling clearer than it has in weeks.” She backs up towards the house and says, “It’s her heart that’s been broken into itty bitty little pieces.”
Chapter Seventeen
Elijah
For an entire week Ana has avoided me. She’s disappeared every time I set foot inside the diner, so every time I’d be left with her very scary, tiny best friend breathing down my neck until I walked right back out that door. She hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts, though I’ve been blowing up her phone for days. I’m convinced she isn’t going to talk to me, ever again.
When I’d set foot inside the garage Monday after the accident, Bob had bailed me up against the wall and hit me square in the face for driving like a fool. Apparently, Ana had given him the same version of the story as I’d given the nurses at the hospital. I don’t know why she was protecting me but I knew if Bob ever found out what had really happened on that back road, I’d be a dead man.
Bob had lived the life; he’d escaped with his balls and his family intact. Unlike Ana, he’d known about my affiliation when I first came to work for him. He knew why I’d been sent to prison, he knew about the events that led to my release, and he also knew I was running as fast and as far away from that life as possible. If he knew I’d let that shit come within a foot of his daughter, of his family, he’d waste no time handing me over to the Angels, and I wouldn’t blame him.
After it became apparent Ana wouldn’t see me, Bob had pulled me aside to pump me for more info regarding our wild Saturday night. I’d fed him some bullshit about being a stupid insensitive male and he’d laughed it off, and said if I didn’t try to pull his daughter out of the bitch-fit mood she’d been in since she dumped my sorry arse he’d dock my pay. I’m not fucking kidding. The bastard would do it, too.
That’s how I wound up here at ten am on a Saturday, watching Sammy’s Little Rugby League team dominate their competition. I would have been barracking from the sidelines but his sister doesn’t know I’m here yet, and I don’t want to frighten her off before I get the chance to speak to her.
When I sidle up beside her I cup my hands over my mouth and shout out to my little mate anyway. “GO SAMMY!”
Several parents give me dirty looks and I feel like flipping them off, but I know that won’t help my case with Ana so I ignore them and wave at the awkward six-year-old who’s waving madly at me from the middle of the field.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ana mutters. “He’ll be distracted now that you’re here.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
