leaving the way
Ellie Aiden
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
[Chapter 1] — Who the Hell is Tommy?
[Chapter 2] — Dick-Tator
[Chapter 3] — Stages of Grief
[chapter 4] — Chocolate or something
[chapter 5] — Get your popcorn ready
[chapter 6] — Shaking hands and kissing babies
[chapter 7] — You owe me five bucks, chica
[chapter 8] — I just peed a little
[chapter 9] — My other three o’clock
[chapter 10] — crossing my fingers
[chapter 11] — i wanna have a double wedding
[chapter 12] — Big foot is real
[chapter 13] — Parlay it is
[chapter 14] — I feel like a pirate
[chapter 15] — well that escalated quickly
[chapter 16] — Mua-ha-ha
[chapter 17] — hell fire and brimstone
[chapter 18] — How rude
[chapter 19] — Anna’s got her groove back
[chapter 20] — A few tricks up our sleeves
[chapter 21] — Truth or dare
[chapter 22] — anger management
[chapter 23] — Nothing
Afterword
COPYRIGHT
Leaving The Way. Copyright © 2020 by Ellie Aiden
Cover Art by Ellie Aiden
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S.
Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be
Reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means without the prior written permission of the author.
First Edition: June 2020
The character and events portrayed in this book are strictly fictitious.
Any similarities to locations, characters, events, or persons, living or
dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1 - Who The Hell Is Tommy?
ANNA
Having lived inside the compound of the Church of The Way since I was five, I knew they had a lot of questionable practices, but those things don’t compare to what they do behind closed doors. In the month before I escaped we discovered the church leaders were selling girls for supplies, stealing food from the locals, and one of their members was molesting girls as so called punishment.
We went through a lot to find all that out. Just a few weeks before my placement ceremony, I was attacked and nearly raped, my best friend and I were molested by a church elder, and I escaped the compound and met a survivor of the California compound. Not to mention a few cases of breaking and entering.
In the end, we knew we had to leave the church, but first we decided to lay all our cards on the table. The night of my ceremony, in front of the elders, their wives, and Vater and Mutter Henry, I told the Vater and anyone else willing to listen everything we knew. We had hoped the Vater, at least, wouldn’t have been in on it. But in the end, it seemed we were wrong. Even if he didn’t know about everything going on, he still sided with the elders, calling me mentally unstable and ruling I would be cast out. Before that could happen though, the church was attacked by a pissed off gang, giving me and my friends the chance to escape. Except not all of us got out.
We were all together when we got to the wall; me, Ash, Chase, Cody, Luke, and three of his friends. We stepped through the crumbled remains of the north wall of the compound together, or so we thought. When we came across an abandoned house and decided to take a break, we realized Ash and Chase weren’t with us.
It’s already been an hour since then. I’ve already tried to make a break for it twice, Luke stopping me once and Cody the second time. It isn’t safe to go back and I know it, but that’s my best friend. With the elders knowing she and Chase tried to escape, what will they do to them? We all know what they are capable of. How can we just leave them?
“Tommy, make another pass. Get as close as you can to the wall without being seen. Maybe you missed them,” Luke whispers from behind me.
Cody and I sit on the rotting floor of an abandoned house no more than five miles from the compound. Two of Luke’s friends are outside ensuring the area is safe and that we weren’t followed.
Tommy, his other friend, walks out the front door to look for Ash and Chase. He already went once, as soon as we realized they weren’t with us. When he came back, he said the members of the church, as well as the gang members were still fighting, and he saw no sign of my friends.
Cody’s head hits my shoulder, seemingly dozing off, and I don’t bother to move him. It’s been a long night; we could all use some rest. Leaning my head on top of his, my eyes follow Luke as he paces back and forth on the other side of the room. How someone can go through what we did tonight and still look hot is beyond me. I can’t see his eyes from here, but I know they are a crystal blue, the kind you can’t look away from. The shock of platinum hair on his head is unusual but no less beautiful, and despite his clenched jaw, I can still make out the perfect single dimple on his cheek. I still want to lick it by the way, that certainly hasn’t changed.
That fact might be the only thing that hasn’t changed between us though. It’s been less than a month since this man saved me from being raped in a hotel brothel, and while we have spent very little time together, the feelings we developed for each other were fast and hard. We had both expressed our feelings for one another, I even used the big L-word, but in the end Luke had held back. He had voiced some excuse about not being able to allow himself to feel anything for me considering I had to go back into the Compound instead of staying with him, but personally, I think that was a load of shit.
Now, with him standing just feet from me I have no idea where we stand, and to be honest, I’m kind of pissed at him. Sure he used the cover of the gang attack to slip in the
