8. 8
8
D onna wasn’t sure about what she was doing but decided to go with it. Who had names like Jailbait and Dumbass? Not that she would ask. She had more manners than that.
“So, how did you meet Savage?” Jailbait asked as they walked along the sidewalk in front of the rooms back toward the office where she and Savage had been only a few minutes before.
“He just came up and started talking to me,” Donna said, staring off into the distance. Standing still for the couple of minutes for each door to be opened had helped but her feet still ached, and she wanted to sit down. She wasn’t sure if she should have coffee, but she’d missed it, and one cup couldn’t hurt, could it?
“And he talked you into coming to the motel with him? I didn’t think he moved that fast.”
“It’s not like that.” She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to warm herself in the chill of the morning. “I,” she hesitated and glanced around before continuing making sure there was no one around listening to them. “I’m new in town and don’t know where anything is. I’d like to leave soon, but I ran out of money.” She turned away, not wanting this pretty girl in short shorts and a tight tank top to see how ashamed she was of her situation.
“So he’s going to get you breakfast and?” the other woman trailed off, leaving it for Donna to fill in.
“He said you guys are leaving in a couple of hours and I can go with him if I want.”
“Did he?” Jailbait lifted one brow as she opened the office door and motioned for Donna to go inside.
“He did. He said you’re only going a couple of hours from here, but that would be a couple hours farther away. If I want, he’ll help me find a shelter, or if I’m still around when you go back to Arizona, and I want, I can go with him.”
“And you think you might want to go to Arizona?” Jailbait followed her in then led her to a small area in a corner where a large coffee pot sat, along with a stack of cups and several cups with different coffee additives. She pulled one cup off the stack and handed it to Donna before lifting off a second and adding sugar and a couple of the little cups of half and half to hers.
“I don’t know. I like the idea of somewhere warm.”
As Jailbait moved a little farther down to fill her cup, Donna added sugar to her cup. It might not be the healthiest, but it was something and right now she needed what she could get. When it came her turn, Donna filled her cup with coffee, blew on it for a moment then took a sip. She couldn’t help herself as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the flavor. It had been so long since she’d had coffee, the commune had a vow against consuming any kind of drug, and they considered caffeine a drug.
“Are you from Wyoming?” Jailbait asked, as they made their way to the small seating area in the lobby. She sat and motioned for Donna to join her.
“No. I grew up in west Kansas. I wanted to get away, see the big city and learn about the world so I went to school in Denver.”
“Sounds nice,” Jailbait said with a slow nod. “But now you’re looking to get away from?” again she trailed off, as if hoping Donna would continue and tell her what was going on.
Donna considered it. She could tell some of it. Maybe not all the details, there were some of them she never wanted to think about again. But she guessed she would have to tell someone and while Savage wouldn’t eventually need to know most of it, she could tell this girl, at least some of it.
Donna took a deep breath, trying to decide how much to tell the other girl, the one who looked maybe eighteen but for some reason, maybe it was the way she carried herself, Donna thought she was older.
“I started school like any fresh faced eighteen-year-old. I was in the door, met new people, made friends.” Donna kept her eyes on her cup while she talked, not wanting to see the judgement in Jailbait’s eyes as she confessed how stupid she’d been. “Things were great. I knew what I wanted out of life. I knew what was right and wrong, or thought I did. I mean what kid that age doesn’t think they already know it all?” She glanced up and met Jailbait’s gaze for a moment, unable to help the self-deprecating smile that quirked her lips.
“We all do at that age, and there’s little anyone can tell us that will make us think different. We have to learn the hard way.” Jailbait’s tone was kind, kinder than Donna thought she deserved, but she continued anyway.
“I learned. Anyway, in my junior year my new bestie came to me with this idea. She found a group of like-minded people who were forming a commune. Not entirely the hippie-dippy, free love kind of the 60s, but a serious community dedicated to living and working together to be self-sufficient. It seemed ideal, at least at the time.” She looked back down at the cup she held cupped between her palms. The warmth seeping from the paper helped to warm her up after the cold night.
“I take it the commune wasn’t all it cracked up to be?”
Donna shook her head slowly, not looking up. “That’s one way to put it. We thought we’d done it all right. Investigated, went out and visited, made sure it was what it seemed to be before we dropped out of school, sold everything we didn’t need and moved out to the compound. Once we were there, though everything changed. Or it seemed to. I now know that what we saw before moving out to the compound was carefully screened, and designed to hide anything that didn’t make it look like an ideal situation.” She took a sip of the coffee and took a deep breath before she spoke again. “They hid a lot.”
She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling as she tried to maintain her composure. She wasn’t going to tell the worst parts of it, but she hadn’t expected that telling this little part would be so emotional.
“Are you alright, sweetie?” Jailbait’s gentle voice brought her back to the present and reminded her that she had escaped. Whether or not she stayed free was up to her and her choices.
Donna bit her lip and blinked back tears as she nodded. “I just need a minute.” She swallowed several times, then took a deep breath once she was sure the tears that had pooled in her eyes weren’t going to fall. “Anyway. It was nothing like what we’d been led to believe and once we were there, they wouldn’t let us leave. And if we tried, we were punished. It took me months to convince them I had accepted my life and my lot in it, until someone trusted me enough that I got a chance to slip away. Now I will do almost anything to keep them from finding me again.”
“Will they look for you or will they figure that you’re gone and there’s nothing they can do?” Jailbait tilted her head to one side, watching Donna.
“They’ll look. They want to make sure I don’t tell their secrets. That would be bad for them, if anyone believes me.”
“All right. Are they near here?” She seemed to be taking it well and believing her, but Donna couldn’t be sure.
“Not near Casper, at least not too close or I wouldn’t still be here. But they are a few hours away. I didn’t have much cash and spent nearly all of it on the bus ticket here.” She looked away again, not wanting to see whatever might be on the other woman’s face. She had been stupid, she knew it and she’d spent the last year paying for it.
“So you’re willing to travel with a group of strangers, if it will get you away from them, you must be desperate. We’ll do everything we can to help you. Or I will, and it looks like Savage will too. I don’t know what kind of people they were, but we don’t hold people against their will. We’re rough, often crude and a little in your face with our tendency to flaunt how far out of the societal norms we are. But the Souls are some of the best people I’ve ever had a chance to know. They got me out of a bad situation a while back and as you can see, I stuck.” Jailbait’s gaze flicked to the someone approaching from the direction they’d come from, and a smile curved her lips.
Donna turned to see what had gotten her attention and found that the guy from the room where Savage had gotten Jailbait was headed their way, what was his name again? Something even stranger than Jailbait. She didn’t remember. And forgot she even cared when a door opened, and Savage stepped out beside the other man. She stared a moment, wondering what she’d gotten herself into.
She should walk away. Ask him to take her to the shelter right now. But she was only a few hours away. Would they find her at the shelter?
“Uh oh. I see from that look you’re having second thoughts.” Jailbait’s voice made Donna turn and look back at her. “You are, aren’t you?”
Donna’s face heated. “I might have been. I mean, really?” Her gaze flicked back to where the two men approached them, then back to the woman sitting across from her. “Look at them, they look like they could rip a grown man limb from limb and not bat an eye. What could they do to me?”
“Donna.”
Something about the way the other woman’s voice had dropped made her look back at Jailbait. She found her leaning close.
“No Demented Soul would ever hurt a woman. And if he did, the others would sure as fuck make him regret it. But instead of looking at what could they do to you, try to see it this way. What would they do to defend you? Cause let me tell you, Savage might have just met you, but he’s already invested. He could have handed you cash and walked away, but he didn’t. He wants to make sure you eat. He wants to make sure you get away from here, if that’s what you want. Does that sound like someone who would hold you against your will or hurt you?”
Donna thought about that, turning to look out the glass wall at where the two men quickly closed the distance to them, she wondered what it would feel like to be protected by someone like him instead of afraid of him. She wanted to try it. But could she? Her heart said yes. Do it. He was a good man, but that part of her brain that always told her how stupid she was being, piped up. It reminded her she’d thought it was a good idea to join the commune. She didn’t know which side would win, but she decided to try to trust her heart, and Jailbait, this time.