Chapter 10 #2
My hands shook as I threw clothes into a duffel bag—jeans, T-shirts, a few sweaters, underwear, socks.
The fabric felt rough against my trembling fingers as I stuffed each item in without bothering to fold anything.
There wasn’t time for that. I didn’t have much.
I’d never had much. Everything I owned fit into one bag with room to spare.
A lifetime of belonging to nothing and no one, all condensed into a single worn canvas bag that had seen better days.
I grabbed my toothbrush from the bathroom, my phone charger, the small stash of cash I kept hidden in my dresser drawer, tucked beneath a pile of mismatched socks that no one ever bothered to look through.
Three hundred and forty-seven dollars. That was it.
That was all I had to my name after years of scraping by, of surviving rather than living.
It would have to be enough. It had to be.
I zipped the bag closed, the sound of the zipper teeth catching seeming impossibly loud in the stillness.
I slung it over my shoulder, feeling the weight of my entire life pressing against my back, and crept down the hallway toward the back door.
Each step felt like it took an eternity.
My legs felt like jelly, weak and unsteady beneath me.
The clubhouse was quiet. Most of the brothers were either asleep in their rooms upstairs or out on patrol, riding through the night on their bikes.
A few lights were on in the common room, casting a yellow glow that spilled into the hallway.
I could hear the low murmur of voices, maybe two or three guys still up, probably drinking and playing cards like they did most nights.
But I avoided that area entirely, sticking to the shadows along the opposite wall, pressing myself against the cool plaster, praying no one would see me.
Praying no one would ask questions I couldn’t answer.
My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst through my ribs. I could feel it hammering against my chest wall, could hear the rush of blood in my ears like a roaring ocean.
I made it to the back door, reached for the handle with a shaking hand, eased it open as slowly as I could manage, and slipped outside into the cool night air. The temperature drop hit me immediately, raising goosebumps on my arms.
The parking lot was dimly lit, just a few overhead lights casting long shadows across the gravel and cracked asphalt.
My car—a beat-up Honda Civic that was more rust than paint, with a dent in the passenger door and a crack spider-webbing across the windshield—sat in the far corner where I’d left it weeks ago.
I hadn’t driven it in so long I wasn’t even sure it would start.
I hurried toward it, my footsteps crunching on the gravel, each sound making me wince. My breath came in short, panicked gasps that created little clouds in the cold air.
Almost there. Almost free. Just a few more steps.
I was reaching for the door handle, my fingers inches from the cold metal, when a hand closed around my arm like a vise.
I gasped, spinning around, my heart leaping into my throat.
Tiffany stood there—with me gone, she was the only club girl left. Her face serious and concerned. Her expression was unreadable in the dim light, shadows playing across her features and making her look older than her twenty-six years.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice low and careful, barely above a whisper. She glanced back toward the clubhouse, as if checking to make sure no one else was around to hear us.
I swallowed hard, my mind racing through possible excuses, possible explanations that wouldn’t raise too much suspicion. “I-I’m just going to stay with a friend for a few days. I need some space. Some time to think. Away from here. Away from... everything.”
Tiffany’s eyes narrowed slightly, her brow furrowing. But she didn’t stop me. She didn’t call out for the others. She didn’t drag me back inside.
She just stood there, her hand on my arm, studying my face like she was trying to decide what to do. Like she was weighing her loyalty to the club against whatever sympathy she felt for me in that moment.
“Brandy,” she said quietly, and there was something almost sad in her voice. “You sure about this? Because once you leave like this, in the middle of the night... you know what that means. You know how it’ll look.”
“Yeah,” I lied, my voice barely above a whisper, the word catching in my throat. “Yeah, I’m sure.” I’d never been less sure of anything in my life, but I couldn’t stay. Not another day. Not another hour.
She held my gaze for another long moment, her eyes searching mine for something—the truth, maybe, or some sign that I knew what I was doing. Then slowly, deliberately, she released my arm. Her hand fell away, and I felt both relief and terror wash over me.
“Be careful,” she said, and those two words held more weight than any threat could have. She knew. She knew I was running, and she was letting me go anyway. “I’ll miss you.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again, and threw my bag into the backseat.
The bag landed with a soft thud against the worn upholstery.
I climbed into the driver’s seat, the familiar smell of old coffee and cheap air freshener filling my nostrils.
My hands shook so badly I could barely get the key into the ignition.
I started the engine. The car sputtered, coughed, the engine turning over once, twice, and for a horrible second, I thought it was going to die. Then it roared to life with a sound that was way too loud in the quiet night, the muffler rattling and the engine knocking like it always did.
I didn’t look back as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the main road. I couldn’t look back. If I did, I might lose my nerve. I might see Tiffany still standing there watching me. I might see lights coming on in the clubhouse windows.
I didn’t let myself think about what I was doing. I didn’t let myself think about what would happen when King discovered I was gone. I didn’t let myself think about the consequences, about the danger, about the fact that leaving like this might be the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
I just drove, my hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, my eyes fixed on the road ahead as the clubhouse disappeared in my rearview mirror.
The drive from Nebraska to Connecticut was over seventeen hundred miles of highway, and I knew it would take me days to get there. Days of driving, days of running, days of trying to outpace the fear that clawed at my chest with every mile.
The first night, I drove east through the flat Nebraska plains, the landscape stretching out endlessly on either side of me.
There was nothing but darkness and the occasional farmhouse light in the distance, pinpricks of civilization in an ocean of black.
The highway was straight and monotonous, hypnotic in its sameness.
My piece-of-shit car rattled and groaned with every mile, the engine making sounds that didn’t inspire confidence.
Strange clicking noises. A persistent whine that grew louder when I accelerated past sixty.
The check engine light had been on for months, glowing like a tiny amber eye of judgment on the dashboard.
Every breath felt shallow, insufficient. Every thought spiraled into another reason why this was a terrible idea, why I should turn around, why I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
But I kept driving.
The air conditioning didn’t work, so I drove with the windows down despite the cold night air, letting the wind whip through the car and tangle my hair into knots.
The radio only picked up static out here, occasionally breaking through with fragments of country songs or late-night talk radio before dissolving back into white noise.
I crossed into Iowa sometime around seven in the morning, though I barely noticed the state line. The landscape remained flat, agricultural, endless. Fields of corn and soybeans stretched out on either side of the highway, dark and dormant in the autumn night.
I stopped for gas at a truck stop just outside Chicago as the sun was starting to peak midday.
One of those fluorescent-lit places that smelled like diesel fuel and burnt coffee and the exhaustion of people who’d been driving too long.
I filled up the tank, then bought a bottle of water and a bag of chips I couldn’t stomach eating, my appetite completely gone, replaced by a knot of anxiety that sat heavy in my gut.
The clerk barely looked at me. I was just another nobody passing through.
I used the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like hell. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair a tangled mess. Skin pale and drawn.
I looked like someone running away.
Because that was exactly what I was.
I got back into the car and kept driving.
By the second day, the landscape had started to change.
Illinois gave way to Indiana, and the flat plains began to roll slightly, the terrain becoming more varied.
I passed through small towns with names I’d never heard of and would never remember.
I drove through the outskirts of Toledo, the skyline visible in the distance, a cluster of buildings reaching toward the sky.
I didn’t stop. I just kept moving, merging onto I-80 East, following the signs toward Pennsylvania, toward the East Coast that felt impossibly far away.
My back ached from sitting in the same position for so long, a dull throb that ran from my lower spine up to my shoulders. My hands cramped from gripping the steering wheel too hard. My eyes burned with exhaustion, gritty and dry from staring at the road for too many hours straight.
I thought about turning back a hundred times. Maybe more. Every exit was a potential escape route, a chance to change my mind, to admit this was insane and head back to Diamond Creek where at least I knew what I was dealing with.