Chapter 17 Darla
Darla
The first time I snuck out of the father’s house, I was fourteen, high on the possibility of not being his little angel for a single fucking hour.
Back then, the rules were simple: move slow, step light, never let your shadow cross a lit window.
Now, over a decade later, I’d graduated to advanced-level duplicity—timing my escapes to the rhythm of my father’s bourbon intake, logging Bart’s patrol routes, slipping black athletic tape around my wrists to kill the glow of my hospital-pale skin.
If there was a medal for Not Getting Caught By A God-Fearing Sociopath, I’d have a whole case of them.
But tonight wasn’t a practice run. Tonight, it was all or nothing. At thirty, why was I still there? Because I didn’t trust myself. Anxiety, maybe, with what was out there and having to navigate it without somewhere to run and hide. Fucked up, sure, but it’s all I knew since Mom died.
I lay in bed for a full hour after curfew, listening to the cooling creak of the house and the distant rumble of my father’s voice as he argued with himself or maybe God, depending on how much Jim Beam was in the mix.
I’d changed into jeans and a black thermal shirt, sneakers instead of boots, hair twisted up so nothing dangled to snag on an errant nail.
My cross necklace was tucked deep beneath the collar, pressed flat against my collarbone like a warding spell.
I stared at the clock—1:16 a.m. The numbers pulsed red on the nightstand, like a countdown to damnation.
I slid out of bed and tiptoed to the window, careful not to shift the curtain even an inch. Outside, the backyard was a bowl of darkness, every surface lacquered with dew. I pressed my forehead to the glass and tried to slow my breathing, counting each exhale, letting the cold help focus my nerves.
The trellis ran down the side of the house, a half-rotted lattice of cedar slats.
It was there solely for looks—my mother’s idea, before cancer made aesthetics seem irrelevant.
She’d meant for it to bloom with clematis; instead, it hosted a ruthless tangle of kudzu that, in the right season, could swallow a man whole.
I’d used it enough to trust its strength, but not enough to forget the time I’d nearly broken my ankle when a nail let go halfway down.
The scar on my shin was a reminder: never get cocky.
I slid the window up, half an inch at a time, pausing with every micro-scream of the frame.
My room faced the back, shielded from the road, but you never knew if Bart was lurking in the garden with his night-vision goggles, or if my father was sleepless and prowling the perimeter like some Calvinist Nosferatu.
I checked the corners, saw nothing but the blank gaze of the toolshed and the moonlight silvering the wet grass.
I perched on the sill and swung my legs over, keeping my weight centered.
The trellis felt cold and slightly damp.
I gripped it at the strongest joint, then went down hand-over-hand, feet searching for the cross bars in the dark.
Halfway down, the slat under my left foot groaned, just a little. I froze, muscles coiled, every hair on my arm trying to stand up and make a run for it. I counted to five. No floodlight, no thundering footsteps, no Bible verse screamed into the void. I kept moving.
At the base, I landed soft in the mulch bed, bent double. My heart slammed so hard I thought it might burst through my sternum and leave a Darla-shaped hole in the dirt. I pressed myself against the shadow of the trellis, waiting, listening.
The house was silent. Not even the whisper of a prayer.
I crept along the fence, using the thick shrubs as cover, then crawled the last ten feet to the side gate. I eased it open and slipped onto the street, pulling the gate gently behind me. It latched with a whisper, nothing more.
Only then did I let myself breathe.
I scanned the street, vision still rimmed with afterimages from the house lights. The neighborhood was dead quiet. A few sodium lamps buzzed overhead, smearing yellow pools across the blacktop. No sign of Bart’s car, no movement behind any of the drawn curtains.
Then I saw him.
He was across the street, straddling his Harley at the curb, the engine dead but every inch of him braced for the sudden need to run.
He wore his black leather cut, “PROSPECT” stitched in ghost-white above the heart, a couple of fresh rips on the shoulder from the last time someone tried to take him out.
His face was half in shadow, but the ember of his cigarette cast a red halo over his beard and the battered ridge of his nose.
Even from here, I could tell he was scanning—every window, every treetop, every possible threat.
For a second, I thought, maybe he doesn’t see me.
Maybe I’m invisible, a wild animal in the suburbs.
But then his eyes cut straight to where I stood, and my knees went weak with the relief and terror of it.
We locked eyes across the pavement, and it was like being shocked with a car battery.
All the tension in my body drained out my feet.
I ran to him, not caring that I made noise, not caring that the neighbor’s porch light flicked on as I crossed their driveway. He flicked his cigarette into the gutter and stood, the movement fluid, and met me at the edge of the yard.
He didn’t say anything. He just looked me over, a once-over for injuries or tracking devices or maybe just for the sake of memorizing the way I looked in that moment.
Then, wordlessly, he handed me the helmet he’d been holding in his left hand.
Matte black, no stickers, scratched to hell but obviously cared for.
I fumbled with the strap, hands shaking. He took it from me and buckled it under my chin, his fingers rough but careful. He touched my cheek once, almost absentminded, as if to make sure I was still there.
He mounted the bike and looked back, jerking his chin at the seat.
I climbed on behind him, not gracefully—my knee smacked his side, and I nearly lost a sneaker in the scramble.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, holding tight, pressing my face into the back of his jacket.
He smelled like smoke, sweat, and the kind of soap you buy when you don’t care what it smells like as long as it gets the blood out.
He fired up the Harley, the engine exploding in the night like an air raid siren.
It was way louder than it needed to be. I knew, without being told, that it was intentional—a final fuck you to the house behind us, a shot across the bow of my father’s little kingdom. I grinned, teeth bared to the cold.
We peeled out, the rear tire spitting gravel across the street, and in the side mirror I saw two lights flicker on in my father’s house. I pressed closer, feeling the speed and the risk and the irreversibility of it all.
I thought about the window I’d left open, about the empty bed and the prayer my father would say when he saw it. But mostly, I thought about the man in front of me, the way his body moved with the bike, the steadiness of his hands on the bars.
We tore down the hill, leaving the whole fucking world behind us, the echo of our escape chasing us into the dark.
***
The city always looked prettier from the outside.
We cut through empty subdivisions and the dead veins of New Circle Road, then up the switchbacks behind Shaker Hill, the Harley’s headlamp punching holes in the black like a star gone rogue.
Axel didn’t talk while he rode; he just hunched over the bars, eyes fixed forward, every muscle tuned to the curve of the road.
The wind off the valley slapped my face raw, but I loved it.
It was the only way to know I was still real, still here.
We hit the overlook at 1:46. There was no signage, just a break in the tree line where the guardrail had rusted away, and no one bothered to replace it.
The city sprawled out below, a galaxy of parking lot halogens and tail lights, the pulse of Lexington’s nightlife so far away it looked peaceful.
Above, the stars were sharp and cold, pinholes in a sheet of black ice.
Axel killed the engine and let the bike coast to a stop on the gravel. All I could hear was the crackle of the cooling engine and my own heartbeat, still kicking at double-time.
He turned and offered me his hand, palm up.
I took it, letting him steady me as I swung my leg off the seat.
He reached back and peeled off his jacket, the action slow, almost ritualistic.
The right sleeve was still sticky from the blood that had seeped through his shirt last week—a gift from Bart’s not-so-subtle warning—but he didn’t wince as he shrugged it off.
He spread it on the flattest piece of limestone, then gestured for me to sit.
“Chivalry, huh?” I said, half-grinning as I lowered myself.
He grunted. “Just don’t like the idea of your ass freezing to death before sunrise.”
I smoothed the jacket and sat, knees drawn up, the helmet beside me like a decapitated sentry.
Axel stayed standing, lighting another cigarette with a battered Zippo.
He inhaled so deep I thought he’d collapse a lung, then flicked the lighter shut and leaned against the bike.
He stared out at the city, like he could count every sinner and saint in the sprawl.
We sat in silence for a long minute. It was the kind of quiet that came before a confession.
“I don’t want to go back,” I blurted, hating the way my voice cracked on the last word.
He didn’t move, but his eyes slid over to me, pale blue and tired. “Nobody’s making you.”
“My father is,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “He’ll find me. He always does.”
He exhaled, smoke leaking from his nose. “You’re not him, Darla. Never have been.”