Chapter 39
NOAH
I’m on my feet. I’m moving to Rue. I’m not even awake fully.
And as I stumble into the spare bedroom, I sigh with relief. Rue looks startled, yes. But she’s alive and unharmed.
“What?” I breathe out. “What’s wrong?”
“Look…” She gestures to the drawer. “Bill is… Bill is not a good guy.”
I lean over the drawer, catching the photographs. Of boys. And Bill. Bile rises in my throat, and I slam the drawer shut. “What the fuck. What. The. Fuck.” I squeeze my eyes shut and exhale.
But as my mind replays what I know about Bill, it makes sense.
I’ve been around way too many guys like him in prison.
“Noah…”
I shake my head, place my hand on the small of her back, and guide her back out into the hallway. “Don’t go in there again.”
“We should call the cops.”
I nod. “Yeah, I agree. We should. How are you going to do that?”
“We’ll call them when we leave. We’ll turn him in,” Rue’s voice is rushed. “That’s so sick, Noah. It’s so fucking sick!” Her voice pitches upward, and I want to comfort her more than anything else in the entire world.
But I can’t burn those images out of her brain.
“Those poor kids…”
“I know,” I pull her into me and pet her head. I don’t know what else to do. Despite having made a horrible mistake that night on the docks, Rue has no idea of the evil that lurks in the world. Some of it is so fucking heinous that there’s no point of return.
And I lived with them. But the truth is…
We all do. Those kinds of monsters are everywhere.
“I want to leave,” Rue pulls away from me, peering up at me. “We should just leave. I can’t stand to be here.”
“Let me get the bike going, and we’re out of here.” I kiss her head, breathing in the scent of her. There’s no arguing with her, and I don’t blame her for feeling the way she does. We have to leave anyway. We only have a few more days.
“I can’t just sit in this house, Noah,” Rue whispers, her hands trembling as she looks back toward that cursed hallway. “Every second we’re in here now, I feel like I’m suffocating. I feel like I have his dirt all over me.”
I know the feeling. Ten years in a cell makes you an expert on suffocating.
“Then we don’t sit,” I tell her, my voice confident. I keep my hand firmly on the small of her back, letting her feel the solid weight of me to ground her. “Go put your shoes on. We’re going to the barn.”
She blinks up at me, her green eyes glassy. “Right now? But it’s daytime. You said we shouldn't be out in the open—”
“We’ll go straight to the shed and pull the door shut behind us,” I interrupt, keeping my tone absolute. “Nobody can see inside. And I need your help, Rue. With this arm, I can’t wrench the carburetor off that Knucklehead by myself. You want out of here? You’re going to have to help.”
The shift in my tone works. I can see the frantic, spiraling terror in her eyes snap into sharp focus. Giving her a task—giving her a way out—is the only way to pull her back from the ledge.
“Okay,” she breathes out, nodding quickly. “Okay. Let me grab my shoes.”
Ten minutes later, we are slipping out the back door. The Texas sun is brutal, beating down on the flat dirt, but we don’t linger. We cross the yard in a fast, silent sprint and slip through the heavy metal door of the equipment shed.
I pull the corrugated steel shut behind us, plunging the barn into the familiar, dusty gloom illuminated only by the skylight.
The air in here is thick, smelling of diesel and old hay, but it’s a million times better than the sickeningly sterile scent of Bill’s house, knowing what happened there.
It makes me want to fucking burn it down.
I guide her to the back corner and pull the heavy canvas tarp off the Harley-Davidson.
“Alright,” I say, walking over to the rusted workbench against the wall and grabbing a socket wrench and a dirty rag.
I walk back and hand them to her. “First things first. We need to remove the spark plugs and check whether they’re completely fouled.
Then we drain whatever sludge is sitting in that gas tank. ”
Rue takes the heavy wrench, her knuckles white. She stares down at the engine block, entirely out of her element. “Noah, I don’t know hardly anything about motorcycles. Maybe just the basics.”
“That’s fine. I do. We’ll figure this out.”
I step up directly behind her. The space between the bike and the barn wall is narrow, forcing my chest flush against her back. She lets out a shaky exhale as my body heat surrounds her, her tension immediately bleeding into the cool metal of the bike.
I reach around her, my good arm brushing her waist, and point to the side of the engine. “Right there,” I murmur, my lips hovering just above her ear. “Take that bolt off.”
Rue swallows hard, leaning forward. She slips the wrench into place and pushes. The bolt is stubborn, sealed tight by a decade of dust and disuse.
“It’s stuck,” she grunts, straining her shoulders.
“Use your leverage,” I instruct softly. I place my right hand over hers, lacing our fingers together over the cold steel handle. “Ready? One, two, three. Pull.”
Together, we force the wrench down. A loud crack echoes through the barn as the seal breaks, and the plug loosens.
A triumphant little gasp escapes Rue’s lips. “We got it.”
“Yeah, we got it,” I say, my voice dropping an octave as I stay pressed against her. “Now unscrew it the rest of the way.”
For the next hour, the barn is filled with the rhythmic clinking of tools and the smell of stale gasoline. I guide her through every step, showing her how to remove the spark plugs, clear the gunked-up fuel lines, and scrub the grime off the carburetor.
We both need it right now. Disassociation is the only thing I know to do right now.
Her hands are completely covered in black grease. There’s a smudge of oil across her cheek. But the frantic, haunted look in her eyes is completely gone. She is laser-focused, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she scrubs a tiny brass jet with the rag.
“You’re a natural,” I tease lightly, leaning my hip against the workbench as I watch her.
Rue pauses, wiping the back of her forearm across her forehead. She looks down at her ruined, grease-stained hands and then over at the vintage bike.
“I didn’t think it would feel this... good,” she admits quietly. “Taking something broken and trying to make it run again. Plus, it’s how we get out of here.” She looks up at me, and the metaphor hangs heavily in the dusty air between us. She isn’t just talking about the Harley.
I push off the workbench and close the distance between us. I reach out with my good hand, ignoring the grease on her skin, and cup the back of her neck.
“We’re getting out of here, Rue,” I promise her, my thumb tracing the soft skin beneath her hairline. “I swear to God, we’re getting out of here.”
She leans her oily cheek into my palm, her green eyes locking onto mine with a fierce, unwavering trust that terrifies the absolute hell out of me.
“I know we are,” she says softly. And then kisses me.