Brittany
If Hell, Kentucky wanted to break me, it didn’t need thunder or fire.
It just needed a Tuesday.
The diner starts loud and ends louder, and somewhere in the middle I lose the thin thread of patience I’ve been clinging to for weeks.
I picked up extra shifts when I became homeless.
By six in the morning I’m already sweating through my uniform, coffee pot in one hand, order pad in the other, pretending I don’t hear the whispers when someone says my name too softly.
“More sweet tea, hon?” I ask a table of truckers who don’t bother looking at my face.
One of them finally does, slow and smug. Winking. “You working weekdays now, or you just keeping busy so you don’t gotta think?”
I keep smiling because that’s what girls like me do. We keep the smile even when it costs. We pour refills, call grown men “sir,” and act like we don’t feel the way the room leans in when it wants a story.
By noon I’ve been called sweetheart, darlin’, and something worse muttered under somebody’s breath when they thought I wasn’t listening. I move between booths on autopilot, balancing plates, counting tips, telling myself Elijah’s silence is probably just work.
Probably just church.
Probably not something else.
He hasn’t been around. Hasn’t answered a text in months. Not the one that said Are you okay? Not the one that said Did I say something wrong? Not even the one that was just a simple, stupid Hey.
I tell myself good men get busy. I tell myself men who go to church sometimes put their phones down. I tell myself a lot of things, because believing them hurts less than the other option.
After my shift at the diner, I head straight to the pawn shop, still smelling like grease and coffee and too many eyes. Lottie’s already there, Mason dragging his toy tractor across the tile like he’s plowing a field. He looks up when I come in and grins like I’m sunshine instead of a mess.
“Brit,” Lottie says the second she sees my face. “You look like you lost a fight.”
“Feels like it,” I mutter, and I don’t even have the energy to pretend I’m fine.
Becki’s at the counter today, eyeliner sharp, mood sharper. She’s no longer locked up at the Kings of Anarchy MC clubhouse. No longer their prisoner. Quite the opposite. She’s Property of Royal all the sudden. No more pining over their Prez.
Hell, Kentucky sure give’s me whiplash.
She watches me the way she always does now, like she’s waiting for something to snap, like she’s counting the days until Hell proves her right, and someone snatches me.
The afternoon drags. A man tries to pawn a rifle with the serial number filed off.
A woman argues about the value of her grandmother’s necklace like it’s a moral failing on our part.
The bell over the door rings too often, and every time it does my stomach jumps like it’s expecting someone to step through and end this whole slow-burn nightmare.
Elijah doesn’t come by.
Oaks doesn’t either.
That shouldn’t matter. It does anyway, because my brain is traitorous and my body keeps remembering what it felt like to be watched like I mattered, even when I hated it.
By the time we're home, Lottie tells me they’ve got an emergency meeting at the clubhouse and asks if I can keep Mason for the night, I’m too tired to argue.
“Of course,” I say. “We’ll build a fort.”
Mason cheers like I just handed him a winning lottery ticket. He runs in circles while I set up couch cushions and a blanket like it’s the most important construction project in the county.
After Lottie leaves, the house settles into quiet. I feed him chicken nuggets, read him a book about a bear who doesn’t want to hibernate, and let him fall asleep on my chest while I scroll my phone with one hand.
Still nothing from Elijah.
I type out another message, delete it, type again, delete again. The cursor blinks like it’s laughing at me. Eventually I give up, carry Mason to his bed, and tuck him in the way I wish somebody had tucked me in the last few weeks.
Then I head downstairs to the finished basement that’s been mine since Daddy called from Missouri and told me he’d met someone and sold the house and didn’t see the point in dragging things out.
Didn’t see the point.
I lie down on the pull-out couch, staring at the ceiling, and for a second I let myself imagine what it would feel like if someone fought for me the way Oaks did for a bit.
Then I hate myself for it. I told him to stop. He did. End of story.
Sleep takes me like a fall.
When I wake up, the air smells wrong.
Not like Lottie’s lavender detergent. Not like Mason’s baby shampoo.
Wood.
Old wood.
And something damp, like fishy.
I sit up too fast and my head spins. I blink hard, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing, because it can’t be real, and my body starts panicking before my brain catches up.
This ain’t the basement.
The walls are paneled in dark wood, the kind that belonged in hunting lodges in the seventies. There’s a mounted deer head above the doorway. A quilt folded at the foot of a narrow bed that ain’t mine.
For a split second, I don’t breathe.
Then everything hits at once.
The warnings. The missing girls. The note in my car. The way Pearly Gates smiles like it owns the county. The way people look at me like I’m a headline waiting to happen.
My heart starts slamming so hard it makes my vision pulse.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
I slide my legs off the edge of the bed and stumble to the door. The handle turns easy.
Too easy.
I yank it open and step out onto a small wooden porch.
And freeze.
Water.
Everywhere.
A lake stretches out in all directions, gray and wide under a cloudy sky. The cabin, or whatever this is, sits on stilts, a narrow dock jutting out to the right. Trees line the far shore like a wall.
There’s no road.
No cars.
No escape.
A noise claws up my throat. “No. No, no, no.”
I spin back inside, heart pounding so hard I think I might pass out.
They took me.
They finally took me.
Pearly Gates. Elijah. Someone. I don’t even know which version of betrayal hurts worse.
I back into the room and that’s when I see it.
A folded piece of paper on the small wooden table.
My hands shake as I grab it, because my body is already sure this is a ransom note or a warning or a list of rules I won’t survive.
The handwriting is unmistakable.
Blocky. Pressed hard enough to dent the paper.
Brit,
It ain’t kidnapping. It’s camping. Stay put. I’ll send a boat with supplies.
Oaks
For a second, I just stare at it.
Then anger explodes so hot it burns the fear right out of me.
“Camping?” I shout. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
A groan answers from somewhere deeper in the cabin.
I freeze.
There’s another room.
I move slower this time, every nerve screaming, and push open the door.
Oaks is sprawled on a narrow couch, boots on the floor, one arm thrown over his eyes like the light personally offended him. His hair’s a mess, his jaw shadowed, and he looks like the kind of man who can fall asleep anywhere as long as danger stays on his side of the door.
He squints at me. “You’re loud.”
“You kidnapped me!” I hiss.
He drops his arm and looks at me properly. “Jesus, Brit. Lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice?” My hands are shaking now, fury making everything tremble. “You drugged me? You took me in the middle of the night? What the hell is wrong with you?”
He pushes himself upright, rubbing a hand down his face. “Didn’t drug you. You’re just a heavy sleeper.”
My mouth falls open. “Excuse me?”
“Holler and I carried you out,” he says like he’s discussing grocery bags. “You didn’t even wake up.”
“You…” I choke on the word, because I don’t even know which part of that to fight first. “You can’t just decide I’m going camping and haul me across a lake like I’m a duffel bag! Strand me in a cabin in the middle of an ocean.”
“It’s Herrington Lake,” he says. “Not the damn ocean. It’s a floatel.”
It’s like float and hotel had a baby. Floatel.
“That ain’t the point! Might as well be. I can’t swim. There’s no boat.”
He stands, and even half-asleep he’s big. Too big for this small wood-paneled room. Too much of him, too close, too controlled.
“The club’s down here,” he says, voice lower now, all the humor gone. “We’re running leads on a girl who went missing two nights ago. Sheriff Dix ain’t worth shit. Pearly Gates property lines run close to the water leading here.”
My anger stutters, but it doesn’t die. It just changes shape.
“So you what?” I spit. “Thought you’d stash me on a floatel like I’m extra gear?”
His jaw tightens. “We didn’t want the old ladies sitting in town while this plays out. Too much danger right now. Too many eyes. So, we made it look like a good ol’ Kings of Anarchy MC camping trip.”
“And I’m what?” I shoot back. “An ol’ lady now?”
He exhales hard through his nose. “You’re someone I can’t leave unguarded.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“I know that.”
“Then stop acting like I do!”
He steps closer, not touching me, just crowding the air between us like he’s trying to block the world with his body. “You think I wanted to haul you outta a bed in the middle of the damn night? You think that was fun?”
“I didn’t ask you to worry about me!”
“I can’t stop,” he snaps.
The words hang there, raw and unfiltered.
We both go still.
He drags a hand through his hair like he regrets saying it but can’t take it back.
“Girls are going missing, Brittany,” he says, quieter now, like he’s forcing himself to stay calm.
“Not just rumors. Not just gossip. They’re gone.
And you got Pearly Gates sniffing around you and my wife frothing at the mouth and half this town thinking you’re mine. ”
“I’m not.”
“I know that.”
“Then why does it feel like I don’t get a choice?”
His eyes darken. “Because in this town, you don’t.”
Silence stretches between us, thick and charged. I fold my arms, holding myself together like a woman trying not to fall apart in a stranger’s floating cabin on a lake.
“You don’t get to decide I need rescuing,” I say, quieter now, because something in me is finally hearing him.
He studies me for a long moment. “This ain’t rescuing,” he says. “This is logistics.”
“Logistics?” I laugh sharp. “You sound insane.”
He takes another step closer, and this time his voice drops like it’s confession and warning all at once. “I’m attracted to you.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“What?” I whisper.
“You heard me.”
My cheeks burn. I hate that they do.
“That doesn’t give you the right.”
“I didn’t say it did.” His jaw flexes. “I want to fuck you, Brit. There I said it. I think about it more than I should. And I’m still married. So no, I don’t get to act on it because you’re not easy.”
My anger flickers, confused by the honesty.
“But that don’t mean I can just shut off the part of me that sees you walking around like bait in a county full of wolves,” he finishes.
“I’m not bait,” I say, and my voice comes out thin. “Not jailbait, either.”
“You’re young, innocent and on everyone’s radar,” he corrects.
“I have wants too you know.”
He shoots me a hard look.
I swallow hard. “Is your wife here?”
His mouth twists. “Yeah.”
The word hits strange.
“Then why am I out here?” I demand.
“Because if she sees you at the same dock as the rest of the club, it’s a statement.” He gestures around us. “This way, it looks like coincidence. Like you’re just some girl renting the cabin next door.”
“Just some girl.” I cross my arms. “You think she’ll buy that?”
“No,” he says honest. “But the rest of the club might.”
I stare at him, heart pounding for a whole different reason now.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I say. “You can’t keep showing up, dragging me into things, acting like I’m yours to protect.”
He holds my gaze, something fierce and complicated burning there.
“I know,” he says.
“Then stop.”
His mouth flattens
“I’ll try,” he answers.
It ain’t a promise.
And somehow, that scares me more than if it was.