Chapter 34-Bit
We’ve been riding for three hours, and my bladder is doing that frantic little panic dance it does when I ignore it too long.
The bikes have the wind whipping my hair into a nest behind my neck, the dark pressing in around us like a velvet sheet, and the only things breaking the night are the taillights bouncing on the asphalt and the steady clack of chains.
I can’t take it anymore.
I reach up and tap Roach’s shoulder.
He turns, grin wide and greasy in the halo of his headlight.
He smells like cigarettes and cheap cologne, and every time he breathes I taste iron.
“You need to find a gas station,” I shout, keeping my voice even.
He snorts. “What? Why?”
“I have to pee.”
The words spill out before I can groom them.
“Really bad.”
“Pee on the damn road,” he suggests, like it’s hilarious.
“No!” I snap, louder than I mean to.
Then, lower, pleading, “It’s that time of the month. I need a bathroom.”
I watch his face for any sign he’ll call bullshit.
It’s a good lie—part of it’s true—and I need him to believe it.
He stares at me for a beat that stretches like gum.
Then, with a reluctant roll of his shoulders, he motions to his boys, and they pull off onto the shoulder.
We coast into the dive of a gas station like a flock of crows landing on rusted metal.
The neon sign flickers above—OPEN—one bulb stubbornly dark.
A campfire of light from the pumps paints everything jaundiced and unreal.
My legs are jelly when we stop. I am so, so grateful for that bathroom right about now.
Roach kills his engine slow, like he wants to make the moment last.
He grins, and I jump off the bike. He follows, oily in his movements, as he turns and grabs my arm like a cat claiming a corner.
He’s got that smug, possessive swagger that makes the hair on my arms stand up like I’m about to be measured out.
“Don’t think I’m lettin’ you go in there asking for help, Doll,” he says, and there’s a pet name in his voice that makes bile climb my throat.
He thinks he’s smart. He’s not.
He doesn’t know what I know.
He doesn’t know Sawyer’s promise.
He doesn’t know the way my insides go quiet sometimes when I imagine him barreling home, all fury and focus.
Sawyer promised he’d come for me. I believe him.
That thought is a bright, stubborn thing I clutch to my ribs.
“Let me go,” I tell Roach when he fumbles for the ignition.
“Art, get the key for the toilet!” he barks.
When Art returns, he holds out the key, and my fingers are shaking but steady.
He hands it over to Roach. That fucker takes it, holds it high.
“I really have to go,” I repeat.
Then he drops his hand with the key—slow, like he wants me to beg.
I try to be casual as I take it, but he won’t relent.
He steps in close, fingers snagging my arm like a leash.
The smell of smoke is close, hot. He’s watching me like a man appraising a prize animal.
“Just makin’ sure you don’t try nothin’. And just so you know, a little blood won’t bother me none when we’re alone in the dark. In fact, I prefer it,” he says, and his hand slides to my hip.
His touch is invasive, like a hand that’s deciding what it owns. My skin crawls, and bile rises in my throat.
I try to pull away, and he tightens his grip, palm digging into me.
“Stop it,” I say, loud enough that the dark around us shifts and two of his friends turn their heads toward us, leaning on their bikes with idle menace.
One of them laughs, low and ugly.
Roach steps me toward the little convenience store door like I’m a puppet. He pats my pockets with a showman’s flourish, fingers sifting through the denim of my jeans as if he’s looking for treasure.
I swore I’d keep my phone on me. I did, tucked deep in a zipped compartment of my purse. But he checks the purse too, and the second his fingers find it he fishes the strap out like a proud hunter.
“Phone,” he says, voice casual. “Gimme.”
“No,” I say. My voice shakes but I stand up straighter. “You can’t—”
He gives me one of those slow, hateful looks.
“You think you’ll try to call someone while you’re in the bathroom? Cute.”
He’s not just talk.
He’s playing for control.
Taking my phone takes my lifeline out of the picture. I’ve learned a lot about men like him during the course of my life.
He’s a bad one.
Anger flares hot and stupid, then drains into something colder. I don’t fight him.
I let him take it because fights escalate, but bargains buy time.
When he’s satisfied, he pats my cheek—like I’m a child—then drags me to the bathroom door.
The fluorescent light outside the station bathroom hums. It smells like bleach, piss, and old coffee.
He checks my pockets again, fingers rummaging through the lining of my jeans, the air between us humming with that violation that can’t be erased.
I squirm under his touch, nails worrying the fabric where his hand rests.
“Stop it,” I hiss.
He leans in, breath hot on my ear. “I’m just makin’ sure you don’t try nothin’ clever.”
I swallow. I find my voice small but hard.
“You better just keep your hands off me.”
He laughs and jerks the convenience-store key from the door with a flourish, shoving it into my palm like I’m the one in charge.
It’s a trap on a chain, but I hide the tremor in my fingers.
He lingers until I step through the door, until the lock clicks and the fluorescent light flickers on my skin, until the bathroom stalls swallow me up and I have a second—precious, slippery—to breathe.
Inside, I lock the door, lean my forehead to the cool metal, and let the tiny tsunami of relief break over me.
My phone is gone. Roach has it.
My connection to help is with him—an ugly little bargaining chip—yet for all that’s been taken, I still have something they don’t.
Time.
And inside that cramped, fluorescent-lit stall, I start to breathe slower, thinking fast.
Sawyer said he’d come. I picture him driving like a man possessed, Micah and Benji cursing through the night, lights slicing through the dark.
I scrub my face with cold water, wipe the sweat and the smear of mascara, and try to steady myself.
The ache in my bladder is still there, real and humiliating, so, I do my business.
And beneath my racing pulse is a steadier beat.
Plan. Wait. Don’t give them another reason.
Outside the thin door, someone paces. Roach’s boots scrape the concrete.
I hear him talk, low and bragging, but I can’t make out all of the words.
Just the lewd ones. The disgusting ones. The ones that make me want to peel the skin off my face—because I swear to God if that man touches me, one of us won’t make it out alive.
My hands curl around my stomach until the tension in my fingers fades into pins and needles.
I close my eyes and whisper into the small, cool space, an invocation or a prayer.
Sawyer, hurry. Please.