Chapter Two
Runa
So.
Even with perfect use, condoms are only effective ninety-eight percent of the time. So two in every one hundred people still get knocked up after a night of fun.
Guess which side of the statistic I fell on.
I probably should have known I was at my peak fertility. I’d been so out of my mind with a need for release that I would have climbed a stump if it looked remotely man-shaped.
Then there I was. At a fair. Trying to distract myself by testing my very rusty shooting skills.
And there he was.
Tall. Broad. Bearded. Hot.
One cute capybara, one trip to my hotel room, and one defective condom later, and I was half the country away, trekking a trail in Wyoming, when I started throwing up first thing in the morning. Then when I tried to eat. When I even thought about food.
Pair that with a suspiciously missing period, and I bought myself a test, got my confirmation, and felt my whole life shift off its axis.
There were options, of course. But the thing was, I was careful.
I didn’t indulge in casual sex often, and when I did, I was strict about protection.
I wouldn’t even change into certain positions because I knew there were some shitty guys out there who practiced ‘stealthing’ and removed the condom mid-act without you knowing.
I even made sure I watched to be certain they’d put the damn thing on right.
Then I lived with a false sort of safety because I assumed the things were practically bulletproof.
So if I was that careful about it and still wound up pregnant, I figured that was some sort of sign from the universe. That maybe it was time to stop dicking around, find some job I didn’t loathe with every fiber of my being, get a decent place to rest my head, and raise my baby.
I did look for York right after I found out. I went all the way back to that sleepy town in New York, haunted every dive bar, pub, restaurant, coffee shop, gym, and strip club I could find.
But there was no sign of him.
Not quite willing to settle down in that snow-covered town in the middle of nowhere, I’d opted to move to Philadelphia, where I thought I might have a lot more social safety nets that would allow me to work and raise a child without a partner.
I hadn’t been wrong either.
But, well, it wasn’t long after my daughter was born that some bad shit started to happen. Break-ins, creepy men hanging around, the feeling of being watched all the time.
It was enough to make me pack everything I could stuff in my car, leave a stable job behind—and a sweet older neighbor lady who was always over-the-moon to babysit—and head to a suburb.
Those were the perfect places to raise kids, right? Good schools. Well-lit parks. Clean, well-stocked libraries.
By the time the baby somehow turned three—despite me swearing just months had elapsed since she was born—I started to have that feeling.
The hairs on the back of my neck standing up.
The shadows in the corner of my vision. Strange cars that I never seemed to shake.
A door unlocked that I swore I’d locked.
A window open I’d have sworn I’d closed.
Little things.
Little enough things that I started to doubt my sanity.
Because being broken into or followed once in your life made a twisted kind of sense. Especially if you were a young, relatively attractive, single woman. It sucked, but that was the reality for a lot of women.
Twice, though? In two very different areas? It just felt a whole lot less likely.
So I’d taken myself to therapy, pouring out my fears and concerns.
Thankfully, I hadn’t had a dismissive shrink who just wanted to toss medication at me and tell me it was all in my head.
She’d confessed to having a friend in college who’d been relentlessly stalked by someone on campus, but because she had no proof of ill intent, no one would take it seriously. Until one night, he got in, assaulted her, and strangled her to death.
She said she would never tell me to brush it off as paranoia until I had exhausted the possibility that someone actually was following me.
So she’d suggested I get a security system at my little rental house, that I get a dash cam in my car, that I try to catch faces to see if any repeated.
For a few weeks, I thought maybe it was time for medication.
Then, reviewing footage, I saw them.
The same three faces, time after time, just in a rotation, never the same person two times in a row.
It had been the same shrink to help me escape, unseen.
She’d let me sign over my car to her, then bought one cheap, paid in cash, and gave it to me.
Then, when I’d been out driving around with my usual tail, she’d gone into my house, packed up everything she could, met me after I shook the tail, unloaded the bags and boxes into my new car, gave me a burner phone with only her number programmed, and begged me to stay in touch.
I didn’t realize she’d left an envelope full of cash until I landed at a motel that rented out by the month, to give me a place to plan my next move. It’d been enough to get me another apartment.
But I barely got six months that time before I spotted some familiar faces.
I’d tried the cops. Showed them all the footage I had, begged them to do something. But got nowhere.
So I moved.
And moved.
And moved.
Any sort of stability I’d wanted for my daughter flew out the window when I was just trying to keep us safe.
Because it became increasingly clear with each move and subsequent discovery of us again, that these guys did not have good intentions.
There were two times when I’d nearly been run off the road in the middle of the night.
Once, I’d taken my iced tea out in the fridge, only to smell something really off with it.
When I’d poured it out, there was a distinct, strong, maple syrup scent to it and a slight bright green tinge to the liquid.
I knew enough about antifreeze to be sure that was what was in my drink.
Then, well, then there was what happened in Montana. And Georgia. God, Georgia…
I shook those thoughts off.
All of that was why we were here.
In some small town on the outskirts of Miami.
A place where I’d needed to slam on my brakes to avoid colliding with a freaking Burmese python so big it looked like it could tangle with a crocodile…
and win. Where I’d seen a crocodile sunning itself on the beach of a water feature on a golf course.
Where an iguana had been lounging on a fence at the gas station.
Basically, it was animal kingdom around here.
An odd place, I decided, as I listened to my little girl belt out one of the songs from her princess movies in the backseat, for a New York state native—who, by all accounts, looked the part of a lumberjack—to decide to settle down.
But when the tip had come in, finally, after years of nothing but the occasional prank call, this was where they’d said to look.
Once I got down here and started asking around, it hadn’t been long before someone had a direction to send me in.
I honestly wasn’t even sure what I was seeking with him. All I knew was I was alone with a helpless little girl, afraid, and running out of options.
And the man who fathered that sweet little girl in her princess dress—hideous, oversized, brightly colored costume ‘princess’ jewelry included—had pulled two knives and a gun off of his body before we’d fallen into bed.
That seemed like the kind of person who might have an idea or two about how the hell to get out of the situation I was in.
Or, you know, lend me a gun and enough bullets to handle it myself.
Not that I was thrilled at the idea of killing anyone. But I would do whatever it took to keep my daughter safe.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I pulled up to the address I’d been given at a bar in the nearest town by a pretty redhead who seemed to know York more than in passing, but a pretty little two-story home was not it.
For a quick moment, there was worry that I was crashing into his life with a wife and kids.
It was the kind of house you raised a family in.
Bright pink, red, and yellow hibiscus flowers poured out of the front flowerbeds, a couple of scattered bikes lay on their sides on the lawn, and what looked like a water gun sat at the top of the driveway.
That didn’t explain, though, the line of motorcycles. Or the fancy sports cars. Or the random man in the front yard who was weeding the front flowerbed in the most inefficient way possible—bent over at the waist with his ass in the air.
Something across the street drew his attention, making him turn, glistening six-pack and all, and smile before jogging off in that direction, offering me a wave as he went.
I watched him join a group of older ladies sitting in beach chairs with umbrellas, mixed drinks in glasses that resembled, well, penises, and books on their laps.
“Are we getting out now, Mama?”
I plastered a smile I didn’t feel on my face. She deserved positivity. She’d been nothing short of an angel when it came to all these ‘road trips’ we went on. Even when it meant sitting in her car seat for ten or twelve hours a day.
“Hopefully!” I turned back to her. “But I need to go talk to my friend first, okay? You’re going to stay here.”
“Can I listen to Frozen?”
“Of course you can.”
I ejected the Aladdin soundtrack and shoved in the Frozen CD.
Yes, CD. Because fear had made me too paranoid to do anything like open an account with a streaming service that might, somehow, lead back to me.
We were an almost exclusively analog family these days.
Which might have been for the best for both of us, but I hated that it was forced on us.
“Okay. I’ll be right back,” I told her, passing her a lollipop, then cranking up the music, wincing at the song that seemed to scratch across my brain, I’d heard it all so often.
With that, I climbed out of the car.
My shirt stuck to my back with sweat, thanks to the air in the car barely spitting out any cool air, so I’d directed it all to the backseat to keep my girl cool.
The humidity had my head starting to sweat, making my hair stick to my neck too as I walked up the front path.
My lips curved up at the sight of a very in-depth hopscotch board drawn in chalk.
Nerves shot through me as I raised a hand to ring the bell.
But it wasn’t York who answered the door.
Nor his wife. Or kids.
This guy was tall and on the thinner side with black hair and a matching beard, dark eyes, gauged ears, and a hoop nose ring. Hot in an alternative way.
My first feeling was, oddly, relief. Because if this wasn’t York’s house, I was saved from one very awkward conversation.
But then the rocker guy stepped aside.
And there he was.
Looking just as good as I remembered. He was tall, broad, and fit, with brown hair and a full beard that he took good care of. He still had that serious, slightly intimidating air about him, too.
Good, I tried to tell myself, that was what I wanted.
Only, I suddenly couldn’t think. Or breathe. Let alone tell him why I was there.
“Runa.” He sighed out my name, and I was reminded of how he’d done something similar when he’d been buried deep inside me, when I’d been trembling from one orgasm as he drove me toward another.
But his gaze slid from me to the car in the driveway, then back.
I saw the wide-eyed realization.
“Fuck.”
I didn’t know the man well enough to know if that was simply surprise, worry, or anger.
“I think we need to talk.”
That was putting it mildly. But I’d forgotten my carefully rehearsed speech I’d come up with to say to him when I finally found him.