Page 2 of Her Dragons

Wherever she was going, I didn’t want her to go on feeling this way.“My name is Jake.Jake Hudson.My friend here is Alex Duvall.”I looked up at Alex, cracking a smile, silently asking him to look sincere to her.He cracked a slightly embarrassed smile of his own.I knew Alex well enough to know he was even more uncomfortable playing the “gallant rescuer” than I was.“We meant to help, that’s all,” I assured her.“You don’t have to be afraid.”

The brunette sobbed on, “I didn’t want anyone to know I was in the park.I just wanted to listen to some music and relax for a while before I left town.It would help my nerves if I could just rest and listen to some music.I love music.That was all I wanted.Then I’d go to the train station and get out of town, go somewhere — anywhere — and maybe he wouldn’t…”A sudden spike of fear seemed to drive itself into her, making her voice catch, making her stop mid-sentence.She stared at us in sudden silence, as if somehow, she had said too much.

But in saying just those last words, she had said something after all, and it made me want to know more.“Maybe he wouldn’t what?Who’s ‘he’?The one you’re trying to get away from?”

“Please,” she said, the fear chasing away her tears.“I just want to get as much distance between myself and…and…him…as I can.”

Now I couldn’t let this go.I knew terror when I saw it, and it was there in the brunette’s eyes.“Who is he?” I pressed insistently, but as gently as I could.“What did he do?”

She looked up at both of us, warily, hesitantly, visibly frightened.She shuddered at the slip of the tongue that she’d made, and licked her trembling lips.

“You can tell us.Nothing will happen, I promise.We won’t get anyone else involved if you don’t want us to.”I looked up at Alex again.He had one hand on his hip and rubbed his neck with the other.“Right, Alex?”

“Right,” my friend replied.“Nobody else has to know.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Lily,” she said, and shuddered just a bit less.

“Okay, Lily,” I said.“Who is it you don’t want to know you’re here?Who is it you want to get away from?”In my mind I asked, Yes, who is this bastard anyway?

“My boyfriend,” said Lily.“He’s awful.He hurt me.He kept hurting me.I knew he’d never stop, and sooner or later he’d get so angry he’d kill me.I had to get away.”She began to shed more tears.Hugging herself, shaking, Lily looked from me up to Alex and back to me and said in a hushed voice, “He…he’s…like you.”

Alex blurted, “He’s a Drake?He’s a Drake and he beats his human girlfriend?”

Lily nodded her head and covered her face, breaking into sobs again.

“Son of a bitch!” Alex said.

Now I had started to size up this situation.Leaning forward a bit, but careful not to reach out and touch Lily, I said, “So you’re running away from your boyfriend.Just getting on the train and going somewhere, not even knowing where.”

Lily uncovered her face.The tears glistened on her cheeks.“I don’t have anywhere really to go.He made me give up my friends, my family.I haven’t spoken to any of them in two years.I had a secret bag packed,” she glanced over at the duffle in the grass, “and I took some money and just snuck out while he was drunk and sleeping it off.When he wakes up, he’ll befurious and probably want to kill me.I have to get out of town and disappear.Please, I have to go.”

I nodded at her.“You’re right.You have to disappear.But not some random place where he might track you down.You’ll disappear — right here.”

“Where?” Alex asked.

Looking up at him, serious as a judge, I said, “With us.At my uncle’s place.”

“What?” Alex retorted, wide-eyed with surprise.

“WHAT?” Lily cried, more shocked at the idea than my friend was.

“If you go to some random place,” I explained, “you won’t know anyone, there’ll be no one to help you, and there will probably be ways for him to find you.If you stay here…you’ll know us, and we’ll help you.”

“But I don’t know you!” Lily said.

“Sure, you do,” I said.“We’re the guys who got that idiot to back off you just now.We’re the guys who won’t hurt you and won’t harass you.And you can stay with us and get your head together, and figure out something better than just blindly running away.”

Alex put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it a bit.“Um…Jake, you can see the girl is freaked out.And we are strangers, you know.”

“She’s better off freaked out with us,” I argued, “than she would be in a strange city, trying to hide from her Drake boyfriend who beats her.”Sincerely, I said to Lily, “Please.I’m asking you, please, let us help you.”

Lily was too beautiful and too gentle to be on her own, scared to death and in hiding.It was wrong, as wrong as the way her bastard boyfriend treated her.I wanted something to be right for her.Come on, Lily, I thought.Let us make this better.

“What do you say, Lily?” I asked, keeping my sincerity but trying not to pressure her.Running from a Drake who made her fear for her life, she didn’t need to be with two Drakes who made her leery.“You’ll be safe, and you won’t be alone.You’ll have help.”

She crawled over to her duffle and held it in front of her, almost as if it were a shield.

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