Page 9 of Never Fall for an Angel

Something’s not right . . .

Slipping from the diner, I scurry back to my room, locking myself inside and pressing myself flat against the door behind me.

My heartbeat thuds painfully against the inside of my chest, sweat beading on the back of my neck.

They’re here. I don’t know how I know; I can just feel it.

“Fuck,” I grit, jumping towards my bag to start throwing my stuff in.

Only, I pause to check out the window and look around.

Nothing.

Am I being paranoid?

“Probably,” I answer the question out loud.

I’m exhausted. It’s been a week since I’ve had more than a couple hours of sleep wherever I can get it. I can’t keep doing this. This running. It’s been a month since the incident in Illinois and three since they almost caught me in Arizona. For all I know, he could have given up by now.

In the darkness of my bedroom, I can’t help but laugh.

Who am I kidding?

I’ve been running on borrowed time for almost a year.

I spend the entire next day looking for under-the-table job opportunities in my tiny little corner of Kansas. Short of blow jobs for truckers or selling coke for my neighbor three doors down, I’m well and truly fucked. Every place I visited wanted my social security number and real name.

How’s a fugitive supposed to feed herself in this country?

Now, I’m walking through the dark and desolate streets of Wichita at night to make my way back to my motel room on the outskirts of town. I’ve been walking all day, and I’m exhaustedand hungry. Luckily, June stopped by my room this morning with a bagel and told me to come see her before I went to bed. I genuinely don’t know what I’d do without her. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve spoken to someone who doesn’t want to kill me, and I’m eternally grateful for her feeding me. I can’t help but wonder what her life would have turned out had she had someone like herself as a young woman.

Everyone thinks innocence is lost when you become a woman.

They’re wrong.

It’s lost the first time you catch a glimpse of how the world really works. The first moment, you no longer feel like the center of your mother’s world. The moment the veil starts to lift and that crushing disappointment starts to wash in, replacing the whimsical wonder you’d once viewed in the world around you.

Like the little girl in front of me. Old enough to run and play on her own. Too young to do so without her mother. They just visited an old ice cream parlor for some late-night ice cream, and she runs to catch back up to her mother from petting a stray cat. Her mother is on her phone, not paying an ounce of attention in a world that would love to rip her daughter from her in the blink of an eye.

It happens to the best of us. We get comfortable in the mundane and forget that somewhere, someone is always watching, ready to take until there’s nothing left to give.

When she finally catches up, she grasps her mother’s hand tightly, and the mother jumps, surprised that her daughter wasn’t with her this whole time.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s what got me into the situation I’m in.

Comfort.

“Mommy!” the little girl squeals, laughing when the cat runs to catch up with them. I smile softly to myself, taking the next street and finally separating from them.

Unfortunately, I’m not paying attention until I’m alone on the street with a group of men on the sidewalk across from me.

Instantly, a chill slips down my spine when they stop talking, their eyes following me as I hug my jacket tighter around myself.

It’s wrong to assume. Maybe they’re nice men. Not all men are rapists, but . . . not all menaren’t, either.

—A fact that’s solidified for me as soon as one of them wolf-whistles.

The rest of the men snicker and a sinister silence sweeps through the air, the only sound my accelerating pulse in my ears.

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