Page 2 of Rules of Association

Reaching down, I pulled my cell phone out of my bra and brought up the text screen.

Me:Are you still in the city?

Pancake:Yeah.

Me:Can you come get me?

Pancake:Where?

I sent him the address and he immediately replied with:

Pancake:Ceci…

Pancake:I’ll be there in ten.

Me:Text me when you’re outside. Keep the car running.DON’TCOME IN.

He sent a thumbs up emoji.

Alright. Either his date was that bad or I had been here alongtime. Much longer than I’d wanted to be. Either way, I had ten minutes to figure out how the hell I was going to get out. Five of those minutes I bided my time, not wanting to wait outside in the cool Spring night and risk having one of those meaty guys grab me and pull me into an alley or something. Yet instead of taking the time to think about how I was going to make a run for it, I found my thoughts drifting to the man I’d just texted.

Nearly two years had gone by since my life had tangled with the second Ferguson kid to slip under my defenses, and in those almost two years I’d never even heard himtalkabout a girl let alone date one. Why had he waited this long to go out with someone? Had he even been out since we became friends? Or was this just the first time he decided to tell me about it?

It wasn’t that he wasn’t tall or broad or good looking as hell. He was definitely all those things. He just wasn’t really the date around kind of guy. It was strange to imagine he’d met someone so great that hehadto take her out right away. I wasn’t jealous or anything. It was just—no one got close to him that easily. No one butme. Or so I thought.

I found myself grinding my molars at the thought of it but was yanked out of the bad habit when the blaring sound of my phone ringing gave me a minor heart attack.

“Shit!” I hissed, fumbling with the device over my head as I laid on the ground. The combination of my clumsy fingers and my lame hand caused the phone to be unstable in my grasp. Before I knew it, it was barreling down at my face. The edge of it hitting me in the bridge of my nose and causing my eyes to water again. With a strangled whine I groaned, “Shit.”

“Hey! You hear that?” Someone said from outside the door. “I think she’s in the closet.”

Scrambling to my knees, I worked to get the phone toshut upas I mumbled angrily under my breath to the person on the other side of that call. “Really? Five minutes early? Learn to tell time, would you?”

Good news: He was here. Bad news: So were my new friends. I could hear them outside the closet door. Big boots coming closer and closer, ready to yank me out of there. To do what? I had no idea. At the very least they would pay me back for hitting their buddy.

I felt my chest go tight with dread as the booted footsteps got closer. For one stupid, helpless,wastefulsecond, I let myself imagine that instead of the ugly biker guys on the other side of the door, it would be him. That he had gotten out of the car to come get me and now we could go get some food and find some ice for my hand and watch TV all night like we tended to do.

But that was dumb, and I wasn’t the type of girl to be dumb and helpless when shit hit the fan. When shit hit the fan,Ihit the dumbass fan for spraying shit everywhere in the first place.

So I squeezed my eyes shut tight and let myself take three quick breaths that matched the rapid pace of my heartbeat, centering myself. All I needed was three minutes. Three minutes and I could be out of there. Three minutes and I could be in a car on my way home. Three minutes and I would be safe.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to the dingy light of the room beyond the closet door. Standing in front of me was the biker I had punched swinging the door open wide, and behind him were two other bikers who looked less angry and more amused.

“Hey—” Mean Biker barely got the rest of his sentence out as I charged upward from kneeling at his feet and rammed a hard knee into his groin. He doubled over with a groan that made him sound like some kind of animal, eventually sinking to the floor as he clutched his family heirlooms.

On my feet now, I hopped over the fallen man and looked to either side of me. I surveyed the room, which was the size of a coat room and was decorated with a dusty black desk, a wine-colored couch that had seen better days, and a black filing cabinet that looked stolen straight out of a 1970s bank office.

On one side of the room there was an open window. It was one of those small basement type windows and it was open because I had pried it open when I first ran in here, hoping they would think I squirmed my way through it already. On the other side there was the open door that led into the bar.

I blinked between the window and the door once, then twice, and then bolted for the window.

“Get that fuckin’ bitch!” Marshmallow Balls groaned to his boys.

The lackies followed me, albeit not all that urgently. But they were big and covered a lot of ground, meaning they didn’t really need much effort to catch me at the window. What they lacked however, were brains. An idiot could tell I didn’t really think I could pull myself through that tiny-ass window. As soon as the guys got close enough to the wall, I slipped underneath them, putting my short girl perks to good use, and sprinted toward the door.

Slamming the wooden door shut after me, I wished that God would just give me a fucking break and materialize a lock on the damn thing. He didn’t. But the universe had some mercy, at least.

The room was located at the end of a longish hallway, each side lined with doors. As I ran through it, I opened every single one of them, leaving them ajar and tangled behind me. Two broom closets, one occupied bathroom and a utility closet later, and I had myself a labyrinth.

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