Page 2 of Cupid's Alpha
1
Emilia
The manwith the shopping is just about to pull out onto the road when I run across the street.
“Hey!” I yell. “Hold up.”
He slams on the breaks and opens his window.
His face is rugged and a little bit scary. But there’s something about him that makes me think he’s not as mean as he looks.
“You okay, there?” he says.
I step up next to his window and smile. Suddenly I’m lost for words.
“I’m in trouble,” I say.
“What kind of trouble?” he asks.
I look back at my sister. She’s still sitting in the car. Her feet are up on the dashboard and her headphones are in her ears. She’s probably listening to some awful music or watching videos on TikTok.
“Big trouble,” I say.
Without meaning to, the words just come tumbling out my mouth. I tell him all about how Abbie was dating a guy that she thought was nice but turned out to be involved with some seriously sketchy shit. How she found a gun and a big bag of meth under his bed and confronted him about it. How he told her a bunch of lies, and she decided to follow him, only to witness his murder. And now the people that killed her boyfriend want her dead too.
“And now my cars broke down and the mechanic across the road says he can’t fix it and he sent me over here to you.”
“Mechanic?” the man says. “That place has been closed for months. Old Earl got drunk and drove his car off the road last Fall.”
I look back at the garage on the other side of the road. The windows are all boarded up. There's a tumbleweed casually blowing across the forecourt. Even the martini glass seems to have vanished.
“Weird,” I say.
The man raises his eyebrows, but he’s kind enough not to say anything else. He probably thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I am. The last twenty-four hours have been so damn wild, I feel like I’m losing my mind.
“So, what do you think?” I say. “Can you fix my car?”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty good at that kind of stuff. I’d have to take a look at it first, though. It depends what’s wrong with it.”
I chew my nails. It’s an old habit. Something I haven’t done in years. But if ever there was a time to pick it back up again, it’s now.
“These guys who are chasing us,” I say, “I’m worried they’ll catch up.”
The man steps out of his car. He’s even bigger than he looked from across the street.
His arms are so huge. I just want to reach out and touch him. He’s like Jason Momoa and Arnold Schwarzenegger had a baby.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he says, “you’re with me now.”
I glance back at my sister. She doesn’t seem to have a care in the world, and it’s her fault we’re in this mess.
“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t wanna be a bother.”
“Believe me,” he says, “you ain’t no bother.”
I chew my lip for a second and then decide it's no time to be worrying about this man's feelings. “Don't take this the wrong way," I say, "but I don't even know you."
He scratches his chin, thinking for a second. “You worried you might be running straight into the arms of a psychopath?” he says, a cheeky grin on his face.
