Page 2 of Along for the Ride

“Please don’t,” she begs. “I got lonely, Gentry. Sometimes you’re gone for weeks at a time, and I don’t hear from you for days.”

She doesn’t know much about what I do for work, but she knows enough to understand why I can’t chat on the goddamn phone when I’m preparing for what I need to do. I’ve never been the type for goodnight texts or daily check-ins. I’m not a fucking lover boy. I’m a hard ass, and I’ve been a hard ass since the day she met me. She’s the one who said she loved me, regardless of my tough exterior, and I’m not the one who changed. I’m not the one who stepped out of our marriage.

“Fucking whore!” I scream before burying the blade in her chest and twisting.

A look of shocked betrayal crosses her expression, which is ironic since she’s the Judas. Right alongside my brother. Her eyes focus ahead of her, somewhere beyond me, and I drop her lifeless body to the floor. I rip the blade from her chest and turn its crimson tip toward my brother. Anger boils over and spills from me in waves.

“Did you have to fuck her first, Karson?”

He shrugs. Just fucking shrugs in the most Karson-esque way.

Deep down in his fucked-up heart, he thought he was helping me. But he’s a selfish fucking man. Karson does absolutely nothing unless he gets something out of it.

I step closer and throw my weight into him again. “Fuck you too,” I growl. “Fuck both of you.”

As much as I want to drive the knife into his chest, I can’t do it. We didn’t end up as murder-obsessed contract killers because we had happy childhoods filled with family dinners and trauma-free game nights. We’ve been through hell together, and Karson came out worse than I did. In his fucked-up way, I believe he was trying to do something for his older brother, and that’s why I let him live. That’s why I push the blade’s handle against his chest until he takes it.

Because we’re all we have at the end of the day, and nothing will come between us.

* * *

Leana

Diesel exhaust fills my lungs.If I cough too hard near an open flame, I’ll probably start a wildfire. Bus stops aren’t clean places, but they’re where girls like me end up.

Girls who flee from broken homes.

Girls whose mothers don’t believe them when they say their stepfather does unspeakable things to them.

I couldn’t stay in that house. My eighteenth birthday was fast approaching, so they also couldn’t make me stay. When I packed a bag and slammed the front door behind me, no one followed. No missing person reports were filed, either. I wasn’t missing. I was forgotten. I took one bus after another until I ran out of money and found myself on the other end of the country.

New York. The land of opportunity.

I’ve been here a week, and so far it’s more like the land where dreams go to die. I’m part of a homeless community that sticks near this bus station. Sometimes a few of the workers take pity on us and allow us to clean up in the bathroom, but only if we aren’t stumbling drunk or strung out on drugs. I don’t touch either.

I won’t lie and say I’m not tempted. When I see that faraway look in Greasy Tom’s eyes after he snorts a line or the deep sleep Chicken Wing slips into after shooting up, I crave that same escape. For a few hours, they aren’t homeless and hungry and dirty and lost. They’re gone, exploring some place in their mind that doesn’t involve whatever hell brought them here.

Yeah, I’d probably try it if any of them offered.

But they don’t. I’ve stayed clean and enjoyed the bathroom privileges a few times this week. It’s a fair exchange, I guess, but it’s still not enough. Something has to change.

I’ve thought about becoming a sex worker, but I haven’t even been propositioned since arriving. I’m no blonde goddess, but I’m somewhat offended that no one has asked how much for a handy or a quick trip to the Red Room Inn down the street. I’d probably blow the first guy who asked if it meant spending an entire night in a bed. I wouldn’t even mind getting roughed up a bit. It would beat the fuck out of the sweet love making all the high school boys wanted to do. Bonus points if it’s consensual.

“You need help, miss?” says a dark, smooth voice beside me. I turn my head and lock eyes with a handsome man. He’s tall, broad, and his tousled brown hair gives him a messy no-fucks-given look. He sits beside me, reaches toward my face, and tucks a strand of my blonde hair behind my ear, licking his lips as he meets my blue eyes again. “Too pretty of a girl to be out here on the streets,” he whispers.

What does a pretty boy like him know about life out here?

He unzips his jacket, and his hand disappears into an interior pocket. When he pulls out a little baggie with a round pill, I can look at nothing else. It’s as if he read my inner thoughts, as if he knows how much I’m craving an escape. My fingers move toward the bag, but he pulls it just out of reach.

“Ah, ah,” he scolds. “What would you do for something to take the edge off?”

Anything. I’d do fucking anything.

“What do you want?” I ask, but I find the answer by looking down at the mass straining against his zipper.

“Come to my car and show me what you’re willing to trade for a fix.” He leans into me and runs his thumb along my jaw. “Show me how little you respect yourself.”

I’ve spent my whole life respecting myself. Hell, my self-respect is what caused such a rift between me and my mother. But I can let that go. It hasn’t gotten me anywhere good so far.

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