Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Imogen

"Just have one drink…" Mike had slurred once we arrived several hours later at their camp site.

I didn't want a drink. I didn't want to drive them all the way out here, only to be met by a round of ragged cheers from the other idiots Phil and Mike were drinking with for the weekend. I definitely didn't want to be the only woman here. Phil had lied, what a surprise. It'd taken everything I had not to grab their shit and just toss it out on the ground when we arrived and then take off in a spray of pebbles. Instead, fucking Phil suggested I come and have one drink and Mike grabbed onto the idea like a pit bull might his target. Then I was faced with the same dilemma.

Say no and risk Mike getting angry. I couldn't give a shit if he yelled at me anymore—that part of me well and truly dead—but it was the bullshit that came afterwards. I wouldn't put it past Mike to try to prevent me from leaving, lurching into the path of my car and waving his arms around, relying on my innate desire not to run a man down to stop me from going anywhere. It was Mike's unpredictability that attracted me to him once, so it was ironic that same tendency was what ended things.

But not right now.

I'd learned to be patient, hadn't I? No one was more patient than me, so I could appease him now and then be on my way.

"One drink," I said firmly, really meaning it, but that's not what he heard. His grin made clear he was happy he was getting what he wanted. "I've got a long drive home…"

He didn't listen to me. Why would he when he had the shouts of his workmates and friends to hear as we approached? Some of the faces were familiar, some weren't, but that didn't matter. They all bayed like huskies that were about to go for a run, their loud voices like nails scraping across a chalk board, all fusing together to form this utterly masculine cry that set my teeth on edge.

Why didn't I just turn tail and drive away? Why did I keep giving Mike what he wanted? I'm sure most people would struggle to understand it, but I did. He'd made clear in every aspect of our lives just how hopeless it was.

When we got our first apartment together, I'd gloried in the chance to play house, making the rented space our own, right up until he did the same. His mother went to great pains to explain that she'd never allowed him to live like a slob when he was at home, but that meant my pleas for help with the housework were just seen as an extension of his mother's nagging. So, he treated our apartment as his. His dumping ground, his rubbish bin, his cocoon of crap that he buried himself down in to sleep once he was done partying with his friends.

I'd gone along with it for a while. His friends seemed so much more exciting than mine, the alcohol, the drugs, the sex all promising one long stream of fun. Instead, he had all of those things, and I was forced to adult—because we were evicted from our first apartment. His parents dismissed us when we came knocking at their door for help. And mine? They closed the door, making clear that everything they'd predicted would happen when I first started going out with Mike had come true. I needed to get myself out of this situation, and that's what I intended to do.

"Here ya go!"

Mike pressed a beer into my hand despite the fact I couldn't stand the stuff. I looked at the green and silver can, seeing the condensation bead on its surface and wondered if he remembered a single thing about me.

It wasn't always like this, I thought, as I sank down onto a log set up by the fire. When we were still at school, he was sweet, attentive, and funny, but also reckless and completely unbowed by teachers' authority. When he pushed back against their demands, I imagined myself doing the same. I never dared to, which was perhaps why I took a sip of the beer, suppressing a wince at the bitter taste.

"So, how's work, Imogen?"

I stiffened when Phil came to sit beside me. Not close enough to alert Mike, but still. What the fuck was he doing near me? Every muscle in my body tensed and I wasn't sure why. Phil was creepy. Somehow I knew that, even though he'd never done a thing to me. My eyes dropped down, eyeing the space between us before his insistent gaze demanded an answer.

"Good. How's Mary and the kids?"

He had a wife, a family. I held that fact up in my mind, as if that would form a safe barrier between us. Of course, he had to destroy that.

"Mary?" I heard the scorn in his voice and that made me shrink down smaller. "Wouldn't fucking know, would I?" Before Mike, I would never have believed someone could drink a mouthful angrily, but its what Phil did right now, his throat almost spasming around the long swallows of beer. "She took off with the kids."

Don't look at him , a small voice inside my head screamed. Don't talk to him. Just shut up and drink the damn beer ? —

"Took off…?" The words fell out of my mouth, and Phil's ugly smile went with it as I watched him drop the mask. Anger, real, hot, immediate anger burned in his eyes and somehow intensified when he stared at me. I wasn't his wife, I wanted to say, nor his child.

"Up and left in the night, the fucking bitch, taking my kids with her. No idea where the fuck she went." Asking that question was like lancing a boil, all this poisonous goo oozing out of him as he spoke. "Blocked my number. Can't trace her on my phone." He held up the device, like tracking your family was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. "Just fucking gone without even a note to say where she went. Fucking bitch."

He'd already said that last bit, I wanted to say, but thankfully my mouth remained closed.

"But you wouldn't pull something like that, would you, Imogen?"

Did he know? My rational mind and terrified heart got into a furious argument inside me. There was no way he could. I'd left no sign, nothing to alert Mike, let alone Phil, as to what I intended. I just stared, and the longer the silence stretched out, the uglier his expression got, until I was forced to my feet. Running was not the right thing to do—I knew that, but I moved anyway.

"Mike." My ex continued to chortle along to what the guy next to him was saying. "Mike!"

"What?"

Had he ever loved me? I'm sure he'd bemoan me leaving him, just like Phil did Mary to his mates, but in Mike's heart, I'm not sure he actually cared. Not having someone to mother him, he'd miss that, but that was about it. Because right now, he gazed up at me with all the interest one might a fly or mosquito. I was annoying and he just wanted me to go away so he could enjoy himself.

I was happy to oblige.

"I'm going." I kept my voice deliberately calm and even. "I'll be back on Sunday?—"

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

For someone who pressed upon me that I needed to stay for one drink, he certainly didn't care that I was leaving now. Instead, he gave me his blessing with a wave of his hand, and I took it, turning on my heel and striding off to my car. Every step took me closer to freedom. If I got behind that wheel, I'd tear out of here and drive twice as long if that's what it took to get me home. To my real home, my new apartment in a shitty block in a not-so-great part of town, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be away from here, from Mike, from Phil…

As if summoned, I heard my name called out, and when I turned around, there he was.

"Where you off to, Imo?"

Imo was Mike's nickname for me because he was too slack to say my entire name, not Phil's. He didn't really pay too much attention to me before this, so I couldn't work out why he was using my nickname now.

Except I did.

Some deep down, instinctive part of me knew. Watching him stalk closer in the shadows, that sly smile took on a whole other meaning.

It feels like every woman's mother has the talk with her at some time. Don't wear this, do this, act like this, say this, lest you get hurt. She passed down the unspoken truce women formed with men. As long as we didn't step out of line, we were safe.

Except that was never true.

Fight or flight were the terms used to explain people's responses to a threat, but that had been expanded to ones that seemed to represent the experience of being a woman. Freeze, which I did now, not sure what I was seeing or what was happening, and fawn.

That response was what explained why I said yes to driving Mike out here. It's why I'd hoped to be out of our place before he came home. Avoid conflict, avoid fight, avoid any more threats to my mental health. I always walked free of every fight without a scratch on me physically.

But mentally?

I was tired, wrung out by my lack of options, of having to paddle as fast as I could just to keep my head above water, and now Phil was going to make himself my problem? My key slid between my knuckles, a trick I'd learned from a PE teacher when she earnestly tried to teach us girls self-defence. I think I was supposed to stab him in the eyes, or was it the groin, if he got too close? A faintly hysterical giggle built in my chest at my inability to decide.

"Home," I replied finally, defiantly. "I'm going home. I'll be back?—"

"You won't be back." His tone was so different that it made me peer into the darkness. The body shape was the same, but that venomous sneer? Surely that came from someone else.

"I will," I said. "Sunday afternoon, right? Right, Phil?"

I was bargaining with some dickhead my boyfriend hung around with instead of running. My heart told me with every frantic beat: Get the fuck away from here and into your car before… My train of thought came to an abrupt stop.

"Whaddya doing, mate?"

Where the hell had these men come from, and why were they forming a wall between me and Phil? I didn't have any answers, but I was strangely grateful. Each one of them was tall, massive, their broad shoulders blocking out the flickering fire beyond. This intervention from three good Samaritans meant I could've made a run for it, but instead, I just stopped and stared. The dark haired one asked the question in a tone just as dark as Phil's, yet somehow I wasn't scared. Perhaps because right now, my enemy's enemy was my friend. Then the tallest one, a guy with reddish brown hair turned around and bent down to meet my eyes.

"Hey, I'm Kyle." He offered me a hand the size of a dinner plate, but I just stared at it. "We're going to get you out of here."

"Where?" I squeaked.

"Away from this dickhead…" Relief, sweet relief washed through me, but still my heart beat frantically. "And to wherever you want to go. Take my hand if you want that."

Grabbing one man's hand to get away from another had to be stupid, and yet I found myself doing just that because I was out of all other options. Mine was tiny, gripped tight as his fingers closed down around my hand. Phil and the other guys' voices started to rise, their shouts far louder than the music pumping through the campground, but Kyle whisked me away from all of that. Crouched down low, he hurried me away using moves I'd seen bodyguards use in movies. I didn't take a full breath until I felt the cool metal of my car's door under my fingers.

"You OK?" Kyle asked, his strange honey-coloured eyes staring into mine. "How we feeling here…?"

He was asking for my name I realised belatedly.

"Imogen." That was blurted out. "I'm Imogen."

"OK, we're all good now, Imogen. You're safe now."

Safe, that was the word my mind baulked at, rearing inside my head like an untamed horse. I straightened up, forcing myself to take slower, more even breaths.

"Of course I'm safe." I peered past his massive shoulder, saw the shadowy shapes there, but I couldn't work out what was happening. The noises made clear I didn't want to know. "Nothing happened."

"Didn't it?" He watched me so closely it was almost eerie. Men only seemed to fixate on you when they wanted something and I couldn't work out what that was right now. "So that man wasn't making a nuisance of himself?"

A no sat right on the tip of my tongue, ready to be said, but I didn't. Instead, my hands slid down my arms, then my legs, something Kyle watched the entire time. No bruises, no sore spots, nothing to make me think Phil had overstepped a line, but… Why wasn't that enough? Why did the lack of physical injury not placate me?

"He…" I fought to form a response, my mind unable to come up with anything. "He…"

"He's sorted for now. Are you alright?"

The other two men who'd stepped between me and Phil jogged over, eyes shining. One wore glasses and had the same honey-coloured eyes that Kyle did, making me wonder if they were brothers. He had a t-shirt with a superhero logo on it, but his slightly nerdy facade was at odds with his build. The t-shirt was stretched tight across a broad chest, his bicep muscles popping as he pushed his glasses up his nose, but it was the other man who's appearance caught my focus.

Pale blue eyes, they were the same colour as Phil's, but entirely different in his face. Now they were like lasers, cutting through the darkness and into my eyes.

"Are you?" he demanded in a growl of a voice.

His face was lean without an inch of softness in it, not even his lips, which were pursed right now, drawing attention to something else. A deep, angry, red gnarl of a scar came snaking down his cheekbone, dragging the eyelid on that side down slightly. Staring at the scar was wrong, I remembered that as I saw his cheeks flush.

He was embarrassed. That I could make such a massive, strong, good-looking man feel like that filled me with an odd sense of power, right before shame slammed in.

"I'm fine." My voice was all fluttery, making a mockery of my words. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Really, I'm fine. I just need to get home."

"Home with him?" Blue eyes demanded.

"No, he's not my boyfriend." The three men's frowns deepened. "Actually none of them are." My breath was coming in faster and faster. "I'm moving out tonight, so thank you, but I'm going to go now because its a long drive home."

"We'll help."

Glasses guy sounded so sweet, and then he blinked, as if shocked by what he'd just said.

"Sorry, I'm Lucas, that's Kyle." My first rescuer nodded. "He's Asher. We'll… Let us help." He glanced back at the party going on before returning his focus to me. "That's why you were sneaking away, right? To get moved out before your… not-boyfriend realises."

God, if they'd worked it out, so would Mike.

"Um, yeah?—"

"So we'll help you." Asher was the extremely intimidating one, something that only intensified as he grabbed a card from his wallet and held it out for me to look at. "That's what we do. We provide security for women and children getting out of domestic violence situations."

"Oh, well…" I went to press it back into his hand, but he refused to take it. "That's not me." I smiled but it came out as an ugly grimace. "No domestic violence here. I just need to move out?—"

"Without him knowing." Kyle nodded slowly, looking a little sad. "Well, rather than argue semantics, how about you let us help you? You'll be out of your old place and into the new one before it gets too late and then…" I watched his Adam's apple bob. "You'll be safe."

That word was all it took to convince me. These men might be strangers, but right now I didn't care. Safe, I wanted that so much, so I looked up and nodded.

"Thanks, that would be amazing."