10. Charlotte

10

CHARLOTTE

I feel like I'm in some kind of alternate reality as I follow Ivan out of the small town that we drove through. I don't even know what it's called—I've been too distracted to look for any identifying signs. It's not as if it matters. I'm not going to run for a police station or commit any of this to memory to give someone as evidence later.

Now I'm an accessory to car theft.

The sentence keeps tumbling over and over in my head like a load of clothes in a dryer, the word theft the annoying buckle that keeps hitting the side. I didn't do any of the actual stealing, but I'm driving it, and I didn't do anything to stop it. If we get caught, the only thing that will get me out of this is more lies. Lies about Ivan, specifically, that even though I'm angry with him, I don't want to tell. I don't want to make up stories about him threatening me, or violently abducting me, or making me do this.

I also don't want to go to prison for stealing possibly one of the ugliest cars I've ever sat in.

I feel numb as I follow Ivan out of the town, down a street that's so dark I almost can't see the lines, until we get to a long stretch of wooded road that he pulls off of, following a trail that I don't see until the headlights are shining directly on it. Every bump jolts the car, and I wince as I follow him, rattling around until he finally comes to a stop.

He gets out, illuminated in the lights, and I hate that even now, every time I see him again, my heart jolts a little in my chest. He's unfairly gorgeous, the kind of man that I've sworn all my life didn't interest me, only to find out now that I was apparently lying to myself the whole time.

Women like bad boys, and I guess I wasn't an exception to that after all. My breath catches as he walks over to my door, tapping on the window so I can roll it down.

"Wait here," Ivan says. "I'm going to take my car a little further in, make it harder to find. I'll come right back. Turn the lights off."

I obey without a word, even though I want to argue. There's no point in arguing, other than that it would feel good, and right now, I'm not even sure that that's true. Right now, I think it might feel the way that squeezing something like a hangnail feels good—it would hurt, and make things worse in the end, for a momentary relief of pressure.

Instead, I sit there with the headlights off, the darkness all around me feeling as if it's closing in, sipping at my water bottle as if there's nothing wrong. As if it's actually alright , the way Ivan said earlier, which was absolutely laughable.

Nothing is alright. It might not ever be again.

I've never been afraid of the dark, and I'm grateful for that as I sit there in a strange car, waiting for Ivan to come back. I have the momentary, insane thought that maybe he's left me, that maybe he decided to abandon me here and go off on his own, but the idea feels oddly ridiculous.

Whatever lies Ivan has told, whatever awful things he's gotten me caught up in, I believe one thing. And that's that he wants to keep me close, because he believes it can keep me safe.

It's the only thing I have to hang onto right now, and that thought makes my eyes burn again, so close to tears that I lean my head back against the seat, closing them to try to stave off another wave of crying. I don't think I can take anymore. Not even on late college nights studying for exams do I remember ever having been so exhausted.

When I open my eyes again, I see Ivan walking towards me. Or at least I think it's Ivan—a dark shape moving through the trees towards my car, just a silhouette in the thin moonlight. My heart thumps in my chest for a different reason—ironic, since I was just thinking that I wasn't afraid of the dark. But there's a number of men looking for me now that could be that shape walking towards me right now.

The urge to turn on the headlights and see who it is, is strong, but I brace myself instead, ready to throw it into reverse and hit the gas if anyone other than Ivan appears out of the shadows. My hand clenches around the gearshift, my other white-knuckling the steering wheel, and I don't realize that I'm holding my breath until the shape gets close enough for me to see features—and I see that it is Ivan, after all.

He taps the window, and I open the car door, almost falling out in my hurry to get outside. The chilly evening air hits me like a slap, and as I look up at the sky briefly, I wonder what time it is. The sky has that strange light that it sometimes gets after midnight, and there's that feeling in the air when the world is still around you, and it feels like you're the only one awake in all of it.

"Charlotte." Ivan's hand touches my arm, and I almost jump out of my skin. "We need to get going."

"I—yeah." I run my hands through my hair. "I'm just tired. It's making me delusional, I think."

"I'm pretty tired, too." Ivan lets out a heavy breath. "We need to keep going for a little while. Next town we get to, we'll stop for the night. Or what's left of it, anyway."

I nod, walking around to slide into the passenger's seat. Ivan is silent as he pulls back out onto the road, turning on the headlights a moment later. The roads are empty, and he drives the speed limit, wordless, as he stares out at the road ahead of us.

I think I doze off for a little while, because before I know it, Ivan is pulling into another darkened parking lot, this time in front of an L-shaped, two-story motel that's very much like the last one we left behind. I've never stayed at a place like this in my entire life, and now I've been to two in one day.

I can't help but wonder how many more of these I'm going to see before this is all over.

I can see in the way Ivan moves that he's exhausted, that he's pushed himself harder than he should have, and I know I shouldn't care. I should be glad that he's suffering in some way, too, after what he's put me through, but I'm not.

It feels like I can't quite match up all the versions of this man, I think as I follow him to the small window where he pays cash for a room and gives the clerk fake names for us both. There's the man at Masquerade, and Venom, and the Ivan I went on dates with in Chicago, and then there's this Ivan, the one who I have a feeling is probably the closest version of his real self. And that's what scares me, because this Ivan, the one who seems to be neither bad nor good but some combination of the two, a bad boy with not quite a heart of gold, but maybe of very-tarnished silver, is a man that I sometimes like and sometimes hate—and one that I don't know if I really want to leave behind.

A man that I also want, despite everything he's done. It hasn't changed my attraction to him, which I proved in spades this morning. I want to blame him for that, but as he threw back at me earlier, I knew at least part of what I was doing when I fucked him this morning. I didn't know all of it, but I knew enough that I shouldn't have let it happen again.

But I won't let it happen again now , I tell myself as we walk into the small room. Ivan yanks the drapes fully shut as soon as we walk in, flicking on the light in the tiny bathroom and next to the bed on the far side, but leaving the main light off. He drops his duffel bag on the floor, moving purposefully and quickly around me as if I'm not even there, as he latches the door with the chain on the side and then drags the worn armchair next to the window in front of it, shoving it firmly up against the door.

"It won't do much if anyone finds us here and gets the room number," he says heavily, his words slow and almost slurred with exhaustion. "But it will slow them down. Buy me a few seconds to wake up and get my gun."

The word gun jolts me. I watched Ivan shoot it at his own brothers earlier, but it still hasn't fully sunk in. I'd never even seen a gun in person before today, other than glimpses of them on police officers' hips. Now, the one that Ivan sets on the nightstand next to the bed is real and violent, like a snake coiled up next to where I'm going to sleep.

"Get some rest," he says quietly, walking past me again to the closet, where he folds back a door to take out an extra pillow and thin blanket. "We need to be back on the road early."

I wrap my arms around myself as I sit down on the edge of the bed, feeling cold even though the room is actually too warm, even for the autumn night. Should I leave my clothes on to sleep? I think as I numbly tug the blankets back, and almost laugh out loud at how ridiculous the thought is. Ivan knows parts of me more intimately than some of my actual boyfriends have gotten to know them. I've let him do things with me that I've never done with anyone else. The idea that I should sleep in my jeans because I'm mad at him is ludicrous.

Still, I can feel his eyes on me as I turn around and start to unbutton them, and the warmth that slides over my skin, banishing the chill I felt a moment ago, makes me wonder if I should have anyway. I start to tell him to look away, but that seems like it would make it worse, by acknowledging the fact that I can feel him watching me.

A tingle runs down my spine as I push my jeans over my hips, and a different feeling replaces the discomfort, a petty feeling that I let myself relish for just a second. I bend over a little as I slide my jeans off, letting his t-shirt that I'm still wearing ride up my waist, so he can see the curves of my hips and ass in my cotton panties as I kick off the jeans and bend down, reaching to pick them up off of the floor.

Behind me, Ivan is silent and unmoving, until I think I can hear him audibly swallow. I straighten, his shirt falling back down around my thighs, and I can imagine what he's thinking. How badly he wants to cross the room right now and grab me, bending me over the bed with a hand on the back of my neck as he pulls my panties to one side. As he?—

I hear the sound of him shuffling, shaking out the blanket, and the fantasy breaks. Not a moment too soon, because I can feel the hot throb of arousal between my thighs, the dampness there as I yank back the covers the rest of the way and slide quickly into bed. The sheets are cold, chilling my heated skin, and I drag them all the way up to my chin, looking away from Ivan as I roll onto my side towards the window.

My face feels hot. I'm embarrassed that I let myself think about it. That I wanted that petty moment of power over him, and instead ended up just as turned on. Just as painfully aware of the fact that he's going to be sleeping inches away from me on the floor.

I feel a different kind of throb at that thought, one of guilt. Ivan is the one who is going to be driving us across several states, and he's sleeping on the floor. He shouldn't be, but I don't want to sleep on the floor either, and after this morning, there's no way we're sleeping in the same bed.

I know exactly what would happen, if we did.