Chapter 9 - Delaney

9

Delaney

My body feels stretched and taut, like my veins are made of elastic and they’re being pulled, pulled, pulled, so tight that one slip will send me snapping back, crumpling to the floor with emotional whiplash.

Some prick deputy , the Wastelander had said. That could be anybody from the department, many of them just as corrupt and awful as my father. But I suspect it’s Aaron Flores. If Dad’s not here himself, he’d only send his most loyal henchman for something like this.

For something like me.

Ares’ grip on my arm is bruising. I wonder if he knows he’s holding me that tight. That he’s hurting me. He probably does. He just doesn’t care. Ares never cared. He’s just like the rest of them — Wastelanders, police, social services. Nobody ever fucking cares.

“Keep up,” he grunts. He yanks me around a corner, leading me deeper and deeper into the rabbit warren of a building. My thoughts struggle to keep up with our pace. Everything is slipping away faster than I could have imagined. Lilly’s sweet little face flashes into my mind and I stumble.

“Wait,” I blurt out, tugging back on Ares’ hold. My chest is tight. I feel the walls closing in. “Wait, just…”

“What? Fucking what?” Ares snaps. He lets me go, rounding on me in a flash. My resistance, that tightly stretched elastic, goes slack and I slam into his hard chest. For a moment, my vision goes blurry and I forget how to breathe.

“I…” Everything goes still as I stare up into those unfeeling gray eyes. Something runs through me. A jolt of electricity, a static shock fizzing along my nerve endings. I want to slap myself — remind myself that Ares is not the same man I felt that little spark of a burgeoning pre-teen crush for.

“I just…” I can’t get the words out. How can I convince him to help me? That my father has to die?

For a second, I think I see his eyes soften, like he’s somehow read my mind, glimpsed into my past and seen every horrible, soul-shattering thing my father has done to me, but then his hand finds my arm again. His grip is just as hard as before.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” he grumbles under his breath.

He drags me further down the twisting hall and through a storage room. Ares wrenches back a steel door and it groans with disuse. All of a sudden, we’re outside, sharp afternoon sun glaring down on us. I blink, trying to clear the fuzzy spots in my vision.

We’re behind the main clubhouse. There’s a dumpster to one side with broken lawn chairs and old wooden pallets stacked up beside it. A sagging chainlink fence separates the gravelled area from the woods and I’m surprised when Ares drags me straight toward what looks like a dead-end.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe,” he replies gruffly.

He pulls open a part of the fence that I thought had been secured in place, only now there’s a gap big enough for us both to squeeze through. He pushes me ahead of him.

“I’ve had enough of being fucking manhandled,” I say, and jerk my arm away. “God, do you all treat women this way?”

“You’re not a woman, you’re a pain in my ass.”

He plants his hand in the center of my back and shoves. I stumble into the tall grass on the other side of the fence. Ares ducks through behind me and folds the wire fencing back into place.

Ahead of me is a narrow track of dried, flattened grass leading into the woods. I follow it, a beast of a man looming at my back. Something cracks underfoot, a twig, and I jolt, my heart wrenching.

“Keep going,” Ares rumbles over my shoulder. “Into the woods.”

Does he know how freaked out I am? That I feel Aaron Flores lurking just out of sight?

“What about the compound? Will Deputy Flores search it?”

“Who said Flores was here,” Ares says, more like a statement than a question.

I shrug one shoulder, the weight of my backpack heavy on the other one. “I just know.”

A few more yards and we pass the tree line. It’s cooler here, the harsh sun hidden behind a canopy of green. The path opens up and Ares’ long strides brings him ahead of me. He doesn’t look at me, seemingly confident that I’m still there, trudging along behind him.

“He won’t get in. No way the fucker got a warrant. Besides, there’s no proof you were even there.”

“Except for my bike out front,” I reply.

Ares stops short. This time I’m able to avoid a full on collision, but I can’t avoid the look on his face as he turns to look at me. Disbelief. Anger. Something else that looks an awful lot like the way a parent looks at a kid who just told them they crashed the car their first time out.

“It’s not like I knew they were coming after me,” I protest weakly. “Nobody saw me take the drugs, okay? No cameras, no witnesses.”

Ares’ jaw tics. “That you know of.”

He’s right. But I’m not going to admit that he’s right because he’s also an ass. I just shrug and motion ahead to the path. “Well, then I guess we’d better get a move on.”

Once Flores realizes I’m not at the Wastelander compound, he’ll leave. Look for me somewhere else. They don’t have proof that I have the drugs at all, Dad just probably wants to make sure.

That’s what I keep repeating in my head, anyway. My little chant as Ares and I trek through the woods. Sweat starts to run down my spine and more gathers under my boobs. I’m cooking in my thick hoodie.

“Are we there yet?”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ares sighs, before ignoring me entirely.

A few minutes later, we enter a dirt clearing. There are three cars parked in a semi-circle, all of them covered by tarps. Ares seems to pick one at random, yanks the tarp off and sends fallen leaves and twigs and dried bird crap swirling to the ground. The car is a plain looking tan sedan — a little dusty, but otherwise it looks like any normal car you’d see and forget about a second later.

“In.” He jabs a finger to the passenger side.

I puff out my cheeks. The last thing I want to do right now is be stuck in a car with Ares, going God-knows-where. I look back the way we came, the dirt track twisting through the woods. I can’t even see the compound from here, can’t hear voices or cars or the roar of motorcycles.

“Delaney!” Ares’ bark snaps me back to him. He arcs a dark blonde eyebrow. “Get. In.”

“Fine. Fuck.”

Swinging my backpack off my shoulder, I toss it into the footwell and climb in. The inside of the car is like a sauna. Ares gets behind the wheel.

“Do you have the—“

He flips down the visor and a set of car keys falls neatly into his palm. “Oh,” I say. “Guess you guys are prepared for this, huh?”

He looks at me. A quick glance, really, and then he starts the engine. It sputters at first, then roars to life.

“No,” he replies, his body tense. “Not prepared for this.”

As Ares pulls out of the clearing and turns down a wider, drivable track, I wonder if he means that he wasn’t prepared for me.

***

We’re climbing. It’s easy to figure out where we’re headed, at least at first. The forested mountain ranges are east of town and the only thing that breaches the flat fields of nothing. You can see them easily from the bottom of Main Street and the last few years there’s even been a little smattering of snow in winter, right at the peaks. Climate change making itself known.

Now, in the depths of summer, everything is green and lush and hot — so, so hot. The air streaming through my open window smells like earth and pine. The breeze cools my sweat-damp skin, at least the parts of me not hidden beneath my hoodie.

Ares doesn’t seem bothered by the heat. About fifteen minutes into our drive, he shrugged off his Wastelander cut and draped it in the backseat, so now he’s just in a white t-shirt that hugs his biceps way tighter than seems appropriate. I’m tempted to suggest he try a size up next time, but then he’d notice me noticing. And I do not want to notice Ares. Not even a little bit.

“How much longer?” I ask as we take a winding turn. Ares squints against the glare of the lowering sun and says nothing. I pull out the bottom of my hoodie and fan in air.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

Another turn. This one Ares takes a little sharper. My stomach rebels and my mouth floods with saliva. I swallow and wonder if I can risk a search of my bag. I think I had some water in there. A few mouthfuls, anyway. But then I’d have to take my eyes off the road and that will no doubt lead to me puking all over the dashboard.

“Ares?”

“Jesus Christ, can you shut up for two seconds?”

He yanks the wheel. We screech around another bend and my guts feel like they’re flipping inside out. I haven’t eaten much today — hardly anything at all — yet it feels like everything I’ve ever eaten is about to come back up in spectacular fashion.

“Pull over,” I say sharply.

“We don’t have time.”

It’s coming. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

I throw a hand over my mouth and Ares finally — fucking finally — looks at me. His eyes go wide.

“Goddamnit,” he says, like I’m doing this on purpose just to inconvenience him. A second later, the car lurches off the road.

I’m up and out of the car before the dust even has a chance to settle, the contents of my near-empty stomach splashing into the dirt.

Once the wave of nausea passes, I notice the silence. The car ticks softly, the engine cooling, and all I hear is the whistling of the wind through the tops of the pines and the distant trilling of birds. We’re at a look-out point, just off the mountain road. A waist-high wooden fence runs along the edge of a cliff that drops down into the valley. It’s beautiful. The dying rays of the run stream out like fingers of gold, tracing the green, reflecting off the glass and chrome of my little town in the distance. I even see the stark white of the sandstone quarry nestled deep in the woods.

“Don’t tell me you’re fucking pregnant.”

The words hit me like a punch to the chest. I turn, my mouth gaping. Ares is out of the car, and he’s watching me from the other side of it, his tattooed hands propped on his hips. He misreads the horror on my face and his eyes narrow into slits.

“Are you kidding me? That is what this is about? You got knocked up and your daddy don’t like it, so you want him dead?” He chuckles, mean and dark. “You’re a real piece of work, kid.”

My stomach clenches like it wants to throw up even more. My throat stings with acidic bile.

“I’m not pregnant,” I manage to grit out. Even the word makes me feel sick.

I snatch my backpack from the footwell and dig around for my bottle of water. It’s lukewarm and tastes like plastic but I swirl some in my mouth anyway, then spit into the dirt.

Ares considers me for a long moment.

“Then why—”

“Dude, ever hear of motion sickness? You were taking those turns like someone was chasing us.”

“The cops are chasing us, Delaney. The cops you brought to my fucking doorstep. Again.”

As soon as the word is loose, he snaps his mouth shut hard enough for me to hear the click of his teeth. Does he feel bad for saying it? For bringing up That Night? There was a part of me that hoped he’d forget it. Move on. That he wouldn’t blame me.

But it’s clear that he still does.

“Where are we going?” I ask, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Like… What happens now?”

Ares takes a breath. For the first time, he looks away from me and I feel some relief not being under his heartless stare. “Safe house.”

“For how long?”

“Until I get the all clear from the brothers.”

“And then what?” I hate the way I sound so needy.

Ares sighs, annoyed, and his head shakes slightly. “Griff will figure out a plan.”

I gnaw at my chapped lips. “What about… what I asked about?”

Ares barks a sharp laugh. “What, kill the Sheriff? That’s not happening.”

I hoist my backpack up so he can see. “But I got your drugs back.”

“Fucking hell. Listen here…” He strides around the hood of the car. I take a stumbling step back, rocks skittering underfoot, and then he’s only a foot or two away. I look up, squinting against the glare of the sun to meet his shadowed eyes.

“You got our shit back, great, but now it’s ours and you have nothing.”

Ares snatches the backpack from my grip and tosses it back into the car. “You have no power here, Delaney. So shut up and get your ass back in the car.”

His eyes flick down my front and his lips pull back in a sneer. “And take that thing off. You look like shit.”

I glance down. The front of the hoodie is speckled with vomit.

Gross.

As Ares makes his way back to the driver’s seat, I turn around and peel off the hoodie, struggling to do it without wiping bits of sick into my hair. My cheeks burn with humiliation as I settle back into my seat and pull the door closed.

One thing is for sure, my plan is a spectacular failure. I just hope there’s a way I can still salvage it.