Page 35 of Stoker's Serenity

“Okay,” Linny agreed immediately.

“You want to ride with Linny or with me in the truck?” he asked me.

“I’d better stay with Linny, in my own car,” I said feebly as my mind screamed,Choices, decisions, yes! Take them! Take them all… I don’t want to do this anymore.

The panic and the angst swirled in my breast and Linny cut in, “You don’t have to stay with me, girl.”

“I want to,” I lied, and she bought it and nodded. She undid her seatbelt and leapt up out of the car.

“Come on, up you go.” Stoker held out his hands and leveraged me up out of my seat, and walked me around to the passenger side of my own car. I got in and he buckled me in like a child. It felt nice that he still cared for me right now, so I let him do it.

“I’m right behind you,” he swore, and pressed his mouth to mine in a swift kiss that was bittersweet with the salt of my tears as panic flowed through me like lava, scorching me from the inside out.

“Okay,” I whispered, scared for an entirely different reason.

What if you tell him and he doesn’t give up on you? What if he stays?

I’d never had that happen before.

He shut my door and I let my eyes follow him as he went around the front of my car. He stopped at Linny’s window and she rolled it down.

“Drive careful. She’ll probably rack out once she calms down a little more.”

“What’d you give her?” Linny asked, blinking up at him through the open window of the driver’s side door.

He braced his hands on the sill and said, “Ativan.” He patted the window sill and with a last worried, lingering look at me, trudged back to his truck.

“He gave you the good shit,” Linny mused as she adjusted my seat for her longer legs and fixed my mirrors for her taller frame.

I huddled in on myself and willed the drug to take effect. I stared into the side mirror outside my window at the beat-up old pickup behind us, Stoker indistinct through the sunset-laden sky reflected on his windshield.

“So, um, how was it?” Linny asked, turning on my headlights and hitting the signal to rejoin traffic.

I didn’t answer and she huffed out a sigh.

“Well, I like this one. He’s different and I like his friends. I hope they give that asshole on the beach a what-for.”

“I hope not,” I said.

“Why?”

“You know it won’t stop, Linny. It never stops. I need to stop fooling myself that it will. You also know, the more you fight back, the worse it gets…”

“We aren’t kids anymore, Ren.” Her voice held a steel edge of admonishment.

“You’re right. We’re not,” I answered, but I knew if she knew what I was thinking it wouldn’t go over well, so I didn’t voice it out loud. What I was thinking wasn’t anything good. Mostly it was how I needed to stop letting myself be fooled by the childish idea that just because there was the way the world was supposed to work, that didn’t mean that it would ever actually work that way.

I rested my head against the window glass and closed my eyes, huddled in on myself, and felt marginally calmer. An almost detached feeling coming over me.

The drugs were working.

“It’ll be okay, Ren. I have a good feeling about this one,” she said, and it was the last thing I remember.

12

Stoker…

“Captain,” I said by way of greeting, cradling my phone against my ear, trapping it with my shoulder as we barreled up the freeway. We didn’t have much farther to go. Maybe a half an hour or so.

---