Page 2 of Hero: Claimed

“Right, cunt—you’re mine,” Crush says, I’m assuming directed at me, seeing as I’m the only one with a “cunt” in the room. Fast for a man his size, he steps into my space, pushing me back until my back slams against the wall next to the door, knocking the wind out of me.

As I struggle for breath, he shoves his hand up my tank, lifting it to expose my naked breasts in front of my dad. He begins to pinch and grope them as I squirm to get away, but his bulk has me trapped. I’m not going anywhere until he wants me to.

“Settle, bitch.” Then sloppy, wet lips land on my neck. It takes everything in me to hold back the gag, which I don’t think would go over too well. When I don’t settle, he slaps me hard against my ear—hard enough to make my eyes water. “Fucking settle,” he yells. “Someone your size should be happy to get any attention from a man.”

My dad stands off to the side, watching, waiting. Until it looks like Crush isn’t going to stop and my dad, now twitchy, cuts in. “You got the stuff on you, it’s a deal. Taking what you want, I… I get the stuff.”

Crush sighs, loud and agitated. “Fine. Fucking follow me.” For a split second, I think I’m in the clear, until he snags my wrist, yanking me behind him as he storms out of my apartment, his heavy boots clomping against the ratty carpet, shaking the thin walls of the hallway. I stumble going down the steps, but he doesn’t slow his pace in the slightest. Used needles and broken glass litter the stairs, and he didn’t even give me the chance to slip on a pair of flip-flops before forcing me from my home.

It had rained earlier in the day, what with it being winter and all. We splash through puddles and the chill of the blacktop and water slices pain up through my feet and calves. He stops us at a white pickup truck with orange pinstriping. This surprises me. Bikers ride bikes.

Yet again, I should’ve been paying better attention because he—swear to God—pulls zip-ties from his pocket, then wrenches at my wrists to pull the one he’s not holding from my side. He uses the plastic to secure them tightly. Then he takes a second zip-tie and threads it through a hole in the metal of the door, in one side and out the other and slips it under my binds, effectively securing me to the door. Crush walks around to the passenger side of the truck, opens the door, and pops the glovebox.

I have never seen that amount of money in my life. The stacks of bills piled and rubber-banded together. My eyes grow huge seeing him pull one of the smaller stacks and he turns to walk back around to me and my dad, handing him off the bills.

Dad doesn’t even say goodbye to me, turning to take off when Crush stops him. “Don’t forget, the old debt is forgiven. This, you owe with interest. Same deal as before.”

While their exchange is going on, I yank and pull and twist my wrists, attempting to free myself from the bindings. They scrape the skin raw—so raw, they begin to bleed. It hurts but ending up under Crush will hurt more. At least my psyche if not my body. The rawness begins bleeding and it’s exactly what I need to lubricate my hands enough to finally slip them through the zip-ties.

It hits me that I only have this one chance to get away. He’s too close to run, he’d overpower me, which means I have to incapacitate him somehow. My dad is long gone, jogging off, my guess, to get high.

Crush doesn’t know I’ve freed my hands. When he moves in next to me, he slaps my ass and leans in to shove the key in the ignition, starting the engine. “Maybe I keep you hooked to the door. Get you to run off some of that jiggle.

The thought that he’d have me running next to a truck in motion horrifies me, and he must see the look on my face. “Gonna cry?” he asks. Then in a move I don’t expect, he says, “Fine. Don’t want you sweaty when I fuck ya, anyway.” He pulls a Swiss army knife type of knife from his pocket and leans in like he’s going to cut me free. It’s my one shot.

I take him completely off guard, dropping my hands and slamming his head with everything I have in me against the corner of the open truck door. He drops. Out cold. There’s a gash across his forehead, but his chest is still raising and lowering, so I know I haven’t killed him. Without second-guessing myself, I hop in the idling truck and shift into gear. I don’t know how to drive a stick and the grinding sounds pretty heinous, but I know enough to push down on the clutch as I ease up on the brake when I shift.

Then I speed out of the parking lot of my apartment complex. It took some maneuvering to not run him over as I did. But knowing that when he wakes up, he’s going to be hunting down his truck and knowing that the way I drive a stick is going to gain attention, I head to the only place I can think of to get me out of Houston and away from Crush and the Riot.

Twenty minutes later, I abandon the truck in the parking lot at the liquor store down the street from the bus station and hoof it the rest of the way. The truck minus the stack of cash in the glovebox that I stash in a plastic store bag from the passenger side floor. I feel like I need it more than he does. Then, barefoot and in my pajamas, I have to figure out where in the hell I’m supposed to go. Hannah’s postcard comes to mind. I shoved it in my pocket when I went to answer the door. Pulling it out, I read the back again.Thornbriar, Kentucky.

I walk up to the ticket window. “Can you get me to Thornbriar, Kentucky?” I ask the tiny woman behind the bulletproof glass. I don’t know how old she is because however old she is, her eyes make her look at least ten years older than that telling me she’s led a hard life. Whether by circumstance or her own making doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know if I don’t get out tonight, my eyes will speak those same stories—probably worse—if I live long enough.

She types in the location. “Closest we can get you is Ashland.” Shoot. I don’t know enough about Kentucky to know if Ashland is close enough. But it’s out of Houston. Out of Texas. I’ll take my chances.

“Sold,” I tell the woman. She tells me the price and I pull money from the plastic bag. The woman shoots me a curious look when I pull money from a store bag, but doesn’t hassle me. My guess, she’s seen weirder shit at this job than a woman showing up barefoot, in pajamas, pulling money out of a bag. Yet another reason I need to get the hell out of Doge. She prints up the ticket. There’s like forty-five minutes before my bus leaves. I spend that whole time hiding in a stall in the women’s restroom, which is beyond gross, seeing as I’m barefoot. But I can’t take any chances.

At the end of the longest three-quarters of an hour of my life, I leave the safety of the stalls, looking every which way over my shoulders for Riot cuts. When the coast is clear, I make a mad dash for the bus. Once I’m on, letting the driver scan my ticket, I find my seat and slink down below the window line the whole time we wait for other passengers to board, when we roll out of the depot and right through clearing the city limits. Only then do I feel like I can breathe enough to sit up.

Tucking my feet up under me and using the money bag as a very uncomfortable pillow, I try to sleep. We drive all through the night and right through the next day with only one stop. The Appalachian Mountains are incredibly beautiful. And when we finally reach our destination, the sun is shining brightly. It’s colder than in Texas.I loop the bag over my wrist and up to my elbow in order to wrap my arms around my chest attempting to warm myself up—an attempt which fails miserably. I’m a full body shiver by the time I get to the door of the bus. Not a great start to my Kentucky adventure. I need to get to Thornbriar, but I’ll never make it being this cold.

That’s when I see a sign. A literal sign, there’s a Rite Aid in the distance. I start walking that way when I disembark. It takes me about ten minutes.A born Texan, I’ve never experienced this level of bone-chilling frostiness in my life.Inside, I find exactly what I thought I’d find, the warmth of a heated store and a display with sweatshirts and sweatpants with the logo of the local high school. But the only footwear option is a cheap pair of plastic flip-flops. They’ll have to do.

I use more of the cash to pay for those items plus a bottle of cold mocha latte and a package of deli ham and sandwich cheese. I’ll make rollups. It’ll give me enough energy without the blood sugar crash to keep going. I ask the cashier to double bag the meat and cheese because I have to go into the bathroom to wash off my feet before I slip the clean sandals on.

The sweats are warm, so soft and snuggly. My feet remain chilled, but at least I’m not barefoot any longer when I leave the store.

Before I leave, I ask the cashier, “Which way is Thornbriar from here?”

She’s a plump lady with thinning mousy-brown hair and kind eyes that grow even kinder when shecocks her head and purses her lips. “Thornbriar… I think that’s south of here if I’m not mistaken. Probably an hour or more.”

“Thanks,” I say as I take off. Once I get outside, I have to figure out which way is south and pick the direction I think is correct.

About twenty minutes down the road, I see an old man out in front of a house. He’s putting aFor Salesign on an old, teal-green Toyota. An old, teal-green Toyota would be a good way for me to make it to Thornbriar, so I approach the man. “Morning,” I say to sound nonthreatening.

“Mornin’,” he says back. “What can I help ya with?”

“How much for the car? Took a bus here, but I gotta get to Thornbriar.”

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