Page 3 of Ember
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked him over. “And why should I trust you?” she asked.
“Because you have no other options,” he reminded. Maybe he was acting like an ass, but it might be his only shot at keeping her safe.
“You don’t know that,” she spat. “I’ve been doing okay until now.” He looked her over and smiled. She was dirty and looked half-starved.
“I don’t have time to stand around here and play games. It’s Ember, right?” Jack asked. She nodded, and he took that as a good sign. “I’m Spark,” he reminded, “we met yesterday.”
“You said that your name is Jack,” she countered.
“I did, but not many people call me that anymore,” he admitted.
“Well, Jack,” she said, ignoring him, “what’s the plan here? Because I’m pretty sure that you just made an enemy of my ex, and he’s not someone you’d want to fuck around with.”
“I’m not someone that he wants to fuck around with, Ember,” Jack countered. “Listen, I’m assuming that you have about two minutes until he comes out of that church, and I’d like for us both to be out of here before that happens. I have a safe place where you can lie low until you can figure out your next move. I don’t want anything from you, and although you don’t know me, my word is my bond.” She looked him over and then back at the church. He could tell that she was trying to figure out if she wanted to do things his way or go it alone. Jack was pretty sure that if she tried to stay on her own, she’d end up in the same hot water because she was right—her ex wasn’t about to give her up without a fight.
“Fine, I’ll go with you, but if you try anything funny, I’m out,” she insisted.
“Right, no funny business,” he teased. He opened the passenger door for her, and she hesitantly climbed up into his truck. The poor woman looked as though she was about to be carted off to her death. He would think the whole scene funny if it weren’t so sad. Jack quickly shut the door behind her, not wanting to give her a chance to change her mind, and took off around the front of the truck to climb into the driver’s side.
“Ready?” He asked.
“No,” she grumbled. She clutched her purse as though it were her lifeline, and maybe it was. It seemed to be the only thingshe had left, but now wasn’t the time to question her about her belongings. No, Jack was going to have to get her to trust him first, and then, he’d figure out how to help her get her life back—or some semblance of it.
Ember
It felt as though they had been driving forever and getting nowhere. “Where are you taking me?” she asked. Ember realized just how ungrateful she sounded and knew that wasn’t going to get her very far when it came to the kindness of a stranger. It was hard for her to remember that some people were still kind. She had been so mistreated and beaten down that when someone who seemed as nice as Jack came along, she didn’t trust them. She had been conditioned to accept evil, and that made her sad.
She wasn’t always that way. Her childhood wasn’t a picnic, but her parents did the best they could with what they had. After their divorce, she knew that counting on either one of them for anything important wasn’t something that she could do—so she learned to depend on herself. She grew up fast and tried to help others as much as possible. Ember believed in kindness back then, and now, she wasn’t sure what she believed in anymore.
“Sorry,” she almost whispered. “I didn’t mean to sound so ungrateful. I guess I’m just tired and hungry.”
Jack looked her over and nodded as though agreeing with her assessment. “That’s understandable,” he said. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Um, well, I have a few protein bars left, but I’m trying to spread them out to make them last.”
“So, it’s been a while then?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I had a quarter of a bar and some water yesterday at the church, but that’s about it,” she admitted. He was quietly watching out the front windshield as they waited for the red light to change. They seemed to be getting stuck at every light, making the trip feel even longer.
“I’m sorry about how long it’s taking, but traffic in Yonkers is the worst. Lights aren’t timed right, and pedestrians don’t give a fuck if they walk out in front of you and you hit them. Hell, they want that to happen—either to pick a fight or to get a lawyer to go after the drive. It’s a shit storm waiting to happen, really.”
“Wow, you make Yonkers sound like just the place a nice girl like me would want to settle down in,” she teased.
“So, you’re a nice girl then?” Jack asked.
“You have no idea what kind of girl I am, Jack,” Ember warned. “You don’t know me.”
“You’re right, I don’t know you,” he admitted. Hell, they had said only about a half dozen words to each other since he found her at the church. They knew nothing about each other, and she wasn’t sure if getting into the truck with a total stranger was her finest move, but here she was. Ember felt as though her decisions lately involved one bad decision after another, and she just couldn’t seem to pull herself out of the dark hole that had her trapped.
“So, why did you agree to get into my truck and let me help you then?” Jack asked.
“That’s a question that I keep asking myself over and over in my head. You saw Marco and his friend. He has more friends,too, and they’ve all been out looking for me. What choice did I have but to go with you, Jack? You were offering me hope, but if I went back to Florida with Marco, he’d only give me despair. That’s all he has ever given to me.”
“I take it that you two were together, then?” he asked.
“Yeah, as bad as that sounds, we were. For way longer than I should have allowed. He wasn’t always an abusive asshole. That didn’t happen until after his accident,” she admitted. Why she was still making excuses for the asshole was beyond her, yet here she sat in New York City traffic, doing just that to appease a total stranger. What did she care what Jack thought about her or her life choices? He had no reason to judge her for who she had been with and what she had allowed—and to be fair, he wasn’t. He was simply asking her questions to get to know her, yet Ember couldn’t help but blow his good intentions out of the water by being bitchy to him.
“Yeah, I saw that scar going across his head. I didn’t know what to think about that,” he drawled.
