Page 56 of Elijah's Hope
A disability that didn’t exist but he’d managed to convince the U.S. government it did, so he got a pathetic monthly check.
I shook my head. “You’re disgusting. You disgust me. Do you hear me?”
His mouth turned down then. His mean face. “Now, you listen to me, girl. That video was real money and it was legal, so you can’t say nothing about it. And if it gets enough likes, the site manager says we can send in more. He said titty porn is a niche thing and your tits are hot.”
I blanched. “You honestly think I would agree to do that? You had to drug me!”
“Then I’ll drug you again if that’s what you need.”
And he would, I thought. He absolutely wouldn’t understand how that would be a violation. Mouth, tits, vagina. It didn’t matter where Jimmy came. As long as the cash came rolling in. In my soul I already felt raped.
“I’m leaving,” I said quietly. I would shower and scrub my hair and skin until it was raw, then I was going to pack everything I had and leave.
Rip snorted. “Leave? Where you gonna go? You got a car that breaks down every ten miles and twenty bucks to your name. You ain’t going nowhere. Now, it will be a few weeks until we know how your video did, but as soon we know, we’re dipping into that honey pot again. That’s endless money with no harm coming to no one.”
I hated that he was right. I hated that I had no way out of this hell. I had felt this need to leave before, but I knew it was senseless to even try so I’d stayed. But if I stayed this time, they were going to turn me into a fucking porn star.
“Fuck you.” I closed the slider between his room and the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower. I stepped in still with my T-shirt on because I didn’t want to take it off. I didn’t want to see the bruises Jimmy had left on my skin.
A miracle. That’s what I needed. Some type of holy intervention that would save me from the fate Rip planned for me.
“Please God,” I prayed. “I need an angel.”
13
Hope’s Point Airport—akathe runway
Jackson
I watched as Eve’s truck pulled up next to mine. Shelby was in the passenger seat. So that’s where she’d gone. Eli had come back to camp. He was on shift again and had asked me to check on Shelby. He was pissed. At me and at her, but I could tell he wasn’t ready to let her go.
Only when I got to the cabin this morning it was empty.
I watched her say something to Eve. Eve hugged her while giving me a death glare through the windshield that scared the crap out of me.
Shelby got out of the truck and I noticed she was wearing a jean jacket over a hoodie. Not the coat she’d been wearing that first night she showed up at the bar.
“Where’s your coat?”
She came around the front of my truck and plopped her duffel bag on the ground. She leaned against the hood next to where I was standing.
“He bought it for me when I got here. I didn’t want to take anything. I didn’t want him to think…” She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’d be obliged if you let him know I left everything with Eve, so he can return it.”
I grunted. I wondered how he was going to react when I told him she was gone. Whether he was going to be hurt or relieved. I didn’t like the fact my gut said it would be the former.
“Does he know you’re leaving?”
“He’ll figure it out when I’m gone,” she said.
“You don’t have to go. He’s…hurt. Angry. That will pass.”
She nodded. “Maybe. But even if he could get past the lying and the porn video, he’d still be left with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks and that’s not what he went searching for. He deserves better. And you know it. That’s why you showed him the video.”
She was right. That’s why I had done it. Only now I wasn’t sure…
Then I could hear the sound of the small plane out over the mountain’s edges. My eyes fixed on it.
“That your lady coming?” Shelby asked.
