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“Shut up.”
“I mean, from where I’m sitting, what’s rude is running away in the middle of the night and making your poor mother worry herself sick over you. Not giving anybody any idea where they can find you. Whether you’re alive or dead. That’s pretty damn rude as far as I’m concerned.”
Another glance her way tells me she’s struggling. Her jaw twitches, her chin trembles. “You don’t get it.”
“Evidently not, Princess.”
“I told you to stop that.”
“I heard you. I don’t feel like it, though.”
I wouldn’t quit arguing with her even if I wanted to. When she’s being a brat and driving me halfway out of my skull, it’s a distraction from what I would rather do. It’s been over a year, but all the old feelings come rushing back. Not that they were ever very far from the surface, especially once it became the focus of my job to find her. I didn’t have much else to do but remember. Fantasize. Obsess.
It’s better this way. Easier for both of us. “Which of us is going to be the one to tell your father where I found you? I’ll leave that one up to you. Consider it a welcome home gift.”
“Get fucked.”
“I’ve been fucked, Princess.” I can’t help but grin when she makes a strangled noise of disgust. “According to what I heard back there at that auction, you haven’t.”
Laughter bubbles up in her throat. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to be the one to do it.”
“Last I checked, I paid quite a lot of money for the honor of being the man who gets to pop your cherry.”
“You are disgusting.”
“Says the girl who was ready to sell her virginity to a stranger.”
Her stony silence speaks volumes. I finally figured out a way to shut her up.
I pull in close to her building for once rather than hanging back a few rows. “Like I said, make it quick.”
“I heard you.” Naturally, I follow her, and naturally she rolls her eyes. “You’re wasting your time.”
“It’s my time. Mine to waste, if I feel like it.”
The apartment is as grim as I imagined. Small, grimy, in need of a new coat of paint, new light fixtures. “They ought to burn the whole place down and start from scratch,” I muse after stepping inside. “Come on. Five minutes. I would think you’d be happy to be out of this place.”
“You mean the only place where I’ve ever been able to make my own decisions? Think for myself?”
“You’ve had such a difficult life.” I watch, mesmerized by the way she moves in that dress. She hasn’t changed out of it, which is fine with me, even though I know it’s a bad thing in the long run. We’ll only be on the road four, maybe five hours. I can control my yearning that long. I controlled it before she ever ran away.
When she acts this way, I can remember her as the bratty little teenager, easy to brush off, to ignore. It wasn’t until her eighteenth birthday and the gigantic party her father threw that I ever saw her as more than a little brat.
And it’s been hell ever since.
She snaps up, glaring at me. “Of all people, I thought you might understand. Seriously. You know how it really is. You took a bullet for my father once. You can’t figure out why I would want to run away from that?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I think it was one bullet too many, wouldn’t you agree?” When I remain blank-faced, she grits her teeth. “Whatever. Let me get some things from my bathroom. This is such bullshit.” She storms into her bedroom, backpack in hand.
There’s not much in the way of memories around here, but I guess there wouldn’t be. She hasn’t had time to put down roots or make many friends. The little money she makes doesn’t exactly allow for girls’ weekends or whatever it is people her age do.
“Let’s go. The clock’s ticking.” I wait, expecting to at least hear her grumbling. All that comes back is silence.
Son of a bitch.
I stick my head in the bedroom, which is empty. So is the bathroom. The window near the bed, leading out to the fire escape, is wide open.
