Page 6 of Slay

Hearing him phrase it like that kept me from doing exactly as he’d suggested. It didn’t mean I was going to tell him who’d hurt me. But I also didn’t feel the pressure of having to tell him what had happened.

“I’ve never even seen a horse up close,” I replied after a pause. I didn’t look at him again because if he was disappointed that I hadn’t answered the question he really wanted to know, I preferred not to see that.

“Ah, that’s a damn shame. Everyone needs to experience the beauty of a horse up close,” he replied, not letting on that I’d ignored his other question at all. He would never know how grateful I was for him letting it go so easily.

“Do you ride horses?” I asked him, finding myself more curious about him. His description and about his grandmother had intrigued me.

He chuckled. “Oh, yeah. I do more than just ride. My family is in the racing horse business. We raise thoroughbreds. They’re a real work of art. It’s something that never gets old, watching one grow into a winner. Seeing it and knowing that one is going to be the one. It’s got the thing. What it takes. Something else,” he said with real passion in his voice.

Hearing him talk about something he so clearly loved made me wish I had something like that. I couldn’t remember what I liked to eat, much less what I liked to do. Having all my decisions, desires, wants taken from me and being forced to become someone Hill wanted me to be had wiped me clean. I no longer knew who I was.

Lost in my own thoughts, I fell silent. I didn’t want to ask King anything more about himself. The more he talked, the more it became all too clear how empty I was. I’d called it lost, but it wasn’t that. How could you be lost if you didn’t know who you were to start with? I tried to think back to a time when I’d had dreams. Before all those had been snatched from me, and the fairy tale had morphed into a nightmare. One that I hadn’t woken up from.

Family. That was all I could remember wanting. To belong. To be loved. To have a place where I was important, needed, accepted. There were no other things I could recall wishing I had. Just that. Something that most people were born with. Given the moment they were conceived. It was a gift that came with life. Except for me. It was an unattainable object I couldn’t quite grasp.

The times I would get settled into a foster family and it would begin to feel safe—like this might be permanent, that I had a chance at a real family—it would be snatched away. A foster mother would get cancer, a couple would divorce, someone would lose a job and need to move. Then, as I got older, the men…they’d look at me or treat me inappropriately. Women no longer wanted me in their home. It had been a vicious cycle, and fate had been against me.

The blue lights flashing up ahead snapped me out of my thoughts as we slowed to a stop. My throat immediately constricted, and I gripped the door tightly. Unsure what I should do now. What if they were looking for me? Would they have found Hill already? Was there a search out for his missing wife? My heart slammed erratically in my chest. I had to do something. I couldn’t stay in this truck.

“The way I see it is, we can get off at this exit and take a back road to my Maeme’s or wait through this here roadblock to get you to the bus stop. I’m gonna let you make that call.”

I tore my eyes off the lights and stared at him. He was watching me. His eyes told me nothing. He wasn’t letting on if he knew I was about to have a full-blown panic attack.

The corner of his wide mouth lifted just a touch. “Maeme’s banana pudding is real good. I think I said that already though.”

Think. Think. Think. Breathe. Think.

I swallowed nervously and studied the situation up ahead. There was a good chance this had nothing at all to do with me. That Hill was still lying in that living room in a pool of blood. Dead. Where I had left him without a backward glance.

But could I take that chance?

“If I’m getting off, then I need to know now. If we start moving, it’ll be too late,” he warned me.

Jerking my gaze back to his, I decided I had only one option here. “Do you think your Maeme would mind me coming with you to dinner?” I asked.

A slow smile spread across his handsome face. “No, sweets. She’d be tickled pink. She loves feeding folks almost as much as she loves me. And that’s saying a lot.” He turned on his blinker. “Banana pudding then?”

I sucked in a breath, and then I nodded. “Yeah. Banana pudding.”

• four •

“My job was done.”

King

I let George Strait fill the silence instead of coaxing Rumor to talk. She was strung up tight again, and I knew she needed to be left alone to think. I almost felt guilty about the fucking cops. She’d been relaxed, talking, even smiling some. Then, she got a look at the police cars up ahead, and it was like a damn switch flipped. That had been the purpose, but still, part of me wanted to ease her again. I wasn’t sure I could do it so easily this time though.

When we turned off I-20 onto the road that would take us to Maeme’s, Rumor seemed to snap out of her thoughts and sat up straight.

“Where are we?” The panic in her voice didn’t surprise me. She hadn’t seemed to notice when we crossed the Georgia state line.

“Madison. Maeme is about three miles down this road, and then we turn off onto a country road that leads down into her land. She owns forty-five acres of pecan trees that she makes a nice profit off of every fall, among other things.” That I was not about to get into.

Rumor would jump out of the truck and take off back to the interstate on foot if she had any idea exactly what all Maeme was involved in.

“We’re in…Georgia,” she said just above a whisper.

“Yep. Madison, to be exact.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com