What exactly did I think he wasn’t? This guy had driven his car into mine when I wouldn’t give him the attention he wanted. He couldn’t have known for sure I wouldn’t be seriously injured as part of that escapade. He was the one who kept going on about how inadequate my old car was, but he’d pulled that stunt anyway… because ultimately I didn’t matter to him, and he knew he would be fine in his tank of a vehicle.
He was the one who kept showing up and playing with my job, my reputation, my dignity, excusing it by exploiting the fact that I enjoyed some of the things he did to me. And then when I needed him to show up and be there for me, he was nowhere to be found. He’d already forgotten the promise he made to me at the start of our night, and I’d never asked him to make it in the first place.
These thoughts went around and around in my head, cold hard facts taunting me like the cold hard buildings I was now staring at instead of the walls of my own bedroom, where I should have been. At first, they were unwelcome, just something my brain was doing while I waited for him to come back and get me out of this mess. By the time I’d been waiting there long enough to accept it had been far too long for him to have just taken a few laps around the suburb, however much I was trying to convince myself I didn’t know for sure without a proper way of telling the time on hand, my thoughts had gotten a lot of experience in the best way to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.
Okay, so Lucas was not the way he was for no reason. He’d had hardships in his life, he had suffered, and I now understood some of the ways in which it had all twisted him. But I couldn’t let that excuse what he was doing to me. I couldn’t just keep playing along with him, hoping to eventually hit the right combination of buttons that would make everything okay, maybe even make him start treating me like another human with needs and rights. There was no excuse for him not realising I was entitled to that already.
He was just—he was taking advantage of the fact that I was lower in status than him in every possible way, using me as some sort of punching bag to make himself feel better. And I was enabling him, because I really believed he was better than me. I always had. That was why I’d agreed at the age of ten to go to that stupid dance with him even though I was no more enthusiastic about the idea than he’d apparently been, why I’d let him set the scene for every one of our intimate encounters… why I hadn’t told anyone how he was manipulating me even though there were plenty of people willing to listen. It would have been terrible if I ruined his life over this… my life didn’t factor into the equation.
I had to stop enabling him. I especially had to stop enabling him at my own expense.
And having made that decision, I was really damn proud of myself… but it didn’t do anything to help me get out of the mess I was presently in.
Well, the best thing to do would be to get to a main road. As a driver myself, I might recognise a street name that would help me navigate back to territory I knew.
It was a bit of a weak hope. Until now I hadn’t owned a car that seemed likely to stand up to a lot of battering, and petrol was expensive, so I’d only ever driven to the same few places I needed to regularly. School and back. Work and back. All of Dane’s jobs took place on new housing developments, so once I knew how to
find the neighbourhood I at least made no worse of a fool of myself than anyone else would on streets that hadn’t been there a year before. I’d taken my mother through all sorts of unfamiliar places to the dentist once when she’d needed some work done, but I’d had to plan out the route the night before on a printed-out map of the area, or we would have made it there about a month late. I wasn’t good at navigating at the best of times, and on foot even locations that were familiar were bound to disorient me.
But I wasn’t just going to stand there by the side of the road until someone happened to drive past who recognised me, so I picked a direction and started walking. The world around me was quiet, except for the odd squealing groan or crash I couldn’t guess at the source of, that made me move a little quicker for a few steps until my tired, shaking legs brought me back to my former pace. Every shadow was menacing. There was only sporadic artificial light from poorly-maintained streetlamps, and very few cars.
There was one vehicle that moved up behind me so quietly I didn’t notice until a black shape at my elbow made me jump back from the road, and its occupant leaned out the window, his face a mystery behind sunglasses, and said, “How about it, sweetheart?”
“Oh, no,” I said, my mouth and tongue at odds with one another as I tried to correct him, “I’m not a prostitute.” I took a few more steps back. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah, sweetheart,” he said, “I’m the one who owes you an apology.” And he drifted off, content to hunt the woman who would meet his needs.
After that, I ran and hid behind a fence or a parked car every time someone else drove up a road I was walking alongside. Until one car stopped me dead three steps into my headlong flight, because it was not the sort of car I would have expected to be cruising around a bunch of warehouses late at night… and then, because it was exactly the same as the car that was supposed to be mine.
It crossed to my side of the road and pulled in between some garbage bins left clustered on the footpath, and my eyes were drawn to a scrape next to the headlight on the nearest side to me. I’d seen a car just like this with exactly the same damage. I’d ridden in it.
The driver’s side window rolled down to reveal dark eyes and eyebrows, framed by very straight, bright blonde hair. I took a step back, but just because the fuzzy memory that face had given me was completely out of order with what I was seeing now.
Lucy Starling had not looked like that the last time I saw her.
“Calista,” she said, “right?”
“Um… yes?” Even though I knew who she was, I still wanted to run. I had a feeling I was about to hear something I wouldn’t like.
“Get in quick please,” Lucy said, “I’m on the wrong side of the road and my fucking idiot of a brother is in hospital.”
Chapter Fourteen
“It wasn’t much of an accident,” Lucy said. “He was tooling around like he always does, swerved to avoid a cat of all things, and plowed himself into a pole. Really messed up someone’s front yard, but he didn’t kill anyone, so I guess that’s all right, huh?”
She glanced at me, and I wanted to shrivel up and disintegrate, sitting there in a mismatched jacket and pants, about as bogan as I could possibly be. Just needed some ugg boots and a ciggie to complete the picture. “Sorry, I’m completely frazzled, please be kind enough to ignore everything I have to say about him. Although he probably doesn’t deserve it.”
Lucy might well be frazzled, but aside from her jittery speech there wasn’t anything about her to show it. Her tracksuit was obnoxiously glamorous, her hair brushed, her hoop earrings—I mean, unless she had already been at a party at two in the morning, she’d been able to take the second to put those things in. She was truly on a whole other level to me.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“I didn’t really,” Lucy said, “but when we got in to see Lucas he kept babbling about you, and I know him a bit better than the parents so I managed to put the pieces together just enough. Came up with an excuse to sneak out, something I needed to take care of for uni. They were so distraught I don’t think it sank in that I wasn’t likely to have classes to prepare for at three in the morning on a Saturday anyway.” Her smile was clearly not something she had inherited from the same place as Lucas. I was glad of that, right now. My head was in a weird place as it was, without any obvious reminders of just who I was in a car with. I couldn’t let myself think about how badly Lucas might be injured or what the accident meant in terms of him leaving me behind, or what I was even doing in Lucy’s car going to the hospital with her. I just had to let everything happen for the moment.
Then one startling detail sank in. “Three in the morning?”
“Well, it’s past five now,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry, it did take me a while to find you, but I can only do so much on the word of an idiot hyped up on pain medication. You weren’t anywhere near where he ended up smashing himself up.”
I turned to stare out at the lightening sky around us. It was nearly morning—I’d been walking for hours, and I hadn’t realised. Time certainly flies when you’re out of your goddamn mind with fear.