At least, I think it’s mostly trailers. Only a few structures have lights turned on at their front doors. I can only assume the other hulking shadows are also RVs.
But the trailer Waylon stops in front of at the very top of the dirt plus sign doesn’t have a helpful light attached to its front. If not for the illumination of the truck’s headlights, I wouldn't know it was even more run-down than most of the other ones we passed. It’s the kind of RV you see in old 90s films, featuring a ragtag gang of underdogs on a road trip mission to complete some sort of goal.
Anyway, this one sits several yards away from the rest of the mobile homes—as if the other trailers don’t want to be associated with it. And I notice there are no other mobile homes beyond this one.
When Waylon kills the engine and gets out, the only illumination comes from the cab's overhead light. Which makes the dark between the truck and the trailer seem particularly pitch black. I gulp, my born-and-raised-in-a-city brain unsure what to do with all this backcountry night.
Waylon comes around the side of the truck and pulls open the door. Not to be a gentleman. I discover that when he reaches over me and unbuckles my seatbelt himself before grunting, “Come on”—like I’m a dog he’s letting out of the car.
But I’m not a dog, and I don't budge.
“Where are we?” I demand. “What is this?”
“My place,” he answers. “Come on.”
This time, Waylon doesn’t give me the chance to argue. He clamps a hand around my wrist and yanks. No more questions allowed, I come tumbling out of the car.
Last night, I was too dazed and confused to do anything but follow him toward that stage. But today, with a few hours of car sleep tucked away, I dig in my heels, refusing to stumble along after him.
“No! I’m not going anywhere with you!” The truck window is down, and I hook my arm around the doorframe to keep him from just dragging me away. “I'm not going anywhere else with you until you answer some questions!”
Now that he can’t move me, I ask him many of the same questions he’s been refusing to answer all day: “How long are you planning on keeping me here? When do I get to go home? What do you want from me?”
Waylon wheels around on me without warning.
And as clever as the hook your arm around the truck window move seemed earlier, it feels like I have to either move it or lose it when he pushes his heavy body into mine, pinning me into the part of the truck's cab that isn't currently open.
"You think you're going home?" He growls down at me, his face a work of shadow and stone. “To what?”
Scenes from my disastrous wedding reel through my mind when he asks that.
Seeing Waylon on the balcony….
The astonished looks on my co-worker’s faces when I said no….
The dream guy who punched me and was preparing to do worse when Waylon burst in on the scene.
I don’t know…. I don’t know what’s waiting for me back in Delaware. But my whole life is in Wilmington. My job, my work friends, and the apartment I still have to pay a few more months of rent on for my lease.
I’ve put so much time and energy into improving myself and becoming a better person. I can’t just erase all that by getting charged with abetting an assault and not at least trying to explain what happened to the people at work.
“You can't….” I have to stop and swallow when my voice comes out a dry squeak.
I lift my chin and try to at least look and sound brave as I inform him, “You can't keep me here forever! And I’m definitely not going in there with you.”
Silence.
Waylon stares down at me with that scary look I’ve become all too familiar with over the last forty-eight hours—like Violence and Crazy have lit a bonfire behind his eyes.
“What did I tell you about backtalk, angel?”
The memory of him lying across my bed, handcuffed and wounded but not truly subdued, flashes inside my head.
But somehow, I manage to swallow again and tell him, “That rule no longer counts. It was from a long time ago. When you had consent and weren’t keeping me imprisoned against my will.”
The truck's overhead light chooses that moment to blink off as if it's tired of waiting for us to finish our argument.
I can no longer see Waylon, but I can feel him in the darkness. Crazed and ticking like a bomb.
His lethal voice sounds like an explosion in the pitch black when he says, “You’re lying to me. And you’re for damn sure lying to yourself. This is where we’re supposed to be.”