Reece (Stud Ranch)

It was also one of my downfalls. Because, say with someone like Jeff who loved to hear the sound of his own voice, a person like me was catnip to him.

At that first Tuesday tutoring session, he’d gone on and on about Hemingway’s genius and I’d soaked it up along with all the other students he’d invited. I never once questioned or considered the fact that he’d only invited the type who didn’t challenge him and were more likely to think him a god.

And that most of us were women. It was five women and only two guys at that first Tuesday study group. As I became more a part of what I would later realize was a cult of personality Jeff fostered around himself, well yes, it was impossible to not notice they were mostly women.

But I told myself we all just flocked to him because he was good looking and charismatic. And smart and gregarious and amazing. I waxed just as poetic as any of them about how wondrous he was.

And it made me feel even more important when, after the first few tutoring nights, it was me he chose to talk to long after the sessions had ended. Me who he asked on a date. Me who he said understood him more deeply than anyone ever had before. Me, who, three weeks after meeting, he declared was his soulmate.

I bought it all hook, line, and sinker, because it was everything I’d always wanted to ever hear.

But a man like Jeff knew that. And so he said the words meant to entice me into his trap like a hunter laying out crumbs to entice prey. And like a foolish, foolish little lamb, I walked right into the maw of the wolf.

I thanked Ana and got off at another gas station in Dallas.

“Don’t go getting in just anyone’s rig now,” she warned me. “You seem like a decent girl. Good luck to you. And don’t go telling folks you’re desperate.”

I nodded. “Thanks again. You were a lifesaver.”

She waved me off, then I climbed out of the cab and watched as she drove off.

Leaving me once again, all alone. And hungry. Ana had shared her donuts with me, but that was hours ago.

I held my hand over my eyes and squinted up at the sky. It was warmer here in Dallas than in Oklahoma, and I hoped the further I headed south, the warmer it would get still.

As much as I liked the idea of snow—it seemed picturesque to be sipping cocoa or coffee while it drifted down outside, I was a sunshine-worshipper at heart. Texas sounded just right to me if I couldn’t have California.

The last few years, I asked Jeff if we could move somewhere where it snowed. I bought snow globes. I took up painting for a few months and painted wintry landscapes. They weren’t good, but I was just learning. Jeff made fun of them ruthlessly and threw them out one day after we’d gotten into an ‘argument’—his word for when he would hit me. When I woke up the next morning, all the supplies were gone.

Everything I did over the last half decade was so I could escape again, and escape for good, somewhere he’d never find me.

Austin seemed as good a place as any.

So in spite of Ana’s advice, I figured I’d continue hitchhiking.

I stood outside the gas station where all the big rigs were gassing up and asked around if anyone was headed south.

One big-bellied guy leered at me. “Yeah, baby, I’ll take you as far as you wanna go.”

“No thanks,” I said and hurried back inside. I hid for half an hour and when I went back out, he was thankfully gone.

I tried again for a few hours and finally found an older man who was rail thin and had the kind of leathery, age-spotted skin of someone who didn’t take SPF seriously. If worst came to worst, I figured I could take him.

Unbeknownst to Jeff, I’d taken a self-defense class. Instead of going to Pilates like I was supposed to, I’d snuck away and attended the self-defense class down the hall that met at the same time. I hadn’t really thought I’d ever be able to use the moves against Jeff.

If I fought back, he took it as an affront against God and nature and would punish me twice as hard.

Taking the class was just one of my small rebellions. One of the ways I tried to fight back, to begin to feel strong. That if I ever did manage to escape Jeff, maybe one day I could stand on my own two feet again.

Either way, it was enough to climb up into Rick’s rig, who’d nodded when I’d asked a group of truckers smoking outside the travel gas station.

“I’m goin’ south. I’m Rick. I’ll take ya,” he’d said, then thrown his cigarette on the pavement and stomped it out with his boot.