I scrambled out of the jeep and ran for his truck.
When he got out of the driver’s side, I threw my arms around him. I had never been so happy to see someone in my entire life.
He was startled by my greeting, but he only laughed in surprise and wrapped his own arms around me.
For a moment, it only felt safe and warm and good to be held by him.
But then he moved his hands just a little bit, skimming them over my back, grazing my waist, and…
My body reacted. I remembered this feeling from the time he’d touched me before. Then it had been pleasant, but forbidden and wicked. Now, it was only terrifying.
I wriggled out of his grasp and took several steps away.
“No, wait, Abby,” he said, coming after me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
I kept backing up. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s just that it would be better… I shouldn’t have touched you.”
“No, please,” he said. “I promise that if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable, I’ll stop. Just don’t run away from me again.”
I stopped moving. “I won’t run away.”
He stopped too. “Really?”
I nodded.
He smiled.
I felt like crying. “I thought you went away. I thought I chased you away again.”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not going anywhere. Not unless I have you with me.”
Then I smiled too. “I want to. I want to go with you.”
His eyes widened. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s great. Really?”
“Uh huh.”
“Now?”
I thought about climbing into his truck and driving out of the community, never to return. Going away from everything I’d ever known, from Susannah and my parents and my sisters and Thomas and Carla. I swallowed. “Well… soon, anyway. But I don’t think I can go right now.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s fine. You can take all the time you need.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He started for me, then stopped. “I really want to hug you again, but I guess that would be a bad idea.”
My face fell. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” His voice lowered. “Abby, what’s Bob doing to you?”
I looked away. I couldn’t talk about any of that.
“I know he’s doing something, so don’t pretend—”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said. I shivered. It was cold out here.
Jesse noticed. “You’re cold. Could we go somewhere else to talk instead of standing out here? There’s a diner in Melville. It’s open all night. Can I take you there?”
I looked at his truck, and then I looked back at my jeep. “I’ll follow you.” I didn’t want to leave my car for some reason. Having it just seemed safer.
“Okay.” He grinned. “Jesus, Abby, I’m so glad to see you again.”
We didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain like that in the community. It was even worse than saying swear words. Hearing him do it reminded me of how different he was now. But he was still Jesse, and he still had the same blue eyes. And now, when he smiled, I could see his dimples better since he didn’t have a beard.
I smiled too, hesitant. “I’m glad to see you too.”
* * *
Jesse
She was on her second Coke, and she was still munching on the chili cheese fries she’d ordered, which she’d declared the best thing that she’d ever tasted.
I couldn’t stop staring at her. Every time she smiled, it seemed like a victory. She was skittish, like the horses on the ranch during a thunder storm. I could see the fear all over her. When I’d left her, she hadn’t been this way.
Or had she? Maybe we were all this way in the community. Maybe back then, I hadn’t noticed because I thought it was normal.
She was talking though, explaining all the things that had happened since I’d left. Gideon was in complete control of the community. He was marrying off young girls, increasing the number of wives for some men—one of the elders even had five, she said. He’d taken away the musical instruments. But when she told me about the doctrine of sacrifice that Gideon had introduced, I was completely floored.
“He can’t do that,” I said. “He can’t murder people.”
“He might already be doing it,” she said. “Susannah’s sister Isabel disappeared. Susannah doesn’t know if she was cast out or… She was married to your dad and—”
“Wait,” I said. “My father got another wife? Even after what I did?”
“Everybody got another wife, Jesse. Gideon’s been marrying people like crazy. That’s why he has to use the younger girls. There’s no one else left.”
I was astonished. I’d been so sure that I’d ruined my father. I’d felt guilty about that, for fuck’s sake. Now, it turned out that everything went just fine for him. He got a young wife and everything. I resolved never again to feel sorry for that man. He’d beaten me up for no reason, and I’d taken it. I didn’t owe him anything else.
I took a drink of my own Coke. “If you think that Gideon murdered Isabel, then we need to go to the police.”
She made a horrified face. “I can’t do that. If I cause trouble, he’ll be after me next.”
“So, then, you leave,” I said. “You come with me, and he can’t do anything.”
“No,” she said. “What if he hurts my sisters? I have little sisters. I don’t know if he’s going to marry them off to someone at any minute or if he’s going to hurt them or… I can’t go to the police. And I can’t leave yet. I have to be there. To help them.”
“How will you help them?” I felt for her. I did. I had little sisters too, after all. “Can you stop Gideon from marrying them to someone?”
“Maybe.”
“How?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. Maybe if I talked to him, or if I talked to the men who were going to marry them.”
“Abby, you know as well as I that’s not going to do any good. The fact of the matter is that staying is not going to help them. You need to get yourself out and get your head straight, and then maybe—”
“Is that what you’ve been doing? Getting your head straight?”
I looked down at the table. “I’m sorry. I should have come for you earlier.”
“No. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I’m in love with you.” I just said it. It felt good to say it, to get it out there.
Her eyes widened. “Jesse, don’t say things like that. It’s not true, anyway. We barely had anything together before you got kicked out, and you hardly know me and—”
“It’s true,” I said. Even though she wasn’t responding in kind, I still felt better having told her. I felt empowered. Still, I didn’t want to cause her any concern. “But you don’t have to worry. Just because I feel that way doesn’t mean you have to feel it back. I’m not expecting you to… do anything about it, okay?”
She stuffed cheese fries into her mouth. She wouldn’t look at me.
“When you told me to leave, and you said that you never wanted to see me again, I listened to you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have kept trying. Everything you’ve been going through here? It’s too much.”
She swallowed her fries. “I’m fine. I’m okay.” She sipped at her Coke. “And I’m sorry that I said I didn’t want to see you again. I didn’t really mean it. Back then, I thought that God would reward me if I submitted to his will, but now I realize that God doesn’t reward people like me. He just makes it harder. And harder. Until you break.”
I wanted to tell her that I didn’t believe in God, but I didn’t know if she’d find the thought as comforting as I did. Not having a deity up in the sky constantly judging me was a relief, but I wasn’t sure if hearing me say something so heretical and wicked wouldn’t only scare her.
“Anyway,” she said, “now I don’t care. I’m done try
ing to please God.”
“Well, so am I,” I said. “If you don’t care about pleasing God, are you sure you can’t leave with me tonight?”
She swallowed. “No, not yet, Jesse. I promise, I do want to go, but I just… I can’t… My sisters.”
I wasn’t exactly sure if it was about her sisters or not. I thought it might be mostly about fear of leaving everything she’d ever known behind. If I’d had a choice, I wasn’t sure that I could have left willingly. But I could see that she was also closer to choosing to leave than I’d ever been. I needed to be patient. She’d leave when she was ready, and I’d be there.
* * *
Abby
We were standing outside the diner, right next to my jeep. Jesse was only a few feet away from me, and I was thinking about the time that he’d kissed me outside my house, and how it had actually felt really nice. I was thinking about kissing Jesse again, but I was afraid, because I kept thinking about Bob’s kisses—forceful and sloppy and disgusting.
“I’m glad you came back,” I said.
“I wish I’d come back sooner.”
I stepped closer to him, trying to find my nerve. He’d said that he loved me, and it was the first time that the words had made me feel good instead of full of dread. And I was going to do this. I was going to run away with him, leave everything behind and be with Jesse. So, I should be able to kiss him, right?
“Hey,” he said, “I got something for you.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened up the door to his truck, climbed up in and then hopped back down. He handed me a sleek, black square. It was some kind of electronic thing. I’d seen people in the world with them, but we didn’t have this kind of technology in the community. It was forbidden.
“It’s a phone,” said Jesse. “You’ll have to keep it hidden, but this way we can keep in touch.”
I turned it over in my hands. It was so foreign to me.
“Here,” he said, “let me show you how to use it.” He reached out to take it from me, and his fingers brushed against my palm.
It reminded me of the time that we were outside the shed at the school, when our hands had touched when I gave him the keys. I remembered that surge of tingling excitement, and—impulsively—I reached up for him, pulled his face down to mine, and pressed my lips against his.
He was startled, and he didn’t respond.
I almost pulled away.
But then his lips moved against mine.
The sensation was pleasant. A slow, soft warmth began to radiate through me. I shut my eyes and clung to him.
His tongue urged into my mouth, and it was slippery sweetness.
I gasped.
But then his hands were on me, one at the small of my back, pressing my body close and one at my neck, tangling into my hair.
Panic shot through me. Suddenly, all I felt was trapped. I went stiff and still, the way I did when Bob was trying to do things to me.
But unlike Bob, Jesse didn’t keep going, oblivious. He pulled away, relaxing his grip on me. His eyes searched mine, full of questions. “You okay?”
I tried to smile. “I’m fine.” But I extracted myself from him. I put at least two feet of distance between us, and I busied myself with looking at the phone. I pushed a button on the top, and its screen lit up. Whoa. I hadn’t been expecting it to do that. But now what did I do with it?
“Abby.”
I looked up at him.
He looked agonized. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” I held up the phone. “I turned it on, I think. Now what?”
He took the phone from me. “It’s a touch screen, so you just hit the things you want. I programmed my number into it. See?”
I peered at the screen, looking at the things he was touching.
“Then all you have to do is hit the green phone picture, and it calls me,” he said. “You can text too. If you hit this little letter picture, it’ll bring up a keyboard.” He began to demonstrate, typing jibberish. “It does other stuff too, but that’s the important part. You should keep the sound off, though. You don’t want anyone to hear it. And, um, I got you a charger, but you’ll have to use your car.”
“Okay,” I said, even though I was still a little confused about how to use it. “Thanks for the phone.”
He turned it off, but he didn’t hand it back to me. He just stood there, staring down at it.
I felt nervous. Had I done something wrong? It was the kiss, wasn’t it? I’d screwed up the stupid kiss. Maybe I wasn’t ready to run away with Jesse, after all. Maybe I should let him go. I was too ruined to be with him.
“I know you said you don’t want to leave yet.” He still wasn’t looking at me. “But I don’t think I can let you go back to him. Not if he’s hurting you.”
“He’s not,” I said. “I mean, not anymore, he isn’t. I take the jeep out every night that I’m scheduled to spend with him. I go out and sleep in the desert instead. And he can’t say anything about it, because if he’s not controlling me, it makes him look bad. So, I don’t let him touch me anymore.”
He looked up at me. “So, that’s what you’ve been doing out here.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’re sleeping in your car?”
“It’s the only way to make sure he doesn’t…” I took a deep breath. “I know it’s disobedient. I know that I’m supposed to submit to him. He’s my husband. But—”
“Stop saying shit like that.” His jaw twitched. “You’re not supposed to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I let out a disbelieving laugh. I’d never heard such a crazy thought. As if my wants had any bearing on my actions. God didn’t care what I wanted. I’d always known that I had to do what was expected of me.
He gave me the phone.
Our fingers brushed again.
“It’s too cold to sleep in your car, Abby.”
“But if I go back to him, he’ll—”
“Stay at my place.”
My eyes widened.
“I know.” He spread his hands. “But it won’t be like that, I swear. There’s a couch, and I’ll stay there, and you’ll have the whole bedroom, and I won’t… try anything.”
“You have a place?”
“I’m renting an apartment in town here. I thought it might take some time to convince you to come with me, and so I wanted to be close.”
“You rented a place just because of me?” I couldn’t take that in. I didn’t think I’d ever been that important to someone.
“Will you stay there tonight instead of in the jeep?”
“Yeah.” It sounded a heck of a lot better than freezing out in the desert. I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
* * *
Jesse
She was in the bedroom. She was two rooms away, and she was close and she was safe. I felt better than I’d felt since leaving the community. I never should have left her. Sure, it would have been tough for both of us out there. It would have been harder to get jobs or to find someplace to stay. But things had been bad for her here.
Of course, things had been bad for me too. I thought of those nights that I was homeless, sleeping in the back of my truck. If River hadn’t found me, then I might still be like that. Heck, I might have died. I had been running out of money fast. I didn’t know how I would have fed myself after it was all gone.
Maybe I’d done the best I could. Still, it tore me up inside when she pushed out of my arms or when she evaded my touch. I couldn’t bear thinking of what had happened to her in the community, and I couldn’t help but feel responsible for all of it.
I was lying on the couch with a blanket over me. The apartment had come furnished, but the couch was actually pretty comfortable. It was big enough to stretch out on, which was a bonus. I could handle sleeping on the couch if it saved Abby from another bad night.
“Jesse?”
I raised my head.
Abby tiptoed over to the couch. She was wearing a pair o
f my sweatpants and a t-shirt. I’d given her that to sleep in. I realized that I’d never seen her wear pants before. My gaze was drawn to her legs. Suddenly, she seemed very… uncovered.
I swallowed. “Is everything okay?”
She took a deep breath. “I feel bad about kicking you out of your bed.”
“You’re not,” I said. “I offered. It’s fine.” I couldn’t stop staring at her. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t help thinking about running my hands over her legs, and my body instantly responded. I could feel myself stiffening between my legs. I sat up on the couch, grabbed the blanket, and bunched it up to hide my groin. What the heck was wrong with me? She was terrified of my touch, and now I had a really stupid hard-on. Go away, I thought at it.
She twisted her hands together. “Why did you say that you loved me?”
“Uh…” Now I was having trouble thinking. It was completely wrong of me to be feeling sexually attracted to her right now, and I was focusing all my attention on trying to stop being aroused.
“You don’t, you know,” she said. “You think you do, but you love the person I was before. You don’t love me now.”
“I do.” I sat up straighter. “I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t—”
“When you left me that night, you kissed me, and you said that you would show me things. You… you wanted me.”
I shifted, uncomfortably aware of my erection. I still wanted her, even if it wasn’t appropriate at all.
“I mean, do you know what I’m saying?” She clasped her hands together in front of her body. “You wanted me in… in that way.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.” I cleared my throat. “Uh… I already told you, Abby, you don’t have to worry. I’m not expecting anything from you.” My dick, on the other hand, had completely other ideas. The turn the conversation had taken was not helping in the slightest. “Look, why don’t you just go back to sleep, okay?”
“What if I…?” She swallowed. “What if I ran away with you, and what if I… if I loved you too, but I couldn’t… What if we never actually had relations or whatever?” She squared her shoulders. “Sex. What if we never did that?”
Oh, shit. She said sex, and my cock throbbed. I squirmed, pulling more covers over myself. “We don’t have to worry about… that… right now. Do we?”
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