by Leddy Harper
His feet shuffled along the densely packed dirt of the parking lot as he stepped to the side, not out of my way, but to stand directly in front of me, blocking my path to my car. “No, you’re not. You’re not driving anywhere right now. You just walked out of a bar, where you’ve been drinking. You may not care about your own life, but do you really want to chance taking away someone else’s family tonight?”
“This is ridiculous,” I said with a huff, shaking my head frantically. Tears threatened to come, but my anger held them away. I’d hit my limit as I pushed against his hard chest with my fists and screamed, “Who are you? Why are you here? And why do you care what I do?”
“Why do I care?” He grabbed me by my wrists to keep me close and prevent me from hitting him more, his harsh voice commanding my attention. His expression grew hard with tight lips and a set jaw. He waited until he knew he had my undivided attention before continuing. “I care because I don’t want to wake up in the morning to news of yet another senseless car accident that could’ve been prevented. You’re coming out of a bar and getting into your car. So many people don’t want to get into an altercation, so they sit back, keep their mouth shut, and watch others get behind the wheel when they shouldn’t be. I’m not one of those people.”
“Well, I’m fine. I’ve had—”
“Everyone says that.” He shook me slightly by the grip he had on my arms as he interrupted me. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve only had a few drinks. The point is, you have been drinking.” His tone lowered, softening as he said, “You need to sober up a little bit more before you’re okay to drive.”
I yanked my arms out of his now lax hold and took a step back. “Do I seem drunk to you?”
“My cousin can drink a fifth of vodka and still seem completely normal. He can recite the ABCs backward, but that still doesn’t mean he makes the best decisions when he’s like that, or that he can even drive a car properly. Alcohol slows down reaction time, no matter how little you’ve had.”
“I don’t give a shit how much your cousin drinks. I’m not your cousin, nor have I had a fifth of vodka,” I ground out through gritted teeth, straightening my stance in front of him. I wanted to shout, punch him some more, tell him he had no right to detain me, but something held me back and I decided against it.
He shrugged, my attitude clearly not bothering him one bit as he appeared to relax—a stark contrast to the angered expression he wore just moments ago. “I think you should eat something. That usually helps to sober a person up faster.”
I dramatically scoured the empty road behind him, sweeping my head from the left to the right. “And where do you suggest I get something to eat if I can’t drive?”
“I can drive.” He pushed his hands into his front pockets and dipped his head as if embarrassed or shy. Both came as a surprise since he hadn’t acted like that when he’d stopped me from leaving. “I didn’t have anything to drink. We can go to one of those all-night diners and get some breakfast.”
“Let me get this straight…you lecture me about smoking, give me shit about driving, yet you see no problem with me getting into a car with a strange man in the middle of the night? Yeah…makes a lot of sense.” I attempted to move around him once more. But again, he stopped me.
“I know what that seems like, and I’m sorry for suggesting it. I just really don’t want you getting behind the wheel quite yet. If it’d make you feel better, we can stay right here and just talk, get to know each other so I’m not so much of a stranger anymore. And who knows, maybe by the time we’re done talking, you’ll be good enough to drive yourself.”
“So you want me to what…? Stand around in this parking lot for a few hours, telling you my whole life story, listening to you tell me things you assume women like to hear?”
“No.” He held up his hands in defense. “It’s nothing like that.”
“This is ridiculous! Why do you want to waste your time talking to me?” For some reason, this man left me feeling weak. He hindered my resistance and drew out emotions from me that most of my family couldn’t pry out with a crowbar. “I don’t even know you!”
“Bentley.” He stuck his hand out in front of me. “My name is Bentley Cole. My friends call me Ben. But you don’t have to call me that…unless we end up becoming friends.” His smile nearly caused my knees to buckle and my stomach to bottom out.
I fought to keep the corners of my lips from curling up, but failed. “Yeah, I don’t see that happening. I don’t have a habit of befriending the men I meet at bars.” Yet I took his offered hand, holding it still while the heat of his palm turned into smoldering flames that ran up my arm and set my neck on fire. “I’m Sarah.”
I’d been so used to offering fake names to the men I picked up that it’d become second nature, yet for some reason, my real name slipped past my lips. I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
“Nice to meet you, Sarah.” He didn’t let go of my hand, didn’t bother to actually shake it. He just held it tenderly in his grasp as he made eye contact with me, letting me appreciate the deep-green color from the lights on the building behind me.
“Why are you here?” I needed to know.
He pulled me closer and whispered, “Take a seat on my tailgate and find out.”
“No, really…” I finally slipped my hand out of his warm hold. I immediately missed his touch, but needed answers. No more playing around. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t understand your question. It’s a bar, why does anyone come here?”
“I just don’t get it. I clearly offended you enough to make you walk out—without getting a drink—so why would you want to spend your time talking to me?”
He grabbed the bill of his baseball cap, bent it between his hands, and dropped his chin to his chest before letting out a heavy huff of air. Once he met my eyes again, he said, “To be honest with you, I just want you to be safe. If talking to you means it’ll give you time to sober up, then I’ll do it. I wasn’t waiting around for you if that’s what you’re worried about. You walked out of the bar less than five minutes after I did.”
“Why didn’t you just leave?”
“This is my last night in town. I didn’t want to go back home and be surrounded by silence and packed bags. I came here to get out of the house, not to turn around and go right back to it.”
“You’re moving?” I tilted my head to the side, curiosity getting to me.
“Not exactly. I’m going back home. I’ve been here for a while, staying with my cousin. I’ve imposed enough already. It’s time I go back home to my family.”
I didn’t need a mirror to see the way my shoulders slumped in despair, and I knew why. It only took hearing someone talk about their family to bring my mood down, knowing my own family had been ripped apart at the seams months ago.
“What about you? Why were you here tonight?” he asked, pulling me from my own self-deprecating thoughts.
“Same as everybody else, I guess.” I shrugged, but then I realized I had no need to lie. This man wouldn’t be around past tomorrow, so it wouldn’t matter what he thought of me. “I came to meet someone.”
“The guy next to you at the bar?”
Suddenly feeling insecure, I glanced around the quiet parking lot. “Maybe.”
“You come here often to meet people?”
“I wouldn’t say often…but yeah. What? Are you gonna lecture me about that as well? Tell me all about the dangers of having sex with strangers? Go through a list of all the diseases I could possibly get?” I really didn’t want to hear his reprimands anymore.
“Nope. I don’t presume to know why you do it, and I don’t find anything wrong with sex. Men do it all the time, why can’t women? Just as long as you’re being safe, it shouldn’t matter.”
His response caught me off guard, causing me to still, completely frozen in place. Excitement bubbled up inside at the idea that I might not have to go home alone tonight. It didn’t matter if he was the forev
er type of guy, because he’d be gone tomorrow, taking with him the fictional white-picket fence and bright future. Maybe he would accept the offer of just one night—there was only one way to find out. “I’m safe. No glove…no love.”
His lips tightened as if holding back a grin. “Come on,” he said and nodded toward the back of a parked truck. “Let’s sit down and talk. I promise I won’t give you any more lectures.”
I studied the nearly brand-new Chevy for a moment before meeting his gaze with a smirk. “How about that breakfast?”
Bentley paused, clearly unprepared for my suggestion. Hell, it had even shocked me—slightly. I didn’t normally get into cars with the guys I picked up, choosing to meet them places instead. But I figured, what the heck, right? As much as his presence affected me, I didn’t want to end the night without getting laid. I ignored that annoying little voice inside my head that told me I’d regret it in the morning, and instead, focused on all the reasons it made sense. He already admitted to seeing nothing wrong with a woman having a healthy sex life, so it would be unlikely that he’d judge me. And it was his last night in town. His ability to provoke happy illusions wouldn’t matter, because there was no way I’d see him again after this. It couldn’t be more perfect.
“You really want to go?” he asked, his words careful and deliberate.
I curled my lips into the flirtatious smile that typically won over every guy I met, ignoring the way my stomach dipped with nerves and my extremities tingled with anticipation. “I seemed to have developed an appetite. And ever since you mentioned breakfast, my stomach has been growling.”
“Okay.” He nodded and offered a small, hesitant grin. “Come on, then.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and snapped a quick picture of his license plate to send via text to my stepsister, Aubrey. I knew she would more than likely be asleep and have a million questions for me in the morning, but I didn’t care. I needed someone to have this information in the event I went missing. Not that I suspected Bentley of being some devious monster, because if I did, I wouldn’t leave with him. I only did it as a preventative measure.
I added his name—which I’d hoped wasn’t a lie—and pressed send before climbing up into his truck. A lift kit had been added to the truck, making it nearly impossible to climb in without his assistance. My hips burned where he’d held onto them as he helped me into my seat, the sensation not going away even after he’d let go and closed the door.
“And you think you’re sober enough to drive?” Bentley asked after settling into the driver seat. He must’ve taken my silence and unfocused stare at the dashboard as a side effect of alcohol instead of the aftermath of his touch on my body.
I only smiled and waved him off, letting him believe what he wanted to. Had he actually let me finish my argument earlier, he would’ve heard me tell him how I’d only had Coke to drink. I was in no way drunk or buzzed—unless you count being completely intoxicated by his presence. But he wouldn’t listen to me. Just as well, because if I’d made that point, I probably wouldn’t be sitting next to him right now, hopefully on my way to lying beneath him.
Heat rose to my cheeks at the mere thought of letting this man touch me with his large, manly hands, having him wrap me up in his muscular arms as I dig my nails into his bulging biceps. Bentley was most definitely hot. And that smirk…my God. That was enough to get me in the mood. I had to stay focused on that—on the physical and sexual aspects of him—otherwise, I feared I’d get lost in the mental and emotional effects he caused.
“Where to?” He started the ignition and adjusted the volume of the country music playing through the speakers.
“There’s a Waffle House down the street.”
His head snapped in my direction and he stilled his hand on the gear shifter. “I’m not going there,” he said adamantly, and then continued to back out of the parking space.
“Why not? What do you have against Waffle House?”
He stopped to check for traffic and then pulled out onto our town’s main road. It wasn’t what most considered a main road, but it was the street that typically led anywhere you needed to go.
“I don’t know, they just creep me out. Especially this late at night.”
Rumbling laughter shook my chest, taking me by surprise—it’d been too long since a genuine giggle filled me. But it didn’t last long, settling quickly. “What about IHOP? Do they scare you, too?”
“I have no issues with them…” He glanced my way, probably noticing the wild smirk I had on my face. I knew it was big; I could feel the burn in my cheek muscles, but I couldn’t make it go away. “Are you making fun?”
“Not at all. The fear of Waffle House is real. I’ve seen the documentaries.”
He laughed beneath his breath, shaking his head as he drove. “Whatever. I can’t think of the place without picturing old truckers with long, stringy beards. And when I think of those guys, I think of hookers going missing. Blame it on my brothers—they used to make me watch all kinds of weird shit when I was younger. Unsolved Mysteries and bullshit like that.”
He seemed like a normal guy. A genuinely nice guy. And instead of leaving me with a sense of calmness or filling me with the kind of happiness most girls would have, it made me uncomfortable. Mainly because I wasn’t used to guys like him; the dirty-talking ones were more my cup of tea. But also because I didn’t want to get to know him, I didn’t want us to be friends. This was supposed to be a one-night thing. I couldn’t focus on the physical if he shared personal information with me, getting inside my head where I didn’t want him to be.
I thought to ask him about his favorite sexual position—letting him know my interest and what to expect from me. But for some reason, when my mouth opened, that wasn’t the question that spilled out. “So…you have brothers?”
“Two of them. I’m the baby. They are both quite a bit older than me.”
“Well, you don’t look like a baby. How old are you?” I never asked guys how old they were—I didn’t need to know their age. If they were in the bar drinking, I knew they were at least twenty-one. And that’s all the information I required. So my question left me unsettled and ready to flee. Clearly, focusing on sex proved to be more difficult than I originally thought when making the decision to leave with him.
“Thirty-two. What about you?”
“Twenty-five.” I picked at my cuticles in my lap as I stared out the window. I didn’t want to have this conversation with him, but it felt like a part of my brain had shut down, answers to his questions just pouring out of me without a hint of hesitation.
“Are you the only child?”
“I have two sisters. But unlike you, I’m the oldest.”
“Two sisters?” He seemed surprised by my answer, as if expecting to hear something different. Sudden paranoia covered me in an icy layer, chilling me to the bone, but I forced it down and swallowed past the acidic lump in my throat. This guy didn’t know me, no matter how much he acted like it. My reaction couldn’t be anything more than the unexplained effects he had on my psyche. I had to let it go.
Just as I had since climbing into his truck, I answered his question honestly and easily, feeling hypnotized by his soothing voice and ever so slight country accent. “Well, one is my stepsister. But we’re really close, so I’ve never considered her anything but my sister. She’s the middle one. She came to live with us when I was eighteen—she was seventeen. So we didn’t really grow up together, but that doesn’t change anything.”
Luckily, Bentley pulled into the parking lot of a small, mom-and-pop diner, interrupting my rambling answer before I told him too much. He didn’t need to know the nitty-gritty. No one did. I wish I didn’t even know it.
Once we were parked, nerves struck me hard. My stomach soured and began to roll, acid rising to my chest. A sharp ringing sound attacked my ears and left me feeling dizzy and unsteady. If he’d managed to effortlessly pull so many answers from me in a five-minute span, I didn’t want to know t
he things he’d convince me to divulge as we sat at a table together. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m feeling fine. Maybe you should just take me back to my car so I can go home and sleep.”
He remained quiet for a second, staring into his lap. “It’s just food, Sarah.”
I knew he’d misunderstand my change of heart. It had nothing to do with worry over him harming me, and everything to do with my fear of opening up to someone. I’d already told him more than I’d ever confessed to anyone else—since my mom’s death—and that made me uncomfortable. It was easier to share my body with people than my mind.
“I know. I just realized how tired I am, and I think I should probably go home.” My voice was weak and shaky, which angered me. I hated how this complete stranger was capable of bringing so many emotions out of me. It was dangerous, and I wanted no part of it.
“Let’s just get you a cup of coffee then. How does that sound? You shouldn’t drive when you’re tired, either.” He turned slightly in his seat, facing me more, his eyes glistening from the lights on the dash. “Listen, I’m not trying to keep you, or make you do something you don’t want to. But we’re already here. If it would ease your mind more, you could call someone to pick you up. We can just sit inside while we wait for your ride to come.”
Why did this man need to be so nice?
“It’s not that, I swear.”
“Then what is it?”
I shook my head, refusing to look at him. His eyes had a way of captivating me, rendering me speechless and enticing me to spill my guts all at the same time. I knew with one look I’d be a goner. “I can’t explain it. You’re just different than the guys I usually pick up, and it’s a problem. I don’t like to talk about myself.”
