Unfiltered & Unsaved

by Payge Galvin

  He laughed a little, a breathless sound that made the fire burn hotter inside her. There was a rueful edge to it that told her, more than the firm pressure of his erection against her, how he felt about her. “Are we on the buttons step?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to make me ask for more permission before I unhook your bra?”

  “Probably.”

  “You’re cruel.”

  She found herself smiling. “Maybe.”

  “I think I like it.” He kissed her again, and it almost distracted her from the slide of his fingers on the buttons, slipping them through the holes with a slight pop of resistance on each one, then relaxing. Six buttons. She always left the last one undone. This lick of cooler air on her skin made her shiver hard against him, and gasp into his mouth at the burning caress of his touch skimming over the surface of her bra, tracing its outlines, gliding down into her cleavage. It was a tease, and a torment, and she loved every seductive moment of it.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, as his lips moved down to her neck, sucking and nibbling and leaving trails of damp heat behind. “I should be running away from you right now.”

  “Then run,” she said.

  “Soon.”

  They both froze at another sound at the door. This time, there was no sound of the code being entered … only a rattle of the knob, and then a loud bang that made the heavy door jump in its frame.

  “Shit,” Elijah said. “Maybe that should be right now.”

  He stepped back and turned toward the back exit. Hope quickly buttoned her shirt and stuffed the tails back into her skirt. She grabbed the heavy backpack she’d abandoned in the middle of the floor and almost overbalanced as she tried to sprint after him. “Elijah, wait!“

  He didn’t pause for her to catch up. He hit the emergency exit bar on the door, and as the contacts broke, alarms and flashers went off. The sudden glare of the outside light blinded her for a second as she dashed in pursuit, and she stiff-armed the door opened when it tried to swing shut on her. E.J. was already halfway down the emergency exit stairs that scaffolded the building. She plunged down in pursuit.

  He didn’t look back.

  “Wait!” she cried, and managed to catch up to him about twenty feet from the bottom of the stairs. He was heading for the faculty parking lot—sparsely filled now, but it was still the best cover around. She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him to a stop, but he only took her hand and yanked her into a run along with him.

  Again.

  “I told you, I have to go back,” he said when they were sheltered behind a big, black SUV. “Hope, you have to let me go. I want you to stay safe. Understand?”

  “They’re going to hurt you, though. Aren’t they?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” It did. She saw it in the shadows in his eyes, but those shadows lifted just a bit when he focused on her face, and smiled. “Thanks for the nice time. Sorry it had to end.”

  She couldn’t let him go like this—not knowing that he was heading back into that van, to that man who was going to beat him. “Wait,” she said, and fumbled with her backpack. “E.J.—what if you went back to them with money?”

  “What do you mean? Your cash? It won’t buy me out of anything.”

  “Maybe this will.” She took a deep breath, unzipped the backpack, and yanked out a thick stack of bills. She thrust it at him. “Take it.”

  For a frozen second he just stared at the cash. Its well-worn edges riffled in the breeze, and then he looked up into her face again. “What the hell, Hope?”

  “Take it! Just—”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just take it, if it’ll help you.”

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t take that to Solomon. If I did, he’d know—” He looked down at the backpack, and she saw a physical flinch go through him. “He’d know there was more where that came from. He’s seen you with me. It wouldn’t take them long to track you down, and I can’t—”

  “Don’t be stupid. Just take it.“ She saw the big, bulky shape of Elijah’s pursuer—his jailor, she supposed—come around the side of the building and look up at the emergency exit stairs. He turned in a slow circle, and then he focused on the parking lot, exactly where they were hiding. “There’s no time, you have to take it. Please!”

  He shook his head and peeled off four bills to stick in his pocket, then thrust the rest back into her hands. “For God’s sake, take that somewhere safe, and crawl in after it,” he said. “I’ll tell them I ripped you off for all the money you had. I hope that it’s enough to keep them from checking.” He hesitated for a second. He wasn’t looking at her. “I guess this is goodbye. Wish it could have been different.”

  He kissed her again, a quick, warm thing that tasted of longing and a bitter note of fear, and then he was turning before she could reach out to keep him. He walked straight out into the open, and headed for the bald bruiser, who watched him approach with what was unmistakably an angry glower. They met a football field’s length from her, but she still saw the punch that the man drove into Elijah’s stomach—a real, serious, do-some-damage blow, and E.J. bent at the waist and staggered, then collapsed to one knee. The man didn’t give him any time to recover; he hauled Elijah up to his feet and pushed him at a stumbling, erratic walk back around the corner of the building.

  Hope stood frozen, watching him go, and she couldn’t think what to do. Running after him was stupid; at worst, she’d just get E.J. hurt worse, and she couldn’t get him away; even if she did, she knew he was thinking about his friends in that van. The ones who would suffer for what he did wrong.

  She had a lot of money, and she had no idea how to use it. All she wanted to do with it—all she had ever wanted to do, from the first moment those strangers in the coffee shop had put it into her hands—was to do something good. Something clean. Make it all mean something.

  You have to call the police and tell them about Elijah. It was, on some level, her default answer to things, but she’d made the decision not to call the police about the killing in the coffee shop. It all flashed back on her in that moment, as real as if she was sitting in The Coffee Cave, trying to concentrate on her Bible verses while the (surprisingly great) musician on stage strummed guitar and sang, and two drunk girls banged loudly on the bathroom door, and a man at the counter grabbed the barista’s arm. She smelled the warm, thick scent of coffee, felt the old wood of the table under her fingertips, heard the sharp, alarmed scream from Sugar as the man dragged her over the counter and punched her.

  Heard the crack of the shot as Jess fired a pistol before the man could fire his own gun.

  Then blood, and the smell of burned powder. The smell of death.

  Her heart was racing. She sagged against the SUV, blindly staring after Elijah, and tried to breathe through the crushing sense of panic. The weight of the bag, with all the money, the blood money, seemed like it would drag her all the way down to hell. For a few minutes, Elijah had made her forget all of it … had made her life seem like it might become normal again.

  But now he was gone, and here she was, alone again. Alone, terrified, and desperate to find some peace.

  Hope staggered over to a wooden bench on the grassy area, dropped the backpack, went to her knees, and prayed. Please, she prayed in fierce, shaking silence. Please listen, oh Lord, please help Elijah. I know I’ve done wrong but I want to do right, I do, I just don’t know what it is. Send me a sign to tell me Your will. Please send me something. I can’t go on like this, I can’t. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

  She felt better, having sent that prayer winging up to the sky; He would hear it. She knew not every prayer was answered, and she wasn’t sure He would find her worthy of an answer, not now. But she’d never needed one more.

  She looked down at the backpack, and felt such a wave of tired disgust she wanted to just … walk away. Leave it here on the ground and let it become someone else’s problem, or blessing. They’d come to it w
ithout the memories, the guilt, the shame. Maybe that would just be better all around.

  But she couldn’t. Because it was her backpack, and if someone called the cops about it thinking it was some kind of bomb, as they’d all been trained to think about abandoned bags, her DNA and fingerprints would be all over it. She’d been fingerprinted once for some school registration thing; it was supposed to be just in case of abduction or something, but maybe they’d be able to access it for a criminal investigation. What if it all unraveled on everyone, because of her? Sugar could go to jail. So could Jess, who’d shot the guy. So could all of them, for taking their cuts of the cash.

  Suck it up, Hope, she told herself. Take the money and do something good with it. That was the plan. That’s still the plan.

  She stayed on her knees a while, waiting, but God kept his silence. She finally climbed to her feet, took the backpack, and headed back to her dorm.

  Along the way, an idea came to her. Maybe it was God, touching her lightly on the head; maybe it was the devil whispering in her ear. Do something good with the money for yourself first.

  She changed course to the Admin building. Still open for ten more minutes.

  ###

  Hope knocked before she turned the key to her room—just in case Brittany and her current boy-toy were sprawled naked in post-sex comas, which had happened more than once. When she eased the door open, though, she saw that the beds were empty, the sheets were tangled up on the floor, and the shower was running. Brittany always showered after the boys left, never with them; it was a quirk, but it told Hope that the sexytimes were over for now. She kicked Brittany’s sheets over to her side of the room and headed for the desk, where she wrote a note. She taped it to Brittany’s pillow, then dragged her suitcases out of the closet and began to pack.

  She was almost finished when Brittany came swanning out of the shower, dressed in a warm fleece robe with a towel twisted around her head. She looked much younger without all the makeup and boobalicious clothes, and Hope felt a stab of guilt … until she realized the robe was actually hers, and Brittany hadn’t asked to borrow it.

  “Going somewhere?” Brittany asked, and flopped on her bare mattress without seeming to notice the tangle of sheets piled at the end. She leaned her elbow on the pillow, and frowned at the paper pinned there. She freed it and held it up. “What’s this?”

  “Read it,” Hope said. “You can keep the robe, by the way.”

  Brittany read it. “You’re moving out?”

  “I’m moving out right now. Today,” Hope said. “I’ll just be a couple of doors down the hall, but I paid for a single room for the rest of the semester. They had an opening. Besides, it’ll be better for you if you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I don’t ever worry about you,” Brittany shrugged. “But they’re going to hike up my room rate for a single, or get me somebody else who could suck a whole lot worse than you did. You think of that?”

  “I did, actually,” Hope said. “I switched your rate to a single and I paid the difference. I hope that’s okay.”

  Brittany looked at her silently for a long moment, eyes wide, and then nodded and cut her gaze away, as if she was embarrassed. “Sure,” she said. “Fine. Thanks.”

  Hope packed her shoes into a duffel bag, and then pulled out an old cardboard moving box for her books and computer equipment. She didn’t have a lot other than that; her family had really emphasized being happy doing, not having, and she didn’t really get why people (including Brittany) had so many gadgets and pictures and dolls and … boyfriends. It was sort of a spiritual insulation, she thought; everybody had an empty spot they had to fill, and if you didn’t fill it with love, and God, then all those things made a kind of substitute.

  “Hey,” Brittany said. She sounded subdued now, not herself at all. “I’m sorry about—about being such a bitch sometimes. It’s just that you’re always so … goody goody. You make me itch all over. I feel like you’re always judging me or something.”

  “I’m not,” Hope said. Well, that’s a lie, she thought, and promised to pray about it later. “We’re just really different people, and we want really different things.”

  Brittany studied her in silence for a second, then smiled slowly. “Not too different. Who was Conservahottie?”

  “What?”

  “You know, Prepster? The button-down boy you had in the room when I got back. Tell the truth, you were getting busy with him, right? Was he from your Bible Study or something?”

  “He was selling magazines,” Hope said, “and no. We weren’t.”

  “Uh huh.” Brittany didn’t sound convinced. “Well, he was kinda cute, and kinda built under all that khaki and plaid. You should get a taste of that.”

  In her own way, Brittany was trying to be … friendly, which was very weird indeed. “I don’t think I’ll see him again,” Hope said. “He’s … probably moving on. He travels.”

  “Best kind of guy,” her roommate—ex, now—nodded. “One who doesn’t stick around.” She sounded utterly convinced of that. It made Hope wonder just how badly Brittany had been hurt before.

  Asking, though, would open up a whole new level of information Hope wasn’t sure she could handle just now; she still felt overwhelmed and numb, which seemed like they ought to be polar opposite things, but somehow weren’t. She just wanted silence. Quiet. A place to herself.

  Hope grabbed her backpack and the first suitcase and exchanged a nod (no hugs) with Brittany, and headed two doors down on the right. She fumbled with the key—the lock stuck—but inside the room it was blessedly quiet and dark. When she flipped on the light she found a stark, empty room with a single twin bed, some built-in shelves, a desk, and drawers. Hope dumped her suitcase and the backpack, and went back to the old room for another load. It only took three trips, without any help from Brit-Brit, of course, and then she was completely … alone.

  Hope shut the door, tossed her favorite pillow on the mattress, and curled up there without bothering to put the sheets on first.

  Hers. All hers.

  It struck her then, hard, that she’d spent the first few thousand of her illegal cash on something completely selfish.

  What was worrying was that she really didn’t feel all that bad about that, either.

  Besides, it gave her the space, the silence, and the privacy to cry.

  Chapter 3

  After she stopped crying, she unpacked, filled the dresser, made the bed, set up her desk, and hung clothes in the closets. It didn’t take that long, but by the time she hung up the embroidery her mother had given her, it felt like home. All hers, no compromises. That felt really, really good.

  And really alone. Again.

  Hope worked on her computer a bit, sent her family an email to let them know the change in room number, and after a hesitation Googled Elijah Crane’s name. She didn’t turn up much. He didn’t seem to have any social media pages, which was weird for someone his age. She checked Facebook, but it was the usual crowd there … no new, mysterious stranger had sent her any friend requests or posted on her wall. Twitter wasn’t any more helpful. He’d disappeared, and except for the remembered tingle on her nerves and lips, it was as if he’d never existed. But she couldn’t forget the desperation in his eyes, or the feel of his hands on her skin, or the truly brave choice he’d made to go back to that van, that life of—well, slavery.

  She felt guilty that she’d let him go.

  Her room felt quiet around her—calm and safe, a blessed space all her own. She found herself saying another prayer for Elijah as she drifted off. She didn’t mean to fall asleep, at least not still fully dressed, but before she knew it, she was out cold.

  She woke up to the sound of her cell phone ringing. Middle-of-the night calls were never, ever good news, and she grabbed for it and opened it without looking at the number. “Hello?” and then, in the next fuzzy second, “Dad?” Because a very small number of people had her cell number, and the only people she could think woul
d be calling this late (early?) were her parents.

  “Is this Hope? Hope Adams?”

  She didn’t know the voice—male, brusque, deep in pitch. She blinked a few times and focused on the glowing phone screen. She didn’t know the number, either. “Yes? Who is this?”

  “I don’t believe we’ve met. You may call me Mr. Solomon.”

  She struggled to identify details. He had an accent, something East Coast, maybe Boston. She didn’t know anyone by that name either, although it seemed familiar to her somehow. Her brain was still trying to throw off the blankets of sleep, and she sat fully up in bed and grabbed a knitted throw her mother had made to put around her shoulders. She felt chilled, all of a sudden, though the room itself was warm enough.

  “Miss Adams,” he said. “Do you mind if I call you Hope? As I said, I’m Mr. Solomon. Elijah’s told me so much about you.”

  Her memory finally clicked into focus. Elijah had said the name, all right. “I want to talk to him,” she said. “Elijah.”

  “E.J. is indisposed at the moment, but he thinks the world of you, Hope. I had a very hard time getting him to tell me about you, and he’s not usually that close-mouthed about his girls. He must think you are more than that.”

  “More than that,” she repeated, because she couldn’t understand what he was saying to her. “More than what?”

  “A quick and dirty fuck, my dear,” Solomon said. It sounded sickening, coming out of his mouth. “I don’t mean he’s in love with you, understand. I’m talking about the attraction you hold for him that’s more than just what’s between your legs. That, I promise you, he can get anywhere.”

  Hope pulled her knees up to her chest in an instinctive huddle. “Stop it.”

  “If you think I’m talking about your personality, don’t flatter yourself. I’m talking about your money,” Solomon said. It felt like the world suddenly went crystal clear and utterly silent. Hope heard the hiss of blood in her veins. “E.J.’s a nice kid, just not very good with pain. He even tore up the magazine form so I wouldn’t get your address, but that taped back up together just fine. So I can come to you any time I want—but I won’t have to pay you a visit, will I? Because you’re a nice kid, too. And you don’t want Elijah to suffer.”