by Stacia Stone
It’s impossible to be absolutely sure, but I’ve had this weird feeling since we left the diner. I noticed this black car in the parking lot. Late model and too shiny to have spent much time on dusty Tennessee back roads. It’s nicer than anything somebody working at that diner would drive. I thought maybe it belonged to the woman with the toddler, but it was still there after she left.
And now the same car, or one that looks remarkably like it, has been following us for the last hour.
I think about telling Hunt, assuming he hasn’t already noticed for himself. But I’m pretty committed to the silent treatment I’ve been giving him since we finished eating. I don’t want to break it just because I’m imagining things.
Of course, I might not be imagining things.
But that would be a good thing, right? A dark, unmarked vehicle that’s suspiciously out of place? It’s probably undercover FBI agents, discretely tailing us until they can get back up in to take him down and rescue me.
That should be a relief, so why do I feel so uneasy?
It could also be his friends following behind us. Maybe that’s why he felt so comfortable taking me into that diner. He knew his friends were outside to catch me if I tried to make a run for it.
It’s barely past dawn. Shoots of pale light trail across the horizon. The world out there isn’t something that I’m part of anymore. It’s as if our entire lives have narrowed down to the confines of this car and the need to keep barreling forward.
Why didn’t I try to get help?
The question gnaws at me, especially because he used it to mock me. It’s not because I care about him, how could I? He’s not just some cute guy that I ran into at the bookstore: no matter how good he looks. He’s my kidnapper and my torturer.
No, it can’t be that. Maybe part of me wants to see this through as much as he does. Maybe I have to prove, both to him and myself, that the terrible accusations he has leveled against my father are false. There is nothing to be found in that storage locker and I want to see Hunt’s face when he figures that out.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the sex. Even as the memory of his hands on my skin is so visceral that it only takes a stray thought to take me fully back to that moment. It isn’t about the fact that you only get one real first time, and mine was with him.
But I can’t stop thinking about my words to him, either. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking.
Maybe you care about me, too.
The sound of my own words in my head makes me cringe. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth at all to those words, because ultimately we have to face the inevitable. Regardless of what we do or don’t feel, we’re going to have to let each other go. This whole thing can only end in one way.
We pass a tiny sign letting us know that Ashland City is two miles away.
“How much farther?” he asks.
I hesitate before answering. It’s the first direct question that he’s asked since we got back in the car. I’ve really been enjoying pretending that he doesn’t exist.
“Turn right here,” I say quickly, just as he’s about to pass the next road.
“Shit, really?”
Tires screech and I have to hold on to the side of the door as the car makes a too-sharp turn. I turn back to watch to see if the black car follows, but it continues past us down the main road without so much as braking. I let out a little sigh, but I can’t decide if I’m relieved or concerned. It’s not his friends, but it’s also not someone who might help me.
“Sorry, I made a mistake.” I keep my voice very carefully neutral and turn to stare out the window so he can’t see my face. “It’s the next turn.”
Hunt curses, but makes a wide U-turn. “Why don’t you just give me the address?”
I ignore that, acting like the line of trees flying by are the most fascinating thing in the world.
He makes a rude noise and I hear the creak of leather as his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Frustrated? I want to ask. Good, because that makes two of us.
Hunt takes the next turn without another word and I suppress a spurt of satisfaction. I like the fact that I can get under his skin, especially since he has spent so much time getting under mine.
If I remember right, the storage unit is just off the main road that leads into town. I’ve only been there a handful of times with my father. He never explained why they had a storage unit so far from where we live, something about the rates being cheaper out here. It’s not like it really matters where he keeps a bunch of old furniture and useless family heirlooms. It was just a place to put anything reminding him of my mother that he didn’t have the heart to destroy.
And what is Hunt going to do when he figures out there is nothing here, but the dusty remains of a life only half-lived?
The most obvious answer is that he is going to kill me. My little ploy back at the hotel room just resulted in me making a fool of myself. He’s not going to just forget about his quest for vengeance just because the sex was good.
We-Store-It looms in the distance. It’s one of those big industrial places with thousands of storage units, ranging in size from a closet to something big enough to roll a semi-truck through. Our unit is somewhere in the middle size-wise, about the size of a large bedroom.
“This the place?” Hunt asks.
“No, we’re looking for the other gigantic storage place down the road.” I can’t stop the sarcastic response, maybe it’s just an involuntary reaction to the sudden burst of fear. “Don’t you know? Ashland City is the storage unit capital of Tennessee.”
To my surprise, he laughs. “I like you better angry than moping.”
I glare at him. “I wasn’t moping.”
“If you say so, sweetheart.”
The endearment sends a little frisson of pleasure through me that just makes me angrier. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He pulls up to the gated entrance of the complex. A little speaker box and keypad is on a podium to the side. “What’s the code?”
It’s tempting to tell him that I have no idea, but then I remember his words from before.
You want this to end about as much I do.
“5-18-19-78.”
He punches in the code. A short alarm bell sounds and then the gate begins to open. I have the ridiculous thought that we’re about to pass through the gates of hell. Stop being stupid, I remind myself. Stupidity is going to get you killed.
“Is that number special?”
I don’t know what made him ask, maybe because it’s something that I still remember after years and years. “My mother’s birthday.”
“That makes sense.” The gate continues to slowly swing open, and he impatiently eases the car forward. “She died about eight years ago?”
“Ten,” I say impatiently.
“Breast cancer, right?”
That’s the official story. I drum my fingers impatiently against my knee. “If you already know then why are you asking?”
He shrugs. “Just making small talk. I figure it’s better than the silent treatment, or whatever it is we were doing before.”
“Your idea of small talk sucks.” I turn to face him, giving him the full force of every contradictory emotion that I’m feeling right now. “Yes, my mother died of breast cancer when I was twelve which was around the time that my father decided to make his career the most important thing in his life. He couldn’t handle it. He took every reminder of her, everything they bought or owned together and locked it away because all he wanted to do was forget. He won’t even come out here. My step-mother has no idea that this storage unit even exists. All the physical reminders of my mom are stored here and you’re about to tear it all apart searching for something that doesn’t even exist!”
He stares at me and I realize that I’m breathing too hard. My voice is loud enough that it’s probably pretty close to yelling.
But whatever response I expect to my outburst, all he does is shrug.
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br /> “Interesting,” he says and pulls the car forward. “Do you remember the unit number, too?”
“1469.”
Maybe he’s just immune to human suffering, but Hunt doesn’t try to comfort me the way that literally any other human being on the planet would. Part of me finds that repulsive, but another remembers that now is not the time to fall apart at the memory of my dead mother. In his own twisted way, maybe he’s doing me a favor by being so callous.
I wonder how he would react if I told him the whole story, not just the one that got written up in the obituary. Would he be shocked, appalled or intrigued? Or worse, would he give me that mocking smile and say the words that I’ve dreaded hearing for most of my life: she sounds just like you.
We roll past rows and rows of storage units. It’s like being inside of an abandoned, but perfectly orderly city. Dawn has firmly broken, but it’s still too early for anyone else to be here. The main office of the complex probably won’t be open for at least a few more hours. I don’t ask what Hunt was planning to do if this place didn’t have twenty-four-hour access.
My family’s unit is toward the end of a row, nearest to the tall wrought-iron fence that surrounds the property. There is a small clearing on the other side that leads into a stand of trees. Even if I wanted to run, there isn’t anywhere else nowhere to go.
Hunt stops the car in front of the unit. The numbers printed on the door are faded and desperately in need of repainting.
“I’m guessing it’s too much to ask if you’ve got the keys,” he says.
I glare at him. “Where, hidden up my ass?”
“No,” he shakes his head and gets out of the car. “I’ve already checked there.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re just setting ‘em up like bowling pins, sweetheart." He shuts the door and walks around to the trunk. By the time I follow him out, he’s already got a pair of bolt cutters in his hands.
I wince as he sets them to the lock and snaps easily through the metal. I can’t help thinking about what those things could do to something different, like human flesh and bone. Maybe he was right, I haven’t learned yet what real torture is.
And the more time that I spend with him, the closer I get pulled towards the darkness.
Hunt drops the bolt cutters to the ground and pulls up the sliding door of the storage unit. Metal creaks against metal with a loud shrieking sound, making me wince. A shower of rust rains down on his head and he brushes it away. It’s probably been years since anyone has opened this place up.
Light shines into the storage unit as he lifts the door completely. Furniture shapes covered in old sheets, dozens of cardboard boxes, and other miscellaneous items are neatly laid out. The cardboard box closet to me has a label on it that is so faded and curled up that it’s no longer legible.
But I recognize my dead mother’s handwriting.
“We don’t have all day.” He nods toward the nearest stack of boxes. “Make yourself useful.”
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” The air is thick and hot inside of the storage unit, making it feel like I can’t get enough oxygen. A thick layer of dust covers everything and creeps down my throat to burn my lungs. “Besides the nonexistent needle in a very big haystack.”
The look on his face is exasperated. “Official-looking documents, computer storage media, anything that looks like it doesn’t belong.”
I open a box labeled Sophia’s Baby Pictures. “I promise you there’s nothing here.”
“Then it shouldn’t matter to you if we look.” He pulls back a sheet, revealing a reproduction Louis 15th chaise lounge. “Think of it as a nice trip down memory lane.”
“Memory lane is the last place I want to be, thanks.”
“You’re pretty bitter for someone so young.”
“Well, I’ve been through a lot for someone my age — or did you forget that you kidnapped and tortured me?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, baby.” His piercing gaze sends a bolt of lightning through me.
Shivering, I turn away. It doesn’t make sense how much he’s able to get to me.
I pull out a photo album and idly flip through it. This one starts with the day I was born and goes through my first birthday — photos of me being bathed naked in the sink, crying on Santa’s lap and toothlessly grinning over a birthday cake with a huge number 1 printed on it.
He goes quiet while I continue to rifle through the boxes. There’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in any of them, unless you consider 80’s hairstyles a cause for alarm.
“Is that her?”
I jump when Hunt speaks from right beside my shoulder because I hadn’t heard him move in so close. I’m holding a picture of my mother in her twenties, before I was even born. He stares down at it for a long moment.
“My mom? Yeah.”
He takes the heavy, silver frame from me and tilts it to better catch the light. “She’s beautiful. You look a lot like her.”
I feel a pang of emotion in my chest, pain and no small amount of fear. “Everybody always said I was her little copy, she used to have us in matching outfits when I was really little.”
“How was it she died, again? Cancer?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, it was really aggressive. She died before my parents even publicly announced that she was sick.”
He notices my hesitation. “That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
He turns to stare directly at my face. “It sounds like there might be more to it.”
“There isn’t.”
“What kind of cancer was it?”
“Um…pancreatic. No, I mean…breast. It was breast cancer.”
Hunt leans against one of the chaise lounges and crosses his arms over his chest. “So let me make sure I understand. Your mom dies out of nowhere and your dad is so broken up that he moves all of her stuff into a storage locker and does his best to write her out of existence.”
I clench my hands around the picture frame. “That about sums it up.”
“That doesn’t seem strange to you?”
“No, not really.”
“I think,” he stands up abruptly and takes a step toward me, completely invading my personal space. “There’s more to the story than what you’re saying.”
I try to look away but he’s so close that there’s no way to avoid his piercing gaze. “Please just let it go.”
He just barely touches me, hands sliding up the outside of my arms and making the hairs there stand on end. “Tell me the truth.”
I can already feel the unholy curl of desire rise up in the pit of my belly at his touch. Isn’t this exactly what I was afraid of, why my father tried to keep me so far from anything to do with my mother, that I would end up making the exact same mistakes that she did?
“My mother was a whore, okay.” I wrench my arms out of his grip and stumble back away from him. I don’t want him to touch me anymore, not when it’s a visceral reminder that the apple fell right next to the tree and planted seeds of its own. “And it got her killed.”
He holds both hands up in a calming motion but keeps his distance. “What happened?”
“I guess nowadays they call it an addiction and you go to counseling or support groups. They didn’t have that kind of stuff back then, I guess. Bottom line: she could never stop herself, even when my dad threatened to leave her and take me with him.” I’m surprised at how little my voice shakes as I say the words, words that I’ve never spoken out loud before in my life. “She cheated on my dad dozens of times, probably more times than he ever found about. It was a sick compulsion. She would say she was sorry, cry and plead for understanding. They would go to church and pray to God to take the demon away, but it never made a difference.”
Hunt watches me silently, his expression unreadable. I can’t read anything in his voice when he finally speaks.
“How did she really die?”
“What do you call it…erotic asphyxiation? She went m
issing for a week and when my dad finally tracked her down, he found her at some crappy motel with a belt wrapped around her neck. She’d been dead for at least a few days. Best guess: the guy she was with freaked out when she didn’t wake up and ran off.”
His lips twitch but aside from that little tell, his face remains very carefully blank. “So the cancer story was a just a cover?”
“Everything reminded him of what happened, that’s why he moved all of this stuff out here. He doesn’t talk about her, ever. I only figured out what happened a few years ago after putting together bits and pieces that I’d heard from people over the years. Eventually, I confronted my step-mother, Magda, about it. She finally told met the truth.” Tears threaten in the corners of my eyes but I force them away, making my nostrils burn. “My dad wanted to protect me and my mom’s reputation.”
The mask of Hunt’s face cracks a bit and I can see his anger. “I’m sure his own reputation had something to do with it. The real story doesn’t exactly match his political image.”
I glare at him. “I get it, as far as you’re concerned everything my dad does is with the worst possible intentions. But he had a good reason to do what he did. My mother was damaged.”
He scans my face, searching for something that he must find because he sighs and looks away. “You think you’re like her.”
“Look at this.” I wrench the picture up in a violent motion and shove it towards his face. “Look at everything that’s happened. I know I’m just like her and I’m probably going to end up the same way.”
We stare each other down for a long moment that feels like it goes on for days.
Finally, Hunt turns away and moves to an unopened box. “We’re wasting time.”
I toss the picture onto the chaos where it lands with a soft thump. My mother’s face smiles up at me, innocent and bright because the woman in that photo has no idea what’s in store for her.
But I do.
It’s been a few hours of him searching methodically and me pretending to do more than flip through scrapbooks before we break the mutual silence.
“I hope you’re interested in my baby pictures because that’s all you’re going to find here.”