TARA

I'm sitting in the passenger seat next to Tommy. The radio's on full blast, playing some pop song that Lola and Ava are both singing along to. But I'm tense like an overstretched rubber band. I'm not even sure if it's in fear or anticipation of what's to come. This feels like a date, even though we're not alone. Though despite all the noise in the car, I feel like we kind of are. Tommy's not talking, but he glances at me from time to time like he's expecting me to say something. And I'm racking my brain for an opening, but my stomach is a knot of nerves, and I'm pretty sure I'd just stutter if I tried to form a sentence.

The land opens up as soon as we leave town, rolling hills coming into view in the distance, on the other side of vast fields already turning brown from the summer heat. I have no idea where we're going. I thought maybe a pool, since the ocean is too far away for an afternoon dip.

I get my answer as we crest one of the hills. A lovely blue green lake stretches out below us, bordered by dark grey boulders, and thick, lush foliage.

Lola and Ava dart form the car as soon as it stops, and dash away toward the ravine leading down to the lake.

"The usual place, right?" Ava yells over her shoulder, but doesn't stop to hear a reply.

I'm already starting to sweat in my flannel shirt just standing next to the car, since it really is a scorching day today. Tommy grabs a blanket from the back of the truck, then hands me my car key.

"Here," he says. "I just couldn't be seen driven around by a woman."

I take the key, close my fist around it tightly.

His gesture of returning the car key means so much to me, I'd never be able to put it into words. Nor should I try, because he has no idea what he just did for me. I can relax now, because I know I can get away if I need to.

"Thanks," I say and he frowns at me like he heard the genuine thankfulness in my voice.

"It's a bit of a hike to the lake," he says. "And you're overdressed. Maybe you should just change into your bathing suit here. I promise I won't watch."

It's the first allusion to last night's events he's made all day, and he's grinning at me. Some promise, that is. He's just showing me his true colors again. Sex. That's all he thinks about. Even after my clear rejection last night. For some reason I feel more hopeful than mad though.

"I'll be fine," I say and stuff the car key into my pocket, pushing the hot pink bikini I have in there even deeper. I'm not putting it on. No way. "Where to?"

He points and starts walking and I follow. But he was absolutely right about me being overdressed. Sweat's running down the sides of my face within a few paces, and the elastic bandage hiding my breasts is chaffing my skin, its tightness making it even harder to breathe. This was a bad idea. On so many levels. Samantha's not here. She was never here. Why am I even still sticking around?

I'll show the girls Sam’s pictures tonight and then leave before morning. It was crazy to think I could find her here on my own, just as its crazy how I can't wait to see Tommy undress and go swimming. He's walking a few steps in front of me, but not so far that I lose sight of him.

I'm breathing heavily by the time I can finally hear the splashing of water and the girls' excited screeches.

The rugged slope we walked down opens into a small half circle of pebble covered lake shore. Tommy dumps the blanket he's carrying on the ground and pulls off his shirt. I actually stumble.

His back is covered in tattoos over the bulging muscles, but his skin is milky pale, with just a hint of a caramel colored tan.

He looks back at me over his shoulder, and I avert my eyes hastily. He knows I was checking him out, it's loud and clear in his chuckle. "Don't know about you, but I'm going in."

He has his jeans and boots off before I can even draw a full breath. And I'm both hoping and fearing his boxers will be next, but he doesn't take those off. He wades into the water, and leaps in head first, doesn't come back out for a good while.

Some alien part of my mind is directing me to go change into the bathing suit behind those boulders we passed getting here and follow him in. But instead I take the blanket, spread it over the pebbles and sit down.

The breeze coming off the water cools my face, and I soon get my breathing under control again. I hope my face isn't too red from the exertion. Lola and Ava are splashing each other and giggling in the shallow part of the lake. Tommy is swimming further out, his perfectly formed arms cutting through the calm water with the precision of a pro swimmer, his whole body one with the water.

I lean back on my arms and look at the sky instead, because I'm getting really tired of the voice telling me I should go in and join him. It's not possible, and the edges of that happy thought are already shrouded in darkness. The one no light in this world can ever chase away. If I don't acknowledge it, it won't hurt me.

"Well, just FYI, the water's fantastic," Tommy's voice flows down to me, followed by a few cold drops of water dripping from his body onto my face.

"I'm sure," I mumble, straightening up and wrapping my arms around my legs.

He lies down on his stomach next to me, looking off at the water. He's so close I can feel the coolness of his skin through my jeans. I'm keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead too, because otherwise I'd just stare at his arms, and his back, and his…

"I thought you said you liked swimming," he says.

"That's why you wanted to go swimming? Because I said I like to swim?" The words are out of my mouth before I even decided to speak. It's touching that he remembered what I told him.

He twists his head and grins at me, nodding. His eyes are kind of the same color as the lake right now. Only the blue in them is much darker, and the green too.

"I do love swimming, but…" How were you even going to finish that sentence, Tara? But…I don't feel comfortable wearing a bikini. But…I get physically sick when a man even glances at me in a sexual way. That wouldn't even be completely true with Tommy. At least not until he actually touched me. Last night was a great example of what would happen then. But that's my problem. My curse. He certainly doesn’t need to know about it.

"Thanks, that was thoughtful of you," I say instead. "Do you come here often?"

He rises on his arms, the cross around his neck glinting in the sun. "Yeah, quite a bit."

"I'm more used to swimming in the ocean," I say. "Or the pool."

I can't believe how easy it is to talk to him, despite all his suggestions that I get undressed, or the fact that he's already seen me naked last night.

"There's sharks in the ocean," he says and grins at me again. Surprisingly he doesn’t follow up by suggesting this would be a great way for me to try swimming in a lake.

"But there's snakes here," I counter.

He looks around in alarm. "Did you see a snake?"

I'm not entirely sure he's just joking.

"No, I just meant there could be."

He lifts himself up in one fluid motion, the way his muscles flex and roll actually reminding me of a snake, and sits next to me.

"Can I tell you a secret?" he asks, glancing over at Ava and Lola, but then locking eyes with me. "But you can't tell anyone."

"Umm, yeah, I guess." I say breathlessly, completely unsure whether he's asking in earnest, or I'm about to be the punch line of another lewd joke.

"I’m terrified of snakes. I can't even watch a documentary about them."

I snort. Of course I'm the punch line, what else? At least it wasn't lewd.

"I'm not kidding," he assures me, and his face does look very serious.

"You're not? Come on," I say in my most sarcastic voice. "You have a huge snake tattoo all over your arm, and you belong to a motorcycle club named after a viper."

He rubs his snake tattoo. "That's why it's a secret. And it's the Viper, not a viper. It was my grandfather's road name, he started the MC."

He sounds bitter, despite the slight smile playing on his lips as he glances sideways to see my reaction. And maybe he can puzzle it out, because I'm so conflicted in my emotions right now I have no idea which one is showing on my face.

He's not just the Vice President, he's third generation founder. Even if Sam wasn't trafficked by his MC, he can ask around, find out if she's being held by one of the others in the area. He's trying to be my friend. Maybe I could just ask and he'd help me find her. Help me bring her home. A friend would do that. But then he'd know why I'm really here. And I can't figure out if asking, or just thinking about taking advantage of his friendliness in this way makes me rotten. I could also go the same way Sam went, if he's not as friendly as he seems.

"How can you stand having a picture of a snake on your arm if they scare you so much?" I ask to stifle all these thoughts firing off in my brain.

"I was young and stupid when I got this," he says. "I thought seeing a snake every day might help me get over my fear."

"And did it work?" I no longer think he's joking. He told me a real secret. Maybe I could tell him mine too.

"Yeah, not so much," he says. "But it's a cool tattoo, don't you think?"

He shows it to me, making a fist and flexing his bicep so the snake seems to move. It's kind of mesmerizing, and I reach out and run my fingers along it before I realize what I'm doing. The jolt of electricity as my fingertips brush his skin, snaps me right back to reality, makes me snatch my hand back. But the electricity is still coursing through me, causing sparks. Yet it doesn't touch the darkness, nothing can dispel that darkness.

I thought that mass of bad memories only came out when I attempted to be intimate with guys, but now I see it's always there, watching over me, making sure I never forget what was done to me, and how different I am to everyone else because of it, how I don't really belong in this world of normal people.

He's frowning at me like he's trying to figure out what I'm thinking, but the edge of his lips curls up when our eyes meet, and I know what he's thinking. He's thinking I've just come on to him, and that's not even remotely true.

I look at the lake. Lola and Ava are still in the water, and it doesn't look like they'll be coming out anytime soon.

The sun glints off the silver cross hanging around his neck again. I very nearly touch that too. I don't know what's happening to me, but I want to feel that jolt of electricity again.

"So are you religious?" I ask. It comes out like an accusation.

He touches the cross, rolls it on his fingers. "Not especially. This is more like insurance."

"I've never heard anyone say that so bluntly," I mutter.

He glances at me. "That offends you? Are you very religious?"

I laugh, and it's an especially jarring sound even for me. "Me and God are not on very good terms. Haven't been for a long time."

I used to pray so hard for the parties to stop, for my dad to stop, to just be my dad, to not touch me that way, not touch Sam that way, not get so very angry when I tried to get him to stop. The nuns at the Catholic School I went to told us God always listened. I fell asleep feverishly reciting the Hail Mary prayer more times than I can count. I even learned it in Latin, thinking that would help. None of it did.

"That was pretty blunt too," he says, smiling at me, but his eyes are serious.

"It is what it is," I say. It took me so long to come to terms with that. And I'm still not entirely sure I ever did.

"So what came first? The necklace or the tattoo?" I ask, pointing at his crucifix, and the tattoo of the same thing it covers.

"I got the tattoo first," he says. "Then had this thing made to match it."

"Well, I hope God listens to you more than he does to me," I say not even sure why I'm still continuing this conversation. I almost feel like I could just tell him everything, and he'd understand. But that's insane.

"Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't even remember exactly why I got the tattoo, or when. It must've been in my darker, teenage years." He looks like he's my age, so that can't have been very long ago. "In fact, I don't remember getting at least half of these tats," he goes on, looking over his ink covered skin. "But even wasted as I was back then, I made some pretty good choices, don't you think?"

I'm actually afraid to look too closely, because I'll just end up tracing the outlines of the dark ink drawings on his body again.

"Yeah, they're all nice." What a great thing to say, Tara. No wonder he's laughing at you.

"Alright, so I told you all sorts of things about myself, for some reason. Now it's your turn."

He didn't actually ask me, just suggested I do it. But I don't think there's anything about myself I can actually tell him. I'm the daughter of one of the most famous movie producers in Hollywood, I work as a counselor at a women's shelter, I think his MC abducted my sister, and is forcing her into prostitution, I can't get close to a man because I've been raped so many times, that most days I can't even think about sex without wanting to puke. And all that pisses me off, because I really want to keep talking to Tommy.

Lola and Ava are out of the water, but they're sitting right next to it, glancing back at us from time to time, but showing no signs of coming over.

Why do I even want to be friends with this guy? He's a criminal, has quite possibly benefited financially from trafficking my sister. He sleeps with underage girls for sport. We're not the same and we never will be.

"Lola's very young to work as a stripper," I say.

He's looking at the two of them too. "Crystal says she's eighteen, but I don't know either. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, what do you think?"

"Younger," I snap. "And you sleep with her anyway?"

The anger coursing through me right now is making me nauseous. And I know it's a reaction to other things, things done to me when I was her age and younger. Because Lola looks very happy. She even laughs like a teenager still. But she is just a girl.

Tommy is looking at me now, but I refuse to meet his eyes. This is all so messed up. I'm leaving tonight.

"I haven't actually fucked her, just gotten some blowjobs from her, but I won't do that anymore either." He sounds very sincere and apologetic. I hear no fakeness in it. "I haven't been myself lately. She's not even my type. But I can do better. Please don't be so mad at me right now."

He grins at me as he says it, and I know he's referring to the anger that must be flashing from my eyes. I know what it looks like, Samantha describes it as terrifying, calls me Tara the Mad Ice Queen. I'd like to tell him I think he's just full of shit. But I don't. He sounds so sincere. And I know what he's doing. He wants to change the tone of our conversation to something lighter, fun not heavy. And I want that too. I want him to tell me more secrets, show off his tattoos, I want the rush and the sparks I got from touching him. I don't want this anger.

But I'm afraid it’s all I have left.

"Good intentions count," I mutter. And I do mean it. My whole career is built on good intentions. That's all we really have in the fight against the injustices of this world.

"Yeah? I heard the road to Hell is paved with those," he says, and fiddles with his cross again. "But I have this."

I look at him sharply, but he's smiling at me, looking straight into my eyes, intently like I'm the only thing worth looking at. "You're a very serious girl, aren't you?"

He means angry, but he's being tactful. And it's a rhetorical question, so I treat it as such. But it changes the energy between us, dulls the sharp edge of my anger because yeah, I am a serious girl and an angry one, and he seems to get that, it doesn't actually bother him.

"Everything's gonna work out, don't worry so much about it," he says, smiling at me.

"Yeah, how would you know?" I can't help but ask.

He shrugs. "That's just how it works."

I would love to have the ability to blow off the hard truths and just enjoy life. I crave it right now, and I don't know how I've lived this long without it. Sam found it. She could stop thinking and just be, just enjoy herself. Until she disappeared.

"Come on, let's go for a swim," he says and stands up. "You'll feel better afterwards."

A part of me knows he's right and wants to go. But I can't forget.

"You go, I'm fine," I mutter, even smile at him because I know he means well.

Then I watch him stride into the water, leap in and swim away. And I really want to be the carefree girl who wouldn't even think twice before going with him. But I'm not, and I never will be.

* * *

It's still light out when we return to the club, but the sun's already set. I watched it disappear behind the rolling hills as we drove back.

Lola and Ava rush towards the club, muttering something about wanting to take a shower first, giggling and glancing back at me as I wait by the truck to get the key back from Tommy.

"Excuse me," he says and reaches over me into the back of the truck for the blanket, making absolutely no attempt to avoid towering over me as he does it.

I gasp, paralyzed by my sudden inability to flee, by his smell all around me. His body’s so close I can sense the strength of his muscles. He's head and shoulders taller than me, and much wider, but it's not actually flight I'm considering, not entirely.

"How about that drink now?" he asks and my head jerks up, my eyes fixing on his. The sudden jolt of butterflies his voice woke in my stomach is overwhelming. My whole body is tingling from the energy coiling between us.

He leans down for a kiss, his lips less than an inch from mine when I finally regain my senses. I put my hand up, move my head to the side.

"Can we just be friends?" I deliver the line I always use when dates get to this point. They all say sure, but none of them ever stick around.

"Sure," he says and backs away. A sensation like something ripping passes through me.

I don't even know what to think as I watch him walk away. Maybe I'm just phrasing it wrong. I meant, I'm not ready, I can't, but I want to try, slowly. But no one sticks around for any of that. Why would they? And Tommy is least likely to of all. He has his pick of other girls. I'm no use to him, if he has to wait around for sex with me.

And I can't even drive away, because he never returned my car key.