“Get in the car.” Vaughn grips me tightly by my upper arm and drags me out of the police station.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” I scream, flinging my arms wildly. The movement reminds me that my ribs fucking hurt when I move, but I grit my teeth and ignore the pain as best I can, just to get his hands off me.

“Don’t cause a scene here, Sadie.” He spins me around to face him and grabs both of my shoulders. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough for one day? Get. In. The. Car,” he spits through clenched teeth, shoving my shoulder forward in the direction of the car.

“Where are we, anyway?” I ask, taking in our surroundings. “This isn’t Reno PD…”

Vaughn slams his hand on the hood of the car, making me jump. “They arrested so many…undesirables at the illegal fight you went to last night, that you had to be taken to an overflow station.” He curls his lip, and the look I’m seeing when I glance at him out of the corner of my eye is that of a man wavering on the edge of losing his shit. I’ve never seen him so angry at anyone, let alone me.

I hate it. It makes me feel small.

He pinches the bridge of his nose then sighs. “Get in the car, Sadie,” he says quietly.

I don’t argue this time. I want to go home. I want to shower. I want to lock myself away and pretend that all of this is just a very realistic nightmare that I’m going to wake up from at any minute. For a second I wish for my old life back, to a time when I was numb.

No feeling. No pain. No direction.

Just eat, sleep, rinse, repeat. But no sooner do I have these thoughts, then I fiercely push them away.  I don’t want the life I had before I felt alive. I don’t want to feel numb now that I know what it feels like to be living. I want to rewind just to last night when Ram left me with a kiss. Naked in his bed. Waiting for him to come back to me.

I climb into the back seat of the car, and Vaughn clicks the door closed behind me. The leather makes me feel nauseous. The silence even more so.

I watch out of the window as the world whizzes by. Everyday people going about their everyday lives like something monumental didn’t just happen. Something that may have just changed my life, forever.

“How did you know I was there?” I ask Vaughn, breaking the silence that we have both settled into. He glances at me in the rearview mirror then back to the road. When he doesn’t immediately answer, I press harder. “I never called you. I never gave your name as next of kin.”

“Why?” he asks, scrunching his brows and changing the direction of the conversation.

“Why didn’t I give your name?” I ask, and he nods. “Because I didn’t need you to rescue me, Vaughn.”

“Well, I think that fact’s just been proven wrong, don’t you?” I hate it when he uses that level, matter-of-fact voice. It’s his business tone, the pleasant words with the condescending meaning.

“How did you know I was there?” I press harder, starting to lose my patience and wanting out of this small, suffocating space.

“It’s not relevant, Sadie,” he growls.

“Yes, it is,” I screech out of frustration. It’s then that I realize we’ve gone past the road that leads to our house. “Vaughn…” He ignores me, keeping his attention on the road ahead. “VAUGHN!” I shout.

“Yes, Sadie,” he replies in a bored tone.

“You missed the fucking turn!”

“I do wish you wouldn’t swear like that. I didn’t bring you up with such a potty mouth …”

“But you—”

“I did not miss the turning because we are not going home,” he informs me. Cool-headed, level, and completely matter-of-fact.

“What? What the hell do you mean, we’re not going home? I need to shower. I need to eat. I have shit to sort out, Vaughn!”

“You need to calm the hell down.” His voice starts to rise, making my heart beat faster. “And, for the love of God, be quiet and do as you are told for once in your life, Sadie.” He slams his palm on the steering wheel, veering out a little but pulling the car back as he takes deep, loud breaths through his teeth.

I sit back in the seat, scared to speak, my mind spinning. Not only am I struggling to process last night, I’m caught off-guard by Vaughn’s uncharacteristic behavior. He’s never spoken to me like that, much less dismissed me so easily. I don’t know how he knew I was there. Maybe the police officer made contact with him because we were listed as sharing the same address, who knows. But I’m not going to push him any harder right now. There’s a deep crease in his forehead, the muscle in his jaw is ticking rhythmically as he concentrates on the road, and I don’t have the strength to argue with him, let alone anger him further.

After half an hour, I can’t stay quiet any longer. But instead of yelling, or demanding he answer my questions, I try a different approach. “Vaughn…” I speak softly, trying to appeal to the Vaughn I knew before last night happened. His eyes flick back to me in the mirror, but he doesn’t speak. “Please tell me, where are we going?”

“Sadie,” he breathes out on a sigh. “My darling girl. You know, I thought Reno would be good for you—for us.” He concentrates on the road ahead, a frown creasing his brows. His shoulders loosen as he talks, and I sit quietly, letting him ramble without interruption. He always did hate bad manners. “When everything happened back in San Fran all those years ago, I nearly moved us then. But moving you away from your home, and the only place that was familiar to you, seemed cruel. So we stayed, and although you were a quiet child, I never really worried about you. Then you found your freedom. You started going out, meeting men.” He smiles sadly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to be free, I did. But you were searching for something you couldn’t have, in a place you’d never be able to find it. I know you didn’t think I noticed your loneliness. But I did.”

He’s right. I don’t know how or why I thought I was so good at hiding my feelings from him. My mom always said I wore my heart on my sleeve, and she was right. If I loved someone, I told them. If I was angry, you knew about it. But Vaughn was right—once I hit my twenties, I used sex to forget. I used it to empower myself, to own the moment, to be in complete control of when and to whom I gave my body to. It was reverse psychology that worked in my twisted mind at the time.  I needed to be in control.

Vaughn continues, breaking my reverie. “So that’s when I decided we should move. You needed a fresh start, we both did.”

“I know why you did it, and I know—”

He interrupts, his mind clearly racing with previously unspoken thoughts. “You might not be mine by blood, Sadie, but I’ve always looked after you as such.”

“I know you have, Vaughn—”

He interrupts, again. “We’re going back to San Francisco, Sadie.” He glances back at me for the first time since he started his journey back along memory lane.

“What? Why?” I jump forward, pushing my shoulders between the seats and wincing at the shooting pain through my ribs. Vaughn eyes me curiously, but I don’t engage it. “I don’t want to go back, Vaughn. I like Reno. I want to stay.”

“It’s not up for discussion.”

“And it’s not your job anymore to say what I can and can’t do with my life,” I huff. “Stop the car.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I said stop the car!” I yell.

He mutters expletives under his breath before swinging the car into the nearest rest stop. He flings off his seatbelt, pushes the car door open to full extension, and jumps out. “Get out then,” he orders.

“Here?” I glance around me, having no clue where we are.

“Yes,” he nods, dead serious. “Get out,” he insists, making me wonder what the hell he’s going to do. But I get out nonetheless, holding my aching ribs with one hand across my body, but also standing my ground, even if he’s going to dump me here. He watches me closely as I climb out and face him, and he steps toward me. For the first time ever in his company, I flinch. He gasps and steps back, but covers his shock quickly and steps forward again, slower this time. He carefully raises his hand, gauging my reaction as he moves, and places it on my shoulder. I let out a shaky breath, confused about my reaction to him, and wondering why the hell this feels so intense. Vaughn has always been my safe place—my neutral ground. “Sadie,” he says, quietly commanding me to look at him. “Reno isn’t good for you. Can’t you see that? It took what happened last night for me to see that. Those bikers you’ve been spending time with—they’re dangerous, Sadie,” he insists, placing his other hand on my shoulder and gripping me tighter as he speaks.

“They’re not dangerous,” I insist. “They’re—”

“You’ve been blinded by the thrill of living outside the law. The danger is real, Sadie. It’s real!” He shakes my shoulders, tension tightening all his features.

“No.” I weakly push at his arms, though what he says starts to permeate through my mind. “It’s not like that, it’s—”

“It’s not the life I want for you.”

“But what if it’s the life I want for me, Vaughn?” I question, my voice raising out of frustration. Maybe I was blinded by the danger and the lust in the beginning, but it’s so much more than that, isn’t it?

“He never came for you.” Vaughn drops his hands from my shoulders, running them through his dark hair.

“What?” I question at his change of pace.

“Vice President Dalton,” he sneers, narrowing his eyes. “He left you in that cell. He left you all night. I don’t see him riding that white horse and coming to your rescue, do you?” He tilts his head, watching disappointment spread through me from my fingers to my toes.

“How would he have known where to find me?” I ask quietly, questioning it all in my head. Surely he would have done anything to know where I was when I didn’t make it back to HQ—wouldn’t he?

“He knew, Sadie.” He steps forward, rubbing my upper arm gently. “Because he told me where you were.”

“He what? How?” I don’t understand. Dread spreads from my toes right up through my body, an ice cold realization that my worst fears, my nagging doubts, may just be right, and that thought makes me want to throw up.

Vaughn shrugs sadly, dropping his head as he speaks. “He must have known that you had been arrested. He came to the house and told me where you were.” He takes a deep breath before continuing. “I’m sorry, Sadie. He said he had better things to do than chase around after trouble.”

My knees weaken. Every limb in my body starts to lose the ability to hold me up, and Vaughn wraps his arms around me as I shrink to the ground.

Exhausted. Scarred. Heartbroken.

Scenarios flash through my mind as I recall softly spoken words, tender touches, and visions of something I thought was very real.

How wrong I was.

When I needed him most, he bailed. In nothing more than a handful of days, I have fallen deeper than I knew possible. It was real for me.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know you liked him,” Vaughn whispers softly as he strokes my hair. I cry into his shoulder. Tiredness, emotion, and physical pain taking over the fierce determination I constantly try to hold on to.

Vaughn has just proven to me that when I need to be saved, he’s always the one there for me. Despite trying to fight for independence and break away from our unconventional setup, Vaughn remains my constant. He continues to be there for me in an instant, unconditionally. I guess it could be worse. I could be completely alone.

I wipe my cheeks with my fingertips, and both of us stand up and step apart.

“Come on, sweet girl. Let’s go,” Vaughn offers softly. I nod, following his lead and getting back in the car, not really caring where we go from here.

Everything I thought was so sure has been blown apart. Everything I thought I knew, was wrong. I read them all wrong. Even JJ. His kind words—his friendly demeanor. It seemed to me that wasn’t his usual way with people. I wondered perhaps if I was different from all the other girls Ramsey had been with. It felt like we were different. Even Dev had smiled at me, and from what Ramsey said, he never does that. But Vaughn just proved to me that I can’t trust what Ramsey says or does. He’s a selfish motherfucker, out for everything he can get, without regard to what it costs. He wanted my body. Or maybe he wanted a pretty girl on his arm, one that could hold her own and shoot a gun. But he couldn’t handle the commitment. The responsibility that comes from being a grown-up. When the going got tough, he bailed on me. I deserve better.

“Are you hungry, Sadie?” Vaughn asks, breaking the silence as he drives. “We have about an hour before we get there. Would you like to stop?”

I haven’t even thought about food until he mentioned it. My mind has been on a wild journey, painfully reliving moments of the past week that I should be trying to forget. But I am hungry, in fact, I can’t remember the last time I ate. This makes me think of Carrie.

I’d only just met her, but we were thrown together through circumstance, and she jumped in to protect me without even a second thought. Because, in her words, when you have a life like hers, it’s not worth living anyway. “Vaughn?”

“Yes…” he answers, glancing at me in the rearview mirror with a kind smile.

“There was a girl in the cell with me last night. She needs help…”

“You want me to help someone that you met just last night, in a police cell?” He laughs.

“Yes. She was good to me. She didn’t have to help me, but she chose to.”

“What is her name?”

“Carrie.”

“Just Carrie?”

“Yeah.” I sigh, looking out of the window with a frown. “I didn’t get her last name.”

“I’ll have Nate see if we can get some more details.”

“Thank you,” I say, settling myself deeply into the comfortable soft leather seats.

“You wanna stop for food, now?” he asks.

“No,” I reply, my eyes closing with the motion of the car. “I just want to go home.” Wherever that is.