CHAPTER 2:
JUNIPER
At first he was fun, exciting, highly intelligent, posh as hell, composed in this way that I’d never seen in another person. Every moment in his company was a high I couldn’t get enough of. He had a strangeness about him that intrigued me, one I should have feared, but instead found myself drawn to. I ignored early warning signs and the little voice inside my head that told me to be careful.
Instead of listening to that little voice, I’d felt lucky—lucky that someone so perfectly good looking, so wealthy, so respected in society seemed to have eyes for only me. I would have done anything for that man, and I did. Even as the aggression in him started to show and an evilness came to light, I was so blinded that I ignored my better instincts.
And when he hurt me the first time, still I ignored it, telling myself he’d only gotten a little carried away in bed. But once quickly turned into twice, and twice magnified into an almost nightly occurrence. There were bruises; I hid them. There were questions from friends; I made excuses. I lied and lied, and alienated myself from others when the lies became too much to manage. Obviously, I realized that none of it was healthy and that I’d taken myself down a very dark and dangerous road, but I stayed because I loved him.
Quinton asked me to marry him last fall. The moment he pulled out the ring—over dinner at the nicest, most exclusive restaurant in town—my heart felt like it had split in half. One half was all his, all in, in love and in denial about his weird fetishes. The other half was angry—maybe at him or maybe at myself for staying in this relationship for so long that now marriage was on the horizon. I guess I’d always assumed I’d leave him before it ever progressed to this point.
The in-love part of my heart won the mini war raging inside me. I said yes to his proposal. I agreed to marry both the man I loved and the monster inside him that terrified me.
But the scale tipped in the other direction yesterday. Yesterday I reached my breaking point. I’d always been compliant with Quinton, for the most part, finding it was easier not to ‘rock the boat’ with him. I didn’t want to lose him. I’d never been loved the way he loved me, and I felt like it was better to have something a little unconventional than nothing at all.
Then two pink lines showed up.
Two.
Pink.
Lines.
Holy shit, I was pregnant. And suddenly something inside me woke up. An animalistic, ‘mother bear’ force came roaring to life. My denial disappeared and like a switch being flipped, some basic instinct overtook me. And it was time to fight for my life. Correction, fight for our lives. Fuck being in love with this man, this monster, and his weird fetishes. I could not let my child grow up with a man like him as a role model. I had to get out now. Not in nine months when it would be too late, but now.
My childhood had been crap; my father was never around, and my mother was drunk off her ass most of the time. There was one summer when my mom had gotten sober, like completely sober, and my dad had returned home. Basically the stars had aligned. We’d gone with family friends on a vacation to the beach. For one small blip in my childhood, I’d gotten to feel what a real, good, stable family felt like. And it was the best feeling. A feeling of unconditional love and togetherness and safety. That feeling was something I’d been chasing ever since that summer and that one vacation.
Quinton and I…maybe we were in love, maybe there was a glimmer of something special between us. But the ten-year-old, day-dreamer, romantic in me, suddenly was refusing to settle, and she rejected this life I’d created around me. She wanted more. She wanted a chance at a greater happiness and a real-life family. She wanted Quinton gone.
* * *
Seriously shaken up, on a giant whim, with only the clothes on my back, less than twenty-four hours after taking that pregnancy test, I withdrew the maximum amount of cash I could from an ATM.
“Five-hundred dollars!” I yelled at the machine. “That’s it?” The bus ticket alone was probably going to cost me a couple hundred.
Would five-hundred even be enough to do this?
“Okay,” I said, still talking out loud and probably sounding like a crazy person to those waiting behind me. “That’s enough money. That’ll be enough.”
I took the twenties the machine spit out and put them into my purse. When Quinton had suggested we combine our money into one account, I should have realized it would end up being just another way he could control me. We weren’t even married yet, I shouldn’t have agreed to it. But I had. And now $500 was all the machine was allowing me to withdrawal.
Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I left the ATM and took off speed-walking down the street. My ‘great-big-plan’ was to buy a bus ticket and get the hell away from here as quickly as possible. I’d told Quinton that I was heading to the grocery store to buy a few things, but that had been a lie. Instead I’d driven straight to the closest metro station, left my car in the lot, and then took the train all the way into D.C. The bus station was located only a block away from the metro stop. Now that I had some cash, it would only be a short walk from here. I knew I wouldn’t be able to use my credit card again, or I’d risk him finding me that way, so the fresh $500 in my pocket was going to have to last a very long time.
Each step felt difficult, like I was stomping through mud, as I walked down the sidewalk. My stomach churned—maybe out of anxiety or maybe this was what morning sickness felt like. I wasn’t sure. Part of me wanted to turn around and go home, back to Quinton and his cozy apartment, but the stronger part inside me forced my feet to keep moving.
I passed a trash can. Now, I didn’t have the first clue about cell phone tracking or what sort of technology Quinton might have access to. But he had a friend or two with connections to the police, and I didn’t want to risk him locating me because of my phone. So I had to say goodbye, and I threw my phone in the trash. It slipped through my fingers, and I watched in horror as it clunked to the bottom.
Damn. It had been a brand new iPhone too. My first. Jeez, I stood there in the February wind, just staring at it for a few long moments.
It’s a new bag.
You can easily reach down and grab it back…
NO!
Shit. Before I could change my mind about the phone, I hurried away from the trash can into the warmth of the bus station.
It’s only a phone, I reassured myself, you lived for years without one before Quinton. You can get a new one again one day after all of this is over.
Giving myself another little pep talk, about the ninetieth one of the day, I glanced around the enormous bus station. I’d never been here before. There were tons of ticket windows, food-court style restaurants, gift shops, and a huge waiting area with seats. It was Friday and it was jam-packed full of people. Good, maybe all the people in here would give me some cover from the tons and tons of security cameras this place had to be crawling with.
With that thought, an idea struck me, and I hurried for the nearest gift shop.
I only had $500 to last me who knows how long, but I was still a little worried about all the cameras. Once Quinton realized I’d run away, if he hadn’t realized that much already, how hard would it be for him to follow my ATM purchase to the bus station, pay someone off for the security footage of this place, and then from there figure out where I’d gone? I hope not that easy…but I needed to take a few more precautions.
So I bought a black Washington D.C. hat, one I’d already seen several tourists around the station wearing, and an oversized sweatshirt.
Yikes, $52 gone.
I piled my long red hair up on top of my head, and with several minutes of maneuvering, managed to tuck all of it up under the hat. My hair was kind of my defining feature, like a trademark, and I needed to hide it. Then I left the coat I’d been wearing behind and put on my new sweatshirt instead.
Maybe this was another foolish idea, in a long line of foolish ideas, but for a moment I felt kind of clever and slightly safer in my new outfit. Typical me didn’t wear sweatshirts and hats, so this was perfect. From there I bought a bus ticket to Richmond, Virginia. I’d change buses there and then be on my way to the Outer Banks, North Carolina. Grand total, six more hours to get to my destination.
Maybe it would have been less risky to head somewhere much more remote and random than North Carolina, which was only one state away. But I chose the Outer Banks for two reasons. One, that was where my family had vacationed that summer I’d felt safe and loved, and, two, it was February and no one went to the beach in February. There had to be plenty of empty beach houses there this time of year…right? I’d break into one, lay low until I could find a job that would pay me ‘under the table,’ maybe find a lawyer that could help me get a restraining order against Quinton, and figure everything else out later. As far as spur of the moment plans went, aside from the whole breaking and entering portion of my plan, this felt pretty freaking brilliant to me.
So brilliant that my paranoia about being followed by Quinton dropped, and I slept on the bus ride to Richmond. I switched buses there as planned. And the next bus took me further south.
The Outer Banks was different from how I remembered. Not better or worse, just different. More businesses now and more houses. It had been over fifteen years since I’d been here. I guess things change in fifteen years. The bus dropped everyone off—there were four other people I’d been riding with—at a small station in Kill Devil Hills. The Outer Banks, a string of several peninsulas and barrier islands along North Carolina’s coast, had many different towns. I’d forgotten which town I’d stayed in as a kid, so I wasn’t picky. Kill Devil Hills would do. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. The bus went here, so here I was.
As I stepped off the bus, watching the other people meet up with waiting loved ones, it sank in for the first time how crazy my plan had been.
What the fuck was I doing here?
Seriously?
It was evening now and pitch-black outside. And somehow freezing cold. Before ditching my phone, I probably should have checked the weather. I guess I’d expected it to be warmer here than it had been in D.C., but it wasn’t. The last car in the lot pulled away, taking the last person off my bus with them. I hadn’t eaten in several hours and my stomach growled at me, but my hunger would have to wait until tomorrow—shelter was my first priority. With no other options, rather than standing alone in a deserted parking lot, I started walking.
I went in the direction of the ocean.
As I walked, I hugged my new sweatshirt closer to my body. There were so many emotions overcoming me—thoughts of the baby now growing inside me, my heart breaking over leaving Quinton, and the sheer terror that came from being in a strange new city, walking down a random street at night. On the other hand, though a part of me was terrified, another part began to feel something completely opposite. I couldn’t deny the rush of excitement bubbling under my skin.
Had this town ever heard of street lamps? Seriously.
I could barely see where I was stepping as I continued down a neighborhood street. I passed plenty of houses, some that even looked unoccupied, but I kept going, my pace quickening, the mini-high I hadn’t felt in years growing.
I only walked for about fifteen minutes before I ran into a street running perpendicular to mine. This was the street I’d been pursuing, the street that ran parallel with the ocean. There were houses sitting in front of me, ginormous and beautiful houses with driveways wide enough to fit at least ten cars. These were the beach front properties, rentals that easily went for 10k plus per week in the high season, and these were what I’d come all the way to the Outer Banks for.
I inhaled a deep breath.
Now that I was here, I had to choose the right house. The first one I approached had several cars parked in front and nearly all its lights on, obviously occupied. So I kept moving. The next one was dark, no cars, and nothing that screamed ‘someone’s home.’
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” I mumbled, my teeth chattering.
I ran from the street, through the yard, around the house. There was a gate, which easily pushed open, and led me to a back yard with a pool. I had what I needed in my pocket—one bobby-pin and one paperclip. All I needed was to find a door that didn’t have a deadbolt or a security alarm. Although I knew how to disable a few different brands of alarms, I wasn’t an expert on all of them. So I crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t have to deal with something I couldn’t handle.
This day was already complete shit, I didn’t need more of it.
But as fate would have it, the back entrance into the house wasn’t deadbolt locked and there was no alarm. Thank my lucky stars. And approximately twenty-two seconds later, I had the lock picked and was behind the safety of the door.
Crazy how alive simply breaking into some random house could make me feel. The truth, though, was that I was pretty darn good at petty crimes. Picking locks, shoplifting, pick-pocketing—these were all survival skills I’d developed out of necessity in my teenage years. I mean, it wasn’t like my mom was going to get up off the couch and provide for us. I had to provide. But I’d put my juvenile delinquent days behind me long ago. Even if small acts of defiance still brought on a little rush of excitement…that just wasn’t me anymore. I wasn’t fifteen anymore, fighting to survive and make sense of the world. I was an adult. But this whole day had reduced me down to a former version of myself. One I hated and had left behind a long time ago.
It didn’t matter though. Nothing mattered. The only thing important was the baby.
I walked through the dark, my boots echoing on the tile floor. I felt my way along the wall and found the stairs, heading for the main level. Everything opened up to a large open floor plan. Damn. It was a beautiful house with giant windows, modern décor, and enough room for a family of twenty. Even coated in darkness, I could tell it was easily a million dollar home. It was perfect.
Welcome home, I thought to myself.
Then, exhausted and emotionally drained, I plopped down onto one of the living room couches.