Daddy Make Me Beg

Chapter 2

I veered around the shed, my heart thundering, and my foot caught on a rut in the ground. My ankle twisted, white-hot pain shooting up my leg. Biting back a cry, I stumbled the last few steps before dropping low behind a rusted wheelbarrow. The knife shook in my grip, clenched so tight my knuckles burned.

Shit. s**t. s**t.

The moon slipped free of the clouds for a heartbeat…just long enough to spill light across the yard.

And there he was.

A silhouette cut from shadow, broad-shouldered and unhurried.

He was always like that. Controlled. Calm. Like he had all the time in the world to ruin me.

He stood in the yard, his head tilted like he was listening. I didn’t dare make a sound.

“Sienna…” he called again, low and coaxing. “Come on, sweetheart. I just want to talk.”

Sweetheart.

I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming and curled tighter into the shadows, willing myself invisible.

Rain fell again, soft at first, then steady, pelting the tin roof of the shed in a rhythmic beat that almost masked the sounds of his boots moving closer.

I held my breath.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said, his voice seeping into the night like smoke under a door. “You always were stubborn.”

That voice. I felt it in my bones before I even processed the words, a cold clamp closing around my spine.

No.

I wasn’t doing this.

I wasn’t falling apart. Not again.

I crept backward on hands and knees, away from the shed, deeper into the shadows, where the trees started. My injured ankle rolled on a branch, but I bit down on the cry of pain.

I was almost there.

If I could just get to the neighbor’s fence line—just far enough to scream, to be seen⁠—

A twig snapped behind me, and I twisted toward the sound, my palms scraping the dirt.

Nothing.

Dragging my gaze back…I collided against a nightmare.

“There you are,” he murmured as he bent over me. Too fast, his arm snaked around my waist, and he hauled me off the ground. His other hand clamped around my wrist. My nerves shrieked as bone ground beneath his grip.

The knife slipped from my hand, and desperately, futilely, I reached out after it. “No, no, no, no… NO!”

“I said stop running,” he growled furiously. His breath flushed hot against my ear.

I thrashed, kicking and clawing…but he only cinched me tighter. My twisted ankle screamed as he dragged me toward the woods, rain sluicing over us both, his hold unyielding, my breath breaking out in staccato gasps.

The security light on the next property burst on, flooding the night with a bright, artificial glare.

“Hey!” a throaty female voice called. “What the hell are you doing?”

It was Mrs. Callahan. The widow next door, who sometimes marched over with a ruler to measure the grass at the edge of my lawn, just to make sure I was cutting it short enough.

Her porchlight snapped on next. God bless nosy neighbors.

His grip loosened for a breath, just long enough.

I seized the knife from the mud and turned, adrenaline roaring in my ears.

A strange calm swept through me, cold and absolute.

And then everything went black.

I was trying to stop looking over my shoulder…but some habits were hard to break.

Somewhere between Nebraska and my next emotional crisis, I realized I’d been driving with my parking brake on for about forty-seven miles.

I fixed it, obviously. I’m not completely irresponsible. But still. My car smelled like hot pennies and poor life choices, which if I were being honest, had become my signature scent. At this point I probably had a higher tolerance for the smell of copper than any normal person should—and not just from the smoking parking brake.

I shook my head. That life was over. Now, I was nearly thirty, husbandless, and the proud owner of two suitcases, one dying Prius, and a glittery compact mirror that said You Look Fine (For Your Age) in bold serif font. Boston was behind me. California was the dream. And the road in front of me?

Endless. Dusty. A quiet that made you start talking to inanimate objects just to feel something.

“Not now,” I muttered to the gas pump at mile marker who-the-hell-knew. It was stuck on “please remove nozzle,” and I was two seconds from body slamming it into cooperation.

I didn’t need “destruction of property” added to my permanent record, so I gave up trying and headed for the tiny building across the lot.

I’d stopped here because I’d made the fatal error of trusting the Next Gas 75 Miles sign like a chump. Also, because I needed caffeine before I committed a felony. My latest playlist, titled “Vengeance and Emotional Support Bops,” had run its course an hour ago, and now I was running on fumes and spite. Which was unfortunate, because it had been working overtime to keep certain…thoughts under control.

This gas station looked like it had been built fifty years ago and immediately abandoned. There were three pumps, one ancient soda machine half full of Shasta…and a front-door chime that made a noise like a dying cartoon character when I entered.

Inside, I passed a dusty rack of postcards and a wire shelf of snacks that might’ve once been food-adjacent in the same way that a sea cucumber is technically an animal.

The cashier didn’t look up from his sudoku as I approached.

“Hi, do you have a bathroom key I could use?” I asked.

He pointed to a wooden spoon hanging from a string on the wall. A literal spoon. With the word “KEY” burned into it.

I took it solemnly, like a knight accepting an enchanted sword. Which, if it had been, would not be the strangest thing I’d done on this road trip.

When you’ve driven alone across the country for five straight days with nothing but gas station coffee, t****k voice filters, and your past trauma for company, your brain starts doing weird things. Like convincing you that stopping at The World’s Largest Corn Dog outside of Des Moines was a reasonable use of time.

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

The corn dog was twelve feet long, mounted to a rusting pole, and looked like a war crime against fair food. I’d taken a selfie with it and added the caption: Me and my last healthy relationship. Then I sat in the car and ate a gas station taquito…which was another example of a poor life choice, since I was literally at a corn dog exhibit.

Another questionable stop had been the International Banana Club Museum, where I learned nothing and everything all at once. There were plaques and photos…and grown adults nodding seriously at bananas. I left changed, though I couldn’t explain how or why.

I wasn’t chasing enlightenment with any of these stops. I wasn’t even chasing fun. I think I just wanted proof that the world still had absurdity in it. That not everything had to be so tightly wound and miserable. That somewhere between heartbreak and survival, you could still pull over and laugh at a giant plastic banana someone had named Cheryl.

And now here I was at yet another absurd stop, except this one was necessary.

The bathroom door creaked when I pushed it open, like it had been waiting to be dramatic all day and finally found its moment.

I froze.

Look…if someone wanted to murder me while I was peeing in the middle of nowhere, this was the exact setting they would choose.

Flickering light overhead? Check.

Cracked mirror? Check.

A single sad paper towel hanging from the dispenser like a white flag of surrender? Check.

I stared at the shadows near the stall…but nothing moved.

“Just me,” I said to the air like all of this was fine. “One woman. Two kidneys. Hoping to keep both, please.”

The air didn’t respond, which felt rude but also encouraging.

The bathroom door didn’t close unless you leaned your full body weight against it, and it took two full heaves of my shoulder to make me feel secure enough to do my business in record time. I washed my hands in the freezing cold tap water, refusing to look in the mirror (I’ve seen The Ring; I know how this works), and bolted the second I heard a soft tap-tap from the ceiling tiles above me.

It was probably just a mouse, but it could just as easily have been a demon. If you thought about it, the line between the two was pretty thin.

Once back in the relative safety of the store, I grabbed a can of cold brew that promised to “slam your brain into gear” and a bag of neon-orange chips that claimed to taste like “sriracha fire.” Because apparently I wanted to cry and suffer more than I already had on this trip.

The cashier still didn’t move as I approached. He was in the same pose—elbows on laminate, pencil over sudoku, face set in the blank expression of someone who had long since made peace with their boredom.

I carefully hung the wooden spoon labeled KEY back on its little hook.

“Bathroom was…fine,” I said.

He didn’t look up. “Mm.”

“Unless you count the suspicious noises coming from above my head, which I am choosing not to investigate because I enjoy being alive. That feels more like a you job, anyway.”

“Mm.”

“I think something’s living in the bathroom ceiling.”