Chapter 13: Jay

Jay was officially out of money. They were broke. Really broke. And while they were close to their destination, he still knew what had to happen next; they had no choice.
“We’re going to have to sleep in the car tonight,” he said.
Addy looked over at him, flabbergasted, her gray-blue eyes rounded with utter shock.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.” He flipped on his blinker and eased the little blue car onto an off-ramp, his gaze catching sight of the Rest Stop sign on the road.
“I can’t sleep in the car,” Addy said. “I have a bad back.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Jay glanced over at her, smirking as he parked the car in an empty parking space. The entire rest area was empty. There wasn’t even a sleepy semi-driver in sight.
“This is creepy as fuck,” Addy said, looking around into the darkness. Jay couldn’t help but silently agree with her. The rest area sat firmly against a border of trees, trees that formed a vast forest around them, which made the parking lot appear even darker than it was. Once again, his mind conjured up some stupid horror movie setting—two college kids spending the night in the rest area—a psychopath murderer hot on their trail.
Oh, wait. In this scenario, he was the psychopath murderer.
“This is all I have for you,” Jay said. He didn’t tie her up. He didn’t even consider it. She was not his hostage, not anymore. If she didn’t want to leave, then so fucking be it. “Are you going to try and sleep?”
“I guess,” Addy said. She looked ghostly in the dark of the night, the moon washing her complexion with white through the window. She shook her head slowly, the bob of her new hair brushing her neck. He put an arm over his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling himself waver with exhaustion already.
“Get some sleep, Addy.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Of course you’re not.” Jay put his hands over his face, rubbing the taut skin. From the corner of his eye, he noticed that Addy was looking at him—staring—as if she were examining a new specimen. “Do I have something on my face?” Jay asked, catching her off guard.
Addy turned away abruptly, her cheeks flushing a shade of crimson. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
Jay shrugged and let his concentration wander out the windshield and into the darkness. In the silence of the car, between their soft breathing, something made a noise outside. “Do you hear that?” he asked. His words cut through the silence, making Addy jump. Jay leaned forward, alert, his eyes narrowing into the darkness.
“Hear what?”
“There’s someone out there,” Jay said and opened the door.

“Don’t do that,” Addy said. “You’re freaking me out.”
Jay held up a finger to shush her, and a tiny ball of fear caught in her throat.
“Seriously!” she hissed. “It’s not fucking funny, Jay.” She watched as he stepped toward the bushes, crouched down slightly, like a predator on the hunt. A million terrifying thoughts swam through Addy’s brain, and she imagined him getting tackled and dragged away by a cougar—or maybe a mad mountain man.
“Jay!” she whispered. “Get back into the car. Please!”
“One second,” he held up a finger again, and Addy wished she was close enough to him to break it. “Something’s out there.”
“I don’t give a shit!” she hissed. “It could be dangerous, and you have the keys on you, asshole!” She watched, frozen in horror, as Jay reached his hand into the swaying brush. He turned back to look at her, and in a terrifying instant, he was yanked forward, nearly clean of his feet. Addy heard herself shriek, and she tried to clamber out of the car. Jay was wailing now, howling bloody murder. Addy froze where she was, heart racing, and covered her eyes, unsure of what else to do.
“Help me!” Jay shouted at her. “Addy, please help me I’m dying—help me, Addy, help me. I’m melting. I’m meeeeeellllltiiiiing.” She felt her hands drop from her eyes as she struggled to catch her breath. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, threatening to break free. Jay was standing straight up now, holding a ragged stray dog in his arms. He looked over and flashed her a cocky grin.
“Gotcha.”

Had a gun been handy, with only one bullet left, Addy had no doubt exactly who she would have used it on at that moment.
“I fucking hate you.”
“I know.” Jay lowered the skinny stray dog into the driver’s seat of the car, his rough hands stroking the frightened animal. “I told you there was something out there,” he said. “I wasn’t lying to you.”
Despite her anger at him, Addy couldn’t resist holding her hand out to the frightened dog. He was thin and worn down, as though he’d been on his own for far too long and apparently without food or water. He sniffed her hand, and his tail wagged weakly.
“Poor thing,” Addy said, forgetting her irritation. “Who could abandon a sweet puppy like this?”
“Maybe someone’s missing him,” Jay said. He pushed the dog over gently and slid back into the car.
“Well, they don’t deserve him back.” Addy kept her hand out, allowing the whimpering animal to lick her palm. “He looks half-starved.”
“Yeah,” Jay agreed. “He does.” Addy watched as he reached into the backseat for a bottle of unopened water. He twisted the cap off, opened his palm, and poured water in his hand. The dog lapped at it desperately, still whining deep down in its throat.
“He looks like a yellow lab cross,” she said. “My friend Lisa used to have one just like him when we were kids. His name was Jack.”
“Jack?” Jay repeated doubtfully.
“Yes,” Addy said. She watched him screw the cap back on the bottle and pat the dog’s head.
“Don’t worry,” he told the pup. “I would never name you something as stupid as Jack.”
“It wasn’t stupid,” Addy insisted. “It was cute.” She hesitated for a moment, her eyes on the dog. “Fine,” she said finally. “It was stupid. Whatever.”
“Did you ever have a dog growing up?” Jay asked. Addy watched his hands rub behind the dog’s ears, and then up and down his spine. The mangy dog, she could tell, was loving the attention.
“No,” she said. “I never had a dog. My mom was allergic, and I guess I never found the time for one after high school. Did you?”
“No,” Jay said. Addy watched, taken, as the dog positioned himself so he was halfway in Jay’s lap. “I always wanted one, but we never had one. My stepmother wouldn’t think of it.” It was odd, Addy felt, watching a man like Jay bond so quickly with a stray dog as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“What are you going to do with him?” she asked. Jay shrugged.
“Leave him where I found him, I guess.”
“Jay! He’s not a toy. You can’t just put him back where you found him.”
“Well, he’s not ours,” Jay said. Addy felt herself hesitating, unable to avoid the fact that he’d referred to the two of them in the same sentence.
“You’re right,” she said finally. “But we can’t just leave him. He could die out here.”
“Do you want to take him with us?” he asked. She was surprised, surprised that he’d suggested such a thing.
“I was going to suggest dropping him off at the next animal shelter we found,” she said. Jay’s eyes flickered from her face and down to the dog in his lap, the one that was now snoring soundly, not a care in the world as long as he had people with him.
“He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?” Jay asked.
Addy stared at the both of them for a moment—man and dog—feeling every emotion tug at her heartstrings. Sure, he was cute. He was a dog—and she was a prisoner—and her captor had just found them a pet.
Good Lord.
“So,” Jay said, leaning back in his seat. “Tell me about this guy of yours.”
Addy met his gaze, taken by surprise at the sudden turn in the subject. “Ryan?” she asked.
Yeah, like there was someone else.
“Yes.”
She hesitated for a moment, uncertain on whether she should get this personal. Sure, Jay had taken a turn for the best, but talking to him about personal details like her love life seemed to push it.
Then again, this whole goddamn situation they were in was pushing boundaries every second.
“He asked me to marry him six months ago,” she said, playing with the ring on her left finger. It glistened in the moonlight, seeming to taunt her. “We went to high school together, but at that time we didn’t even really know each other. He was a jock and a scholar, and I was the bookworm. Withdrawn, shy.” She paused. Jay was watching her from the driver’s side seat, silent—intrigued.
“You? Shy?” he said.
“I learned to stick up for myself,” Addy said. “Nobody else did.”
“So, when did you get together?”
Tension gripped her, and she almost considered stopping, but she couldn’t not talk to him. It felt like the first time in a long time that someone was paying attention to her—listening.
“He asked me out in high school. He was a senior, and I was a sophomore. I would see him around now and again at friends’ houses and in school. He was always the life of the party. Drunk, of course, with a girl on each arm. Women drooled over him. He was it.”
“‘It?’”
“Yeah,” she confirmed with a smile. It felt good to smile. “You know, the one guy that everyone wanted. Mr. Right.”
Jay laughed. She thought he looked so different like this: kicked back. Smiling. It was—bizarre.
“Do you notice that when you talk about Ryan, your voice changes?” His question was abrupt, serious, catching her off guard. She could almost feel the brick wall go up as she looked over, meeting his gaze.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your voice,” he said. “It gets cold. Tightens up.”
Addy forced a smile. It was tight-lipped. “What are you, a psychology major?” she asked mockingly.
Jay shrugged. “I took some classes,” he said. “I was two months away from graduating with my bachelor’s degree in psychology before the shit hit the fan and I had to drop out.”
“No kidding?”
“Nope.”
She watched him shift his body and cross his legs, facing her now, his undivided attention in her direction.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. With Ryan, I mean. I love Ryan.” Even to her, the words sounded and felt strained. Stiff. Untrue. “He’s amazing. I look forward to becoming Mrs. Ryan Parker.” There wasn’t even a hint of truth in her voice, and they both knew it.
“You can kid yourself, Addy, but you can’t kid me,” Jay said. Something in his tone forced her to look at him, to scan the features of his face and study the secrets behind his eyes.
“I’m not kidding anyone,” she said. “I love him.”
And as the words fell out of her mouth, burning her tongue like a hot iron, the image of Ryan towering over her, intimidating her, screaming at her, grabbed hold, and clung on. Before Addy even knew what was happening, tears pressed against her eyelids and slipped down her face.