Jack and Djinn (The Houri Legends, #1)(45)
She heard a car approaching from behind, and she moved farther over to the side of the shoulder, looking up from her phone to realize the sun was setting. She turned to watch the car drive by and felt her stomach clench. It was Ben, pulling up next to her, rolling down his window, pacing her. How had he found her? He must’ve followed her, she realized. She turned away from him and kept walking.
“What are you doing out here, Miriam?” He sounded sober and calm. Miriam ignored him. “Don’t ignore me, baby, please. Just get in the car. I’ll take you home.”
“I’m not your baby.”
“Okay, fine, Miriam, please let me take you home. Come on.”
“I don’t want to go home. I’m fine.” She refused to look at him. He was looking at her with puppy-dog eyes, pleading silently.
“Look at me, Miriam. Just stop for a second. It’s sunset—you’ll be walking for hours. Anything could happen out here.”
“I’ve walked home alone in the dark plenty of times. I can take care of myself. I’m a freak, remember?”
“I’m sorry I called you a freak. I’ve been an *. I know I have. I’m sorry, okay? I apologize. I can change, I promise. I’ll stop drinking, and I’ll treat you right. Just let me take you home.”
“You’ve said all this before, Ben. Nothing has ever changed, and it never will.” She hiked her backpack higher on her shoulders, tightened her grip on the gas can. “Go away, Ben.”
“Miriam, this is stupid!” Ben said, frustration bleeding into his voice. “Come on. Just get in. I’ll take you right home. I promise.”
“Yeah, right. Funny how ‘right home’ always means going to your apartment so you can grope me. No, thanks.”
Ben hissed, gunned the car, and pulled it over in front of her. He got out to stand in front of her, not quite touching her. “You’re being f*cking stupid, Miriam. Come on. Let’s go. Now.”
She stared at his chest, refusing to meet his eyes. “Get out of my way, Ben. You’re wasting your time.” She pushed him out of the way as she said this. Or tried to, though he didn’t move.
“No. This is idiotic.” He grabbed her arm.
Miriam wrenched her arm free and slapped him, hard. “Don’t touch me.”
“Listen, please! No, don’t walk away. Just listen. Do you remember how we met?” Ben was walking beside her, his car still running, door open, on the side of the road. “You had just started at the Taproom. You were living in your car, and you thought no one knew. You didn’t say one word the entire first day, just followed Beth around on your shadow shift, watching. You looked scared of everything. Your hair was braided down to your waist, and you had a ton of eye shadow on, making your eyes look big and even darker than they are. God, I was crushing on you from that first day. There was something mysterious about you. There always has been, actually, and that’s part of what makes you so attractive, aside from your looks. There’s this sense of…I don’t know…mystique, something secretive about you. You refused to even look at me that first day. You’d come up to the service bar and you’d just stare at the liquor bottles, or out at the customers. You wouldn’t look at me, and it drove me nuts. I thought you were so hot, and I just wanted to say hi, but you wouldn’t cooperate. You barely glanced at Larry during your interview. Everyone wanted to know what your deal was, who you were, why you lived in your car, but you wouldn’t talk to anyone. It was months before you even looked at me.”
Miriam remembered. She had been trying to leave Nick. When she’d woken up with Nick holding a knife to her throat, she’d finally gotten desperate enough to run, but Nick had come after her, found her at the Taproom, tried to scare her into going with him. Ben had hospitalized Nick, protecting her, and after that he had acted like a friend and protector to her, going out of his way to talk to her, to make her laugh.
She had still been wary, keeping her distance from him for several months, putting him off at every turn. That had only made him want her more, though, made him chase her all the harder. Eventually she had given in, let Ben take her to his apartment, let him kiss her, let him touch her, let him sleep with her.
He was nicer than Nick…at first. He seemed normal. A bit quick-tempered sometimes, prone to outbursts about little things, but he’d never hit her, never treated her the way Nick had. His temper worried her. The ease with which he had ripped into Nick had sent warning flags waving in her head, but she ignored them. He was big and tough, promising to protect her, which was exactly what she thought she wanted after having barely survived Nick. Ben made her feel safe, or at least he provided the illusion of safety. She allowed herself to ignore the warning signs, one after the other.
Things had been fine for about six months, and then he told her he had enlisted with the Marines. She had just begun to get attached to him, so it hadn’t been welcome news. He left for basic, and came back bigger and harder. He got drunk the day he received his orders sending him to Afghanistan, and he’d been rough with her that night. He hadn’t been violent, just rough in the way he threw her to the bed and stripped her clothes off, rough in the way he had slammed himself into her, ignoring her whimper of pain. That should’ve been warning enough, but she’d shoved it down. For his sake, she told herself. Then he shipped out, and his letters and Skype calls got more and more infrequent over the months of his deployment, and the times he did call or write, he communicated in short, terse sentences.