Stealing Grace (9 page)

“Not tonight. I’m not in the mood for belittling from the old dogs in this town.” They all bellowed and laughed and slapped Alex on the back as they walked by. “That went better than expected,” he said low to Elena.

She nodded and did what he said; kept quiet.

They found a booth in the back and sat opposite each other. Alex asked her what she liked on her pizza just as the waiter came up and he looked at him with a funny look.

She rubbed Alex’s shin under the table with her foot to let him know to just order whatever.

“We’ll have one large pepperoni, extra cheese. One sweet tea and one diet coke with a shot of cherry.”

After the waiter left, Elena spoke to him.

“You eat Meat lovers or supreme or something manly like that don’t you?” He just smiled. “I’d have eaten anything, you know.”

“I know that, but you look like a pepperoni kind of girl.”

“I am. Thank you, and for remembering my drink.”

“No problem. Buying you a pizza is the least I can do, after kidnapping you and all.”

She looked up at him sharply, thinking he was being sullen again but he was smiling, making a joke. She smiled too and then hid it with her hand. It was so weird to live this way, always fearful of someone seeing you be happy.

They ate their pizza and drank their drinks. Alex left no leftovers as he plowed through the slices once she said she was finished.

He offered to order her desert but she declined and they paid, then headed for the truck without any further incidents.

On the way home, Elena sat in her seat. She was cold. She wanted to ask him to turn on the heat or something, or maybe scoot over next to him but she stopped that thought. She was not near that bold yet. Then she saw flashing blue and red lights in the rear view mirror. She turned to look behind them.

They were being pulled over.

“What is he doing?” Alex said clearly irritated. “We’re two blocks from the house.”

He didn’t bother to take out his license or registration. He just told her it would be ok, he knew the guy and once again to keep quiet and rolled down his window.

“Silas,” Alex said in greeting.

“Alex, evening.”

“Evening. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Alex said sarcastically. “I wasn’t speeding.”

“No, you weren’t.” The guy moved upwards some and Elena could see his face. He was young, maybe twenty two or three. “Just wanted to check out the new ball and chain.”

“Well, it’s been a long day. Are we free to go now?”

“Now, hold on. I hadn’t even gotten a good look at her yet.” He poked his head in through the window. “My, my,” he whistled through his teeth, “but she’s a looker.”

Elena kept her head down and didn’t look at him. Just like at the pizza shop, don’t look at their faces.

“Alright, enough, Silas,” Alex said exasperatingly. Elena glanced over at him quickly and saw in the dome light that he was getting upset. “I’m going home.”

“You know, it’s not fair that they choose who gets put on the list by age. I mean, some men aren’t even ready for a wife yet. They still have things to get straight. Not me. I’ve been ready and I’m still gonna be waiting on that list for who knows how much longer. It ain’t right.”

“I know you don’t agree with it, Silas. But that’s just the way it is.”

He said it like they’d had this conversation before. Like Silas was venting on something he’d vented about a lot.

“Easy for you to say, you got a wife.”

“True. But I waited my fair share of years for one.”

There was a silence. Silas stayed there saying nothing, and then...

“Let me just have her for an hour,” Silas blurted out loudly. “Please, Alex. Come on.”

Elena gasped and looked over at him for the first time. The mans’ eyes were gleaming with fresh opportunity.

“What?” Alex yelled angrily. “Are you trying to borrow my wife?”

“Come on, Alex. We both know there are some men in the community who do it on the down low. It’s perfectly fine.”

“Not for me it isn’t. Now, go on and get out of here before I take this to the Elders.”

“You wouldn’t,” Silas said incredulously.

“Try me,” Alex spit out through clenched teeth. “You just asked me to let you have sex with my wife. Cardinal rule of the community is to save yourself for your own wife and that be that. So why would I break two rules for you.”

“I’m tired of waiting, tired of it.”

“Sorry about that, find a hobby,” Alex spouted with disdain.

“You’re an as-” the officer was cut off as Alex rolled his window back up.

He put the truck in drive and drove the two blocks to the house, pulling in the driveway and shutting it off just outside the garage. They sat in silence for a minute. Then he sighed and spoke quietly.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“You seem to be apologizing to me a lot, lately,” Elena said and when he looked at her, she smiled to let him know she was joking.

She didn’t want to make him feel worse than he already did. She knew he was protecting her and trying to do the right thing. She couldn’t hold him accountable for other people’s actions.

“I’m sorry about that, too,” he said sadly.

“Don’t be. I know you’re trying. That’s what matters to me. I’m not worried about anybody else.”

He looked at her for a few minutes, intensely and with fascination. She started to squirm under his scrutiny and then he spoke again, scooting a little closer in the bench seat next to her.

“You are...the most amazing woman. You’re nothing like what I expected my wife to be like.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone who hated me, was indifferent to me. Upset and angry and wanted nothing to do with me.”

“I could never hate you, not after what you did for me.”

“I didn’t actually do anything, Elena. It may have been an easier way for you to live because of what I did, but it was still wrong that I did it. One wrong doesn’t make a right, no matter how good the intentions.”

“I don’t agree with that at all. If you have to do something slightly wrong and sometimes illegal to help someone, save their life, it’s totally worth it.”

“I guess it depends on your outlook. I can’t help but feel guilty for what I did.”

“I’m grateful that you did what you did. I’m sorry if you feel some guilt over it but I can’t wish that you hadn’t done it,” she said and looked down at her lap.

The truck was quiet. She could hear his breathing. It was steady but quick. She couldn’t make herself look up into his face. He regretted it. He regretted coming to get her. He didn’t want her here after all and he felt guilt over it.

Then she felt his fingers under her chin, pulling her face to look at him.

“I don’t regret going to get you from them. That’s not what I meant. I just meant that I thought the woman I took was going to be angry and nasty to me. Hate me. It would make it easier for me to not feel so bad about that. But you are not like that. You’re so forgiving and amazing. It makes me feel that you didn’t deserve this. But I
don’t
regret taking you and that makes me feel guilty.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t feel that way. I didn’t have a life before I came here. I’m not missing anything and no one is missing me.”

“Just because someone doesn’t notice a penny missing from a coin jar doesn’t mean it was ok to steal it.”

“I guess it depends on your outlook,” she shot back his own retort to him and felt her lips spreading into a smile again.

“Well, in the interest of not stealing,” he inched closer, closer until their legs were touching, “can I ask for a kiss instead of taking one this time?”

“You can ask,” she said flippantly and turned her head.

She heard him chuckle.

“Ok, then. Would it be alright if I ki-”

She cut him off with a kiss and felt his smile against her lips. She turned toward him and put her knee up on the seat beside him. He put his hands on her cheeks giving her more shivers.
Why do I like that so much?

It wasn’t a crazy hair grabbing, breathing going nuts, tongue everywhere kind of kiss. It was a playful, nice, slow, easy kiss. He ran his fingers down her arms and then to her sides where he tickled her slightly making her giggle but he didn’t stop kissing her. So she tickled him too but he quickly restrained her hands after letting out a bark of a laugh.

It still made Elena’s breaths quicken and her skin raise in goose bumps but that was lessened by the tickling and laughing and playfulness of it. She was elated. But then she was startled by the bang of a fist on the drivers’ side window.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Alex growled into her ear and pulled back to roll down his window. “Yes?” he asked briskly.

“Alex, what are you doing in the... Oh, I see,” the man chuckled. “Couldn’t wait to get inside, could you?”

“Something I can help you with, Mr. Peters?”

“Well, I figured I’d drop by and make sure that you remembered to have my papers ready.”

“Ok, ok, enough,” Alex said and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Enough of the checking up on me. We are doing just fine. Tell everyone to stop barging into my house to see how I’m doing.”

The man laughed loudly.

“Clever boy. Alright. Alright. Good night to you.”

Elena did not miss the fact that the man ignored her presence completely and no niceties were offered her.

“Yes, goodbye.”

Alex turned to Elena and laughed another bark of an exasperated laugh.

“Sorry.”

“Please, no more sorry’s,” Elena said sweetly. “I know it’s not your fault.”

“Ok.” He laughed. “Come on. Let’s get you inside. It’s cold out here.”

He pulled her to him in the drivers’ seat and helped her down out of the truck. They walked hand in hand to the stairs and up to the porch, then he opened the door for her.

“You go ahead and take your shower. I’ll make some hot chocolate,” Elena said and started for the kitchen.

“Ok. Thanks.”

They drank their hot chocolate together on the couch for a while then headed to bed.

As they lay there, they faced each other but didn’t say anything. Elena could tell something was on Alex’s mind but he wouldn’t say it.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You want to ask me something, I can tell.”

He sighed.

“Yeah, I do. And I want you to tell me the truth and not feel like I’m harping on it.”

“Ok. What is it?”
“I want to ask you about the traffickers.”

She stiffened. Their faces flashing before her eyes, the smell of the warehouse, the scratch of the bag over her head, stripping down in front of the men, the girls crying after they’d been raped and slapped.

“Why do you want to talk about that?”

“Because I need to know. I always turned my eyes away and tried not to see what was really going on, but as bad as it is here for the women, I’m sure it’s twice as bad there. I want you to tell me, Elena.”

She knew why he was asking, wanting to punish himself some more, but she figured he should know. She didn’t want to rehash it, but she did it anyway and if she was going to do it, she was going to tell him all of it, every horrid detail.

“You’re sure you want to know all this? I’m telling you right now I don’t want to tell you. I will if you want me to, but I’m not going to sugar coat it.”

“I don’t want you to.” He took a deep breath and sat up, turning on the bedside lamp. “Tell me.”

So she did, every disgusting detail, every sick thing, every moment of pain and hunger and fear.

She started at the beginning and told him about her past. The parts she left out before, about the abuse. The cigarette burns and the wreck scar and others. She showed him the scars on her arms and told him how the traffickers almost disposed of her for being damaged because of them.

He winced and flinched and growled through the explanations and descriptions but she kept going.

She told him about how she was kidnapped in the beginning, about how they stripped them and bathed them and made them ride in vomit and urine, about how they starved them, about how they raped some of them.

An hour later she was just finishing and was sobbing long painful heaves. She had tried to not cry, tried to not make it worse but at the end, when she described how the girl was so young and crying violently, clinging to her after being raped by who knows how many men, she just couldn’t handle it anymore and the sobs racked her.

Alex had tried to hold her a few times; to stop her, tell her it was ok, she could stop talking about it but Elena pushed him off, she had to finish now. She had to get it out and be done with it once and for all.

“And then you came and pointed at me, to take me home. And here I am.”

He reached for her and she let him this time. He pulled her into his lap as he leaned against the headboard. She buried her face in his neck and cried out everything she’d been holding in and hoarding. All the things that scared her so badly when she first got here and the things she tried to forget but couldn’t.

“Elena,” he breathed in her hair, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you. No one should have to go through that. I guessed it was bad in those places but I had no idea.”

“Me either.” She sniffled and wiped her face with her hand. He handed her a tissue from the night stand. “Thanks. I never thought twice about things like that. We always look the other way if it doesn’t concern us.”

“Gah, Elena. I just can’t believe... So, they didn’t touch you?” he asked quietly.

“No, not me.”

“They must have some kind of list because the community men request virgins,” he pondered and she looked at him aghast. “I’m sorry, I’m just thinking out loud. You being on the list for us is probably what saved you.”

“You’re probably right. That doesn’t make me feel much better though. I was saved and others weren’t.”

“I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could have helped somehow. I’m sorry.” He began to wipe her tears away with his big hands, smooth back her hair and run his fingers through it trying to comfort her. “I will never hurt you like that, Elena.”