Wanderlust

WANDERLUST

Skye Warren

Copyright 2013 by Skye
Warren

Smashwords Edition

Can love come from
pain?

Evie always dreamed of seeing the
world, but her first night at a motel turns into a nightmare.
Hunter is a rugged trucker willing to do anything to keep
her—including kidnapping. As they cross the country in his rig,
Evie plots her escape, but she may find what she's been looking for
right beside her.

“Skye Warren will take you into
the depths of depravity but bring you home, safe in the
end.”

- Kitty Thomas, author of Comfort
Food

Praise for Trust in Me:

“
Good gracious! Skye
Warren is a true mistress of dark and twisted love
stories.”

- The Forbidden Bookshelf

“
Skye Warren knows how to
deliver a powerfully poignant story that will keep her readers
engrossed.”

- Sizzling Hot Books

Night Owl Top Pick!
“The author plays with metaphors and imagery in a
prominent way to express Mia’s abuse at the hands the men in her
life. This story was literally hard to put down.”

- Night Owl Reviews

Praise for Hear Me:

“
This is a disturbingly
arousing book I couldn’t put down until the last page was
turned.”

- Day Dreaming

“
From the story title to
the striking imagery of Melody being an echo of one man’s dark need
and desire, HEAR ME has a smart and eloquent literary quality that
stands out from page one.”

- S. Richards, Amazon
reviewer

“…
achingly detailed,
beautifully written, and just so much to experience.”

- Maryse’s Book Blog

AUTHOR’S
FOREWARD

Dear readers,

Wanderlust explores captivity and
dubious consent. It is intended as a fantasy for those who enjoy
these themes in their fiction.

This book is dedicated to those who
have been found—but who never forget how it feels to be lost. Many
thanks to the beta readers and editors who helped me, including
Leila DeSint, K.M., Antoinette M—, Em Petrova, and Helen
Hardt.

Yours,

Skye Warren

CHAPTER ONE

The Niagara Falls were
formed by glacier activity 10,000 years ago.

A clash of pots and pans came from
downstairs. I winced but remained cross-legged on my bed, staring
at the assorted items I’d deemed essential. Some clothes,
toiletries.

A map.

There was so much I didn’t know, so
much I hadn’t seen. My absence of knowledge had become an almost
tangible thing, filling me up, suffocating me until I needed to
kick up to the surface just to breathe.

Ironically, my innocence was my mom’s
explanation for keeping me home. The world was too scary, and I
wouldn’t even know how to protect myself. To hear her tell it, the
streets were filled with ravening men who would attack me as soon
as look at me.

That was the anxiety talking. At least
that was what the counselor had said before we’d stopped
going.

“
Evie!” my mother yelled
from the kitchen.

It would be three more times before
she elevated to screams. Four before she threw something. Six
before she came up to my room, demanding I make her coffee or
whatever else she needed.

I’d grown up fast, fumbling with mac
and cheese before I was tall enough to see over the pot, explaining
away my excess absences to disinterested teachers. In high school,
I’d stayed home and studied to get my GED. Two years of
correspondence classes through the community college, and I was
desperate for any human contact.

I picked up my book, running my
fingers over the cool, glossy surface.

The library was one of the few places
approved by my mother. I must have read almost every book in that
place, living a thousand lives on paper, traveling around the world
in eighty days and through the looking glass. I knew about hope and
death, about fear and the dignity required to overcome, but only in
theoretical constructs of ink and ground tree pulp. That was my
irony: to wax poetic about the meaning of life while being unable
to do something as simple as pay rent.

Weary of re-reads, I’d
wandered into the nonfiction section. I’d picked this one up on a
whim, on a joke almost because the title seemed so silly.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Niagara
Falls.
Who wanted to know anything about
Niagara Falls?

Then I read it.

I snuck back every day for a week,
enamored by the descriptions, in awe of the pictures of water
rushing, enchanted by the majesty and magic of this place both
faraway and someday attainable. My mother didn’t let me get a
library card, so I’d stolen the book and kept it ever
since.

Now the paper was thin and pliable,
well-worn from years of turning the pages. The binding was loose,
the stitching visible between the cardboard and glue. By now it was
probably held together by the clear tape that held the library tags
to the spine.

“
Happy birthday,” I
whispered.

My present to myself: to finally see
the place I’d been yearning for. The place I’d dreamed about even
before I’d gotten the book, for all twenty years of my life. For
room to breathe. For freedom.

Even my camera couldn’t sustain me. I
flipped through the photographs on the digital screen, every single
one taken in the house or the yard. Nowadays mom got antsy when I
walked over to the park. There were only so many times I could
pretend a new angle of the flower pot was artistic instead of just
plain pathetic. I wanted to see new things, new places—new
people.

I piled everything into my bag. I was
far too old for the purple backpack. But then, my body was too old
for me. Somewhere in the past five years, I had blossomed into a
woman, with full lips and fuller breasts, with hair in places I was
almost afraid to touch, except when I just had to at night in my
bed, and I did—oh, I did, and it shamed me. I shamed myself with
the wetness and the horrible, rippling pleasure around my
fingers.

My twentieth birthday. Neither my
mother nor I had acknowledged it at breakfast, as if even the
mention of passing time would crack the fragile votive that
ensconced us.

And now, I would shatter
it.

I wouldn’t be going around the world
or even outside the state—at least not today. But the fear felt
huge inside my stomach. Her anxiety was rubbing off on me. I had to
get out of here.

Everything fit neatly into my faded
backpack, but then I was well-practiced in packing it after having
done so at least a dozen times. Each time had ended in screaming,
in tears, and in me back upstairs in my room.

Not this time. If I didn’t follow
through now, I would be stuck here. I’d live here
forever.

I’d die here.

Feeling queasy, I slung the bag over
my shoulder and headed down the stairs. My mother sat at the
kitchen table, her thin robe loosely tied, eyes glassy from the
pills. The medicine was supposed to help her, but she never got
better—only worse. More fearful, more controlling.

All those chemicals had taken their
toll on her body. She looked so tired. The weary shadows around her
eyes and tension lines around her lips always made my gut clench. I
should be here to protect her. I just couldn’t, I
couldn’t.

I leaned my backpack against the leg
of the table and sat down across from her.

“
Mama.”

Her eyes came into focus. She sighed.
“Not this again, Evie.”

I swallowed. “Please, Mama, try to
understand. I need to see more of the world than these
walls.”

“
What is there to see?
Suffering? People starving? Go look at the TV if you want to see
the world so badly. You know I’m right.”

We used to watch the news together.
Every young girl abducted, every college girl who had her drink
drugged was somehow a mark against me.

That could have been
you,
she would say.

Whereas most families might let the
tragedy of strangers pass them by like waves, she would catch them,
collect them, marking down their names and ages in her notebooks
and checking whether they had been found in six months, a year,
five years, until I felt like I was drowning in unseen
violence.

“
I don’t want to watch the
news. I want to see things for myself. Ordinary things. I want
to
be
ordinary. I
want to live.”

She scowled. “Don’t be dramatic.
You’re living here. You’re safe.”

I firmed. “No, Mama. I know you need
to stay inside, but just as much, I need to go out into the world.
Experience things for myself. And I’m going to. You can’t stop me
this time.”

Her face seemed to crack. Plump tears
slipped down her cheeks. “I don’t understand why you’re talking
this way. What have I ever done but protect you?”

Guilt swelled my chest, but I forced
it down. I would be strong.

“
I can’t stay here. I love
you, but I just can’t stay.”

“
Evie, Evie, my baby.” She
clasped her hands together, begging.

I knelt at her feet, taking her hands
in mine. I could feel each bone, each tendon beneath the paper-dry
skin.

“
Please. Give me your
blessing to leave. I’ll come back to visit. Maybe even move back to
town after a while. I need to see something of the world
first.”

“
How are you going to
afford it?”

I’d been lucky enough to get a job
doing touchups for a small photography studio up the road when I
was sixteen. I could do the work from home, and the paychecks were
deposited directly in our account—well, technically my mother’s
account. I wouldn’t take that money even if I could, knowing she
didn’t have another source of income.

I did get a small weekly allowance,
though, and had saved up a hundred and sixty dollars. Not enough to
get me all the way to New York, not with paying for gas, food and
motels along the way.

“
I talked to someone
through the college’s job placement system. There’s an opening at a
photography studio up in Dallas.”

I’d work there for a while, saving up
money and looking for another stop closer to Niagara Falls. That
was the plan anyway.

She sniffed. “If you leave, you won’t
ever come back.”

It was a pronouncement, bitter and
unyielding.

“
I will, I
promise—”

“
No.” She hardened, her
tears drying as quickly as they’d come. “I mean it, Evie. You
wouldn’t be welcome here anymore. You’d be one of
them
.”

The paranoia. I knew it was a
sickness, but labeling it didn’t help me.

“
I’m your daughter.
Always.”

She shoved back from me. “If that were
true, you wouldn’t leave me. If you leave, you wouldn’t be my
daughter anymore.”

Her words sank into my stomach like a
lead weight. No shock, only resignation. Maybe I had always known
it would come to this.

“
I love you, Mama,” I
whispered, and it panged with permanence.

As if finally realizing I was serious,
her eyes widened, filling with rage.

“
You won’t last a second
out there. Not one goddamn second, you hear me? You have no idea
what kinds of things happen out there—”

“
I do, Mama. Because
you’ve told me every day that I can remember. Well, do you think
nothing bad ever happens here? That I’m safe just because I’m
trapped here? What about Allen?”

Her head jerked back as if I’d slapped
her, and in a way, I had. We never talked about that, not even to
the counselor.