Blackheath

***

The noise of the engine enclosed him in his own private world as he sped over the snow. Dorsey had warned him she would run, back when they had first got together. He remembered that time well; she'd been driving him crazy, turning him on fire one day and playing ice queen the next. He'd finally got her to settle down and tell him what was going on. She'd talked all around it, and finally she'd started to get down to the nub.

"I've just had some guys that stuffed me around in the past…" she'd said, her face on his shoulder and her body curled into his.

"I'm not going to stuff you around," he said quietly, his fingertips smoothing circles on the miraculously perfect angle of her shoulder.

"No, I don't mean that. I know you wouldn't…"

She shifted out of his reach and sat by herself, not touching him, not looking at him. He was beginning to understand she was really fighting to tell him something, something so hard for her to say that her whole body fought back to keep it from him. He waited, but her words seemed to choke her.

"You going to tell me about those guys, then?" he said softly, resting his chin on his knees, patient.

"Oh god," she said, looking away, eyes shining, but he felt she was edging closer to talking to him, closer to letting go.

"Ah, well, there was Mike… I just about died when I found out he liked me. He was with this older group of kids, they never would've let me hang around if it wasn't for him. But I wasn't a kid to him. I would've done anything for him. Probably did too. Anyway, they were getting into some pretty dark stuff, and of course, we got caught. I guess, as the youngest, they reckoned the police would go easy on me. Or maybe coz I was the newbie… anyway I wasn't sticking up for myself; they'd told me to keep quiet and I was sticking to it, stupid little twerp.

"So they sent me to juvie and… I got the fright of my life. I found out I was pregnant and I was terrified, I had no idea what would happen. If they'd said they were going to put me in iso I'd have believed it… Anyway, there was this guard there and, he… he made me feel safer. I thought, if I was with him the other girls would keep out of my face, you know? I knew he wasn't some knight in shining armour. He really got off on that whole guard-prisoner thing."

She was lost in the past til he slid his hand over hers.

"Well, he found out I was pregnant and he got really mad. He thought it was his, he was going to lose his job, and he was hitting me... but he wouldn't stop. The other girls heard what was going on and eventually they got the other guards to believe them and check it out. So they found me, and they took me to the hospital…"

"and you lost it?"

"No, the baby survived… that's just how they found out I was pregnant. But they weren't real pleased. They told me he would probably be brain damaged and… I couldn't keep him in jail… and they made me decide… I decided to get rid of him. And then they sent me back to school."

He waited while the grief passed and she could go on.

"Anyway. I got a bit of a reputation from that. Didn't matter what I did, it stuck. The invasion was a good thing for me, that way, you know? A chance to start learning to be someone else. Maybe even me. Not as easy as it sounds though. I'm so used to just taking what I want as soon as I can and just running away before they can get their fingernails into me."

She turned and looked at him for the first time, her eyes yearning for him to understand.

"I don't want to be that girl with you. But… but, part of me wants to run already."

He drew her back into his embrace, kissing her tears away softly.

"Maybe, I won't let you get what you want, until not a single fibre in your body wants to go anywhere."

A tiny smile twitched her lips, as he teased her with kisses that always just missed them.

"What makes you think you can make me?" she said, looking up into his face then and smiling her Cheshire smile, sliding her hands under his shirt.

"I think I can keep you interested," he said, kissing her full on the lips til she relaxed completely in his arms.

"Of course, you run away anytime you want," he said, pulling away, and evading her following face, "But you think real hard before you go anywhere. I won't be coming after you."

She leaned back and looked at him, serious.

"You wouldn't?"

"No. You make that choice, I have to respect that. What's chasing after you going to do? Either make me look stupid because you mean it, or you look stupid because you don't. I'm not into looking stupid. So you think about that, because I won't come after you."

But here he was, doing exactly what he promised he would not do.