“Tank,” I say and pause because I don’t really know how to ask this next question. “Are you in love with me?”

He glances back at the road. “Don’t flatter yourself, darlin’. I’m just trying to get you clean. As a friend.”

“As a friend I fuck?”

“Have we been doin’ any fuckin’? ’Cause last time I checked my balls were still fuckin’ blue as that pretty sky up above us, and I still jacked off twice today.”

“Poor baby. You need me to suck your cock?” I tease, undoing my belt and sliding across the bench seat towards him. I rest my hand on his thigh and he surprises me by removing it.

“I’m not giving you drugs, Ivy,” he says, with a stern look.

“Oh fuck you,” I say, and move away from him. I hadn’t even been thinking about drugs. I hadn’t been thinking anything at all besides the fact that despite how country he looks right now, he also looks good. And it’s been so long. For both of us. I buckle my seatbelt again and angle my body so it’s facing away from him, then I glare out the window at the endless sea of sunburnt grass and fat cows behind barbed wire fences. “You know you really are an arsehole, Tank.”

“So you keep telling me,” he says and reaches for the dial on the radio again, turning it on and drowning out all of the silence between us. There’s some horrid wailing banshee singing about gunpowder and lead, and when I lean over to change the station, Tank intervenes by smacking my hand away and turning it up until the bass reverberates through the dinky cabin around us. He yells like some fuckin’ country yahoo, “Settle in, Warrior Princess. We’ve still got a long-arse ride to civilization.”

I hate you I mouth, and he grins like a madman.

“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, darlin’.”

We don’t speak after that. When we do finally make it to town, Tank pulls me into a Kmart and we head to the women’s clothing section. He comes to a stop in front of a rack filled with graphic T-shirts and waves at them as if the things are on his shit list. “Get some things.”

“I’m a club whore who mooches off of the Prez when I catch him in a giving mood, Tank.” I point out. “I don’t have any money.”

“I have money. Buy whatever shit you need. You can’t be walking around the cabin in your underwear, and you’re gonna need more than a couple of ratty old jumpers and a pair of jeans. Cold’ll be settlin’ in to stay soon. We might even see some snow, and I reckon you’ll be wantin’ some clothes.” He frowns and glances at my hair. “Shampoo too, toiletries and whatever else you want. Get all the girly shit you need now. I don’t wanna do this again.”

A lump forms in my throat because he doesn’t have to do this. He could just as easily swing by his room at the clubhouse and pick up all my shit the next time he’s there, and it makes me both grateful and uneasy that he’s so willing to take care of me with nothing in return. Worse still that I’m so quick to let him, that I like it, spending time with him, having him around. It’s a dangerous way to be though, because nothing good can come of it, and so I brush off everything I’m feeling and say with a bored tone, “Just how long do you think I’ll be staying with you?”

“Long enough,” he says, and then turns to me with one of those playful smiles that he’s so fond of today. God, I want to strangle him sometimes. “You start to earn your keep and I might never let you leave.”

He’s joking, right? Right? I mean, he’s not serious about keeping me. Tank’s just the unlucky bastard who got lumped with me. I’m not even sure why Jett wanted me to get clean. I’d always thought he believed I was good for sucking cock and nothing else.

“I’m going to get us a trolley. Start gettin’ your shit together,” Tank says, and wanders off.

Start getting my shit together? Yeah, because it’s that easy.

I watch his retreating figure for a moment, appreciating how good his arse looks in those jeans, when it dawns on me that I’m alone. I mean, not alone, because there’s an entire store full of shoppers here, but for the first time since he found me in the middle of the road, Tank isn’t with me. There’s an elderly woman standing a few feet away. She has one of those big fake Louis Vuitton bags—or maybe it’s not fake. It’s not like I’d know the difference. I glance around, pinch the bridge of my nose and cry out. She looks over at me, alarmed, but continues her perusal of the clothing in front of us, which is all far too young for her. I glance around for Tank, he’s nowhere in sight.

“Oh,” I say, and stagger a little.

“Are you alright dear?” the woman says. She doesn’t look overly sympathetic—more annoyed than anything.

“I just … I have this terrible migraine and I need something to take the edge off, but Rizatriptan is the only thing that works.” God bless Kick for introducing me to that one. It’s no coke, but it will take the edge off in a bind.

“There’s a chemist a few doors down,” she informs me.

Yeah, except my arsehole babysitter won’t give me any.

“I know, it’s just that I don’t have a script and I can’t get in to my doctor until tomorrow, and I know it’s going to get so much worse between now and then and … you wouldn’t happen to have any Nurofen, or pseudoephedrine, would you?”

“I have Panadeine Forte. I need them for my back pain. No water though, you’ll have to buy a bottle from the front counter.”

Fuck. To anyone else Panadeine Forte isn’t anything to sneeze at, but my body is used to much stronger opiates. Chances are I’ll burn through it in a half hour, if it does anything at all.

“That would be great. Thank you so much, you’re really a lifesaver.”

She pulls out the box from her handbag and I wait on tenterhooks as she slowly pops one tablet out from the blister pack into my hand. I snatch it closed as though at any second she might take it back.

“You know, my husband used to get migraines,” she says, tucking the card of pills back in the box. I try not to stare longingly at them as they disappear into her bag. “They really knocked him for six.”

I nod in agreement. I’ve never suffered from migraines. Headaches maybe, and that feeling on a comedown like you just touched a live wire and your whole body has gone into shock. I’ve felt that for the last two weeks. “Yeah, they’re really killer.”

“Well, you best get that tablet into you before it gets much worse,” she says.

“I will,” I promise, with a pained smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She goes back to perusing the clothing and I turn away and swallow the pill dry, wondering how many times I can get a complete stranger to hand over their medication today. It’s not blow, but it might take the aches and pains away. Fuck Tank for not even allowing me to take a Panadol. He really can be as cruel and sadistic as his reputation states.

I grab a few black T-shirts and singlet tops, some jeans and a couple of jumpers. It’s all hideous generic shit, stupid sayings, too much colour, and ugly as all fuck, but it’s not like they have a clothing line for club whores in Kmart.

I wander over to the underwear section and pull a pair of pink panties with little white printed bows decorating them off the nearest rack and look them over. Who even comes up with this shit? I mean, I know plenty of men who dig the little schoolgirl vibe, but still, even they have to find panties like this insulting. I shove them back on the rack and head into the section where they keep the bra and panty sets. Picking up a black lace bra and panties in my size that I think Tank will like, I throw them over my arm with the rest of my finds.

“No,” Tank says, startling me so I jump and almost lose the cargo in my hands. I whack him with a plastic coat-hanger. “We go somewhere else for lingerie.”

I laugh and shoot an incredulous look at him. “Lingerie? Since when do you shop for lingerie? Since when do you even like lingerie, much less use the word?”