If I’d wanted to, I could buy a new cell phone. A pet dog. A time-share in Florida. A gun. And jerky made out of camel meat.

But that was nothing compared to what I could have gotten at night.

At night I watched through the window of my car as the young girls came out in short skirts and heels so high they could barely walk. Or boys in tight pants, playing with their nipples through net shirts, talking to truckers who watched them like if they could, they would unhinge their jaws and swallow them whole.

Those girls and boys climbed into the trucks, smiling and licking their lips, only to come out an hour later, smiles vanished, tucking money into their pockets.

And I got it—I understood, they were playing a part. I knew all about that in my own life. But they were so convincing. So illicit and knowing. Forbidden and confident. The parking lots reeked of sex.

I watched them and wondered and thought about what went on in those trucks.

What I knew about sex could fit in a shoe box. A terribly small shoe box. And I knew that the reality of what was happening in those trucks was totally illegal, probably cold at best, and degrading more often than not.

But what if it wasn’t always? What if one of those truckers and one of those men or women were kind? Were excited? And careful? What if they were able to take something that could be awful and painful and scary and made it…nice? Or more than nice?

It’s not like I thought it was The Notebook happening in those trucks—I wasn’t stupid. I was just…hopeful.

And if I had hope for them…couldn’t I have hope for myself?

I thought about that in my car in those truck stops until I was…hungry.

And that was a hunger I had no idea how to feed.

—

A half hour later, still sweating, even after the coldest shower in the history of cold showers, I stood in the bedroom of my trailer and considered doing something I’d never done before:

Dropping the towel and lying down naked across my bed so the breeze coming through the screens would blow right across my hot body.

My naked body.

Because I could do that. No one was here to care. Or stop me.

I put my fingers against my neck. It was a sick habit, but I caught myself pressing my thumb against the worst of the bruises—just until it hurt again.

A reminder. An anchor…Don’t move too fast, Annie. Remember where you’re from.

Crouching down slightly, I caught sight of the world outside when the breeze came through the window. What if someone was standing right there? Just when the wind blew and someone saw me…naked on the bed?

The chances were minuscule. The idea ludicrous, surrounded as I was by walls of metal. Thin metal—but still.

The truth was I was more self-conscious alone than I was with other people.

In the end, twenty-four years of conditioning won out. Defeated, slightly ashamed of myself, I got dressed.

Annie McKay, you’re just not the kind of person who lies down naked in her bed in the middle of the day.

In the drawer next to my bed was the phone programmed with only one number. Dylan. I felt the world in a new way these days. Since pulling myself up off the floor and leaving my life behind. I was new.

And I wanted to call Dylan.

And I was terrified of that. Terrified of what it meant. About me, about my decision-making. All of it. Everything about Dylan felt risky.

Calling him was an invitation to something dangerous.

Not yet, I heard his voice in my head, that dark purr. But soon.

There was a knock on my trailer door and I jumped like a scalded cat, yanked from my utterly impure thoughts.

“Hey, Annie. I think a package arrived for you.” It was Kevin outside my door. Just Kevin. I put a hand against my throat and felt my heart pounding hard.

“There’s got to be a mistake,” I said, opening the door. “There isn’t anyone who would send me a package.”

“Well,” he said, looking down at a small box, wrapped in regular post-office brown paper. “It’s addressed to ‘Layla-slash-the new cleaning lady.’ And you’re the closest thing I got to a cleaning lady around these parts.”

Layla.

That box was from Dylan.

Kevin held it out toward me but I couldn’t get my hands to move. I could barely get my lungs to move. He’d sent me something.

“You want me to pitch it?” he asked, dropping his hand to his side with a shrug.

“No!” I cried. “No, I’ll…I’ll take it.”

Of course I would take it.

It was a package from a man I could not stop thinking about. It was a bad idea, I got that, but what was just one more bad idea? I was kind of on a roll these days.

“Here you go.” He handed it to me and left, walking back across the dirt path to the other side of the trailer park.

I closed the door and put the box down on the table and slid into the settee. The handwriting on the top was a woman’s handwriting. Weird. But whatever.

I grabbed a knife from my drawer and slid it between the edges of the cardboard, cutting open the brown tape that sealed it shut.

Inside was a phone charger. And a note.

For the phone. For emergencies, the note read in very different handwriting than what had been on the box. This was a man’s handwriting. Sharp and slashing across the white paper in dark ink.

I hope you are all right.

A phone charger. For emergencies. The breath I’d been holding shuddered hard out of me. I had no idea what I thought was going to be in there, but a phone charger was not it. I grabbed the note and phone from my cupboard and went into my bedroom where I plugged the charger into the wall and hooked it up.

Manners dictated I say thank you. I had to contact him.

You know, because of manners.

A dark thrill, a sort of giddy misgiving, rolled through me.

I pulled up his number on the phone but instead of calling him, I texted.

I got the charger, I wrote. Thank you. So much.

I deleted the so much. No need to go overboard.

You’re welcome, he wrote back.

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and waited for him to say more. But the screen stayed the same.

Either write something or put it down, I told myself. Because this is ridiculous.

In the end I put the phone back in the drawer and shut it.

But I thought about it—about Dylan—for the rest of the night.

“Hey Kevin,” I said, walking into the office a week later. Kevin sat directly in the path of the rattling air conditioner in the window, playing computer solitaire. “I’m going to need more garbage bags and a new rake.”

“There isn’t a rake in the shed?”

“There is, but it’s broken.”

“You can’t fix it?”

And I thought I was cheap.

“Nope.”

“A shovel won’t work?”

I sighed. “No. Kevin. I really need a rake. And some hedge trimmers. Heavy-duty ones.”

“Why?”

“I’m going after the kudzu.”

Kevin nodded, impressed maybe by my antagonistic nature toward the creepy mummy plant.

“I’ll get that for you tomorrow,” he said. “You done real good out there. Most people don’t get past the flies and the garbage.”

“Well, I figure the garbage had to be the worst part.” And it had been disgusting, but I did it. I shoveled it. Bagged it and cleared it.

“Amen to that,” Kevin said. “And here.”

He slid the key to the shed across the counter.

“You saying I’m not unsavory?” I asked, smiling.