Free In My Stepbrother's Hands by Tara Lynn Page A

who’d be my stepbrother. I’d found him looking back at me with narrowed blue eyes in his long, rugged face. He was tall and leanly muscled like a long missile. I never looked for too long, lest he get the wrong idea. We were going be family soon, but I wouldn’t put it past a Grim Flyer to get a twisted idea.
    The marriage went about as bad as I expected. The house filled up with bikers more often and I ended up staying at school or in my room to avoid them. My new father tried to talk to me, but I let the stuff go in one ear and out the other, counting down the days left. The other bikers got even less of my time.
    Lucas, I saw often, but he seemed to let me be. However big our differences he, at least, understood them. I would see him in our kitchen now and then. He would freeze, looking for a moment like some predator in his leather cut - someone who didn’t want to alert his prey. But then, he would just toss me a silent nod. I would head back to my room and wait for him to clomp out loud and clear to indicate that I could take his place.
    It was a decent courtesy, but not enough to change my plans to leave. Not for more than a crazy moment, at least. I would briefly debate engaging him, trying to make good with at least one bit of my messed up family. Yet, the idea of getting close to him filled me with anxiety. My body sure warmed up. In any case, I’d eject the idea from my head and look back at the calendar with the dates X-ed out.
    I left the weekend after I became of age. They’d all forgotten my birthday which was just as well. Mom was out of the house, so I simply packed everything of consequence into our little beat up car. The thing was even registered under my name, what with Mom’s DUI record. It took no more than an hour to clear up. A couple neighbors gawked, but most of them understood what I was leaving.
    The car was old. There were no fancy electronics on it. Once I got a couple hours out, I’d been clear of any danger. No one could report my own car missing, and the Flyers and the local police wouldn’t know where to go to find me once I got on the interstate. After an hour, I could already feel all the weight of Tarmont lifting off me.
    Of course the problem with old cars is that they tend to break down at the worst possible moment.
    I wasn't sure what scared me more- the sight of smoke rising from the hood of my old ride or the hot, damp and completely empty brushland surrounding it. I had managed to pull off the shoulder of a county road, though which county I could not say.
    A bit far off, I could see a clearing, but that was it as far as features. No farms, no shacks, nothing human round but the road markers. If I could be grateful for one thing, at least the smoke kept the mosquitoes away. I had on capris and a tank top so there was plenty of thick patches of skin for them otherwise. Course the smoke also served as a signal for predators, which I was way more terrified of facing. Back in the old day, beasts might be scared away, but now the only animal left to fear came in the human variety.
    I opened the hood of my car and peered in at the incomprehensible tubes of metal, half wishing I could climb in and just hide there. I'd spent my whole life in Tarmont, which was closer to a junk heap than a city or farmland. My dad had never taken me outdoors back when he was alive and none of mom’s boyfriends had done more than ogle me. All I saw around me was untamed miserable land, what with the searing heat and the bugs, and, oh yeah, outlaw bikers. That's what I knew about land like this.
    “Leave civilization and the civilization leaves the man,” my daddy once said. Some folks hadn't yet got the news about the 21 st century. Their morals came from another time and baser instincts. I knew how messed up small towns could get - I didn’t imagine things were much better with no society around at all. Some of my friends in high school had had over family from swampland like this. All too