The Bandit Read online

  Fuck him.

  * * *

  “ You look nervous,” Aaron stated as we parked.

  “I’m not nervous, but I am having second thoughts,” I admitted. When we arrived on the outskirts of campus, the two-story frat house painted blue, gray, and white with Greek letters prominently displayed was crawling with people. Music poured from the speakers inside the house, turning this side of campus into a nightclub. It took five minutes, and by that time, I was really having second thoughts. Drunken guys lingered around even drunker, half-dressed girls who made me feel severely overdressed in my sweater dress and boots. It was freaking January, yet most of them strutted in miniskirts and crop tops.

  “Why? You’re here with me. It’s the safest place in the world.” I ignored Aaron’s attempt at being charming. He hadn’t noticed since his attention was now on a freakishly tall, thin guy with shaggy brown hair. He held a red solo cup as he called out Aaron’s name repeatedly while stumbling in a drunken stupor across bodies littering the yard.

  “What’s up, man? I see you brought food to a dinner party,” he remarked as his eyes devoured me. My skin felt like it was being attacked by a million tiny bugs.

  “We’re on a date,” Aaron answered, making his gaze shift.

  “So, you brought her here?” I guess his brain wasn’t completely fried if he had more date etiquette than his friend did.

  “Yeah, she didn’t mind.” His tone suggested he wouldn’t care either way if I wanted to be here. “What are you drinking?”

  “A little of everything. You and your lady should grab a cup.” He tried to appear suave, but he was too drunk to sound like anything but stupid. Inside, there was a makeshift bar littered with open bottles and discarded cups. “Mian, you drinking?”

  Common sense told me to decline, but the need to self-destruct won. I took the cup he offered and took a healthy swig. If I were going to get through this ‘date,’ I’d need alcohol. It wasn’t my first rodeo, so I figured I could handle myself if I needed.

  Unfortunately, my weak bladder was near bursting after my third cup and a few dances.

  I shifted away from Aaron’s exploring hands and shouted over the music, “I need to pee!” I got a few dirty looks from girls of the slut persuasion, but I was too wasted to care. Aaron chuckled and took my cup. I stumbled up the stairs, and after nearly falling in a closet and walking in on a couple going at it, I finally found a toilet.

  I was already peeing as soon as my bum met the cold seat and was relieved I’d worn a dress. I had no idea how much time had passed, but a knock on the door jarred me awake. I realized I must have dozed off so I quickly cleaned up and opened the door. Aaron stood on the other side, leaning against the jamb and wearing a cute grin.

  He may have annoyed me at the start of the date, but the booze definitely warmed me up to him. I hooked my arms around his neck and fell into his muscular body. He was hard in all the right places, and then I blushed when I realized that all of him was hard. He lifted and carried me away before I could kiss him. Maybe I was in rougher shape than I thought. Maybe I turned him off. Maybe…

  I felt a pillow like softness beneath me and lazily looked around. We were in someone’s bedroom. Before I could question anything, he fell on top of me and moved between my legs.

  I let him kiss me knowing if I were sober, there was no chance I would have allowed it. He gently ran his hands down my sides but then grew too bold too quickly and began to push my dress up. The drunk induced fog cleared and I pushed at his chest. My heart stopped when I felt his grip tighten on my waist as I struggled to escape from under him. I was ready to scream when his lips finally lifted from my neck. He stared down at me as he took deep breaths in and out. He looked like he was considering something in his head.

  Finally, he stood, and I watched as he adjusted himself in his jeans. He looked pissed, but then his expression changed to boredom. “I should take you home. I’ll be downstairs.”

  And then he was gone.

  I was relieved as I tugged my dress back into place and ran my fingers through my hair. I should have stayed true to my initial decision about him. His willingness to continue our ‘date’ ended now that it was clear my virginity wasn’t on the table.

  Well, fuck him very much.

  I stomped downstairs, feeling a lot more sober than I had coming up only to see him holding another solo cup and talking up some blonde.

  Of course.

  Why not go blonde, right?

  The girl who presently had his attention looked like a guaranteed fuck. If I had my own way home, I would have left him to it, but instead, I awkwardly ended their verbal fuck fest by clearing my throat.

  Her smiled dropped, and his gaze barely skimmed my forehead before he turned back to the blonde and whispered something in her ear. Whatever he said caused her to giggle outrageously. I’d been with him for all of two hours and not once found him that funny.

  “I guess I’ll be in the car then.” I didn’t wait around for a response and made my way through the dancing crowd. After checking my phone, I realized I only had thirty minutes until my aunt and uncle would be home. I was prepared to extend my curfew by an hour as part of my rebellion, but now that the rush was gone, I wasn’t as willing to give my Aunt Gretchen an excuse to go off on one of her religious tangents.

  I found Aaron’s Mustang and tried the door, but it was locked. Fifteen minutes later, he sauntered from the house swinging his keys and whistling. He still held his cup as he unlocked the door and sat inside.

  “Would you mind?” I gestured to the cup. There was no way I’d trust him or anyone to drink and drive with me as a passenger. “I’m not comfortable with you literally drinking and driving.”

  “Oh. Shit. I forgot I still had this. Drink it for me, will you? I probably shouldn’t have anymore.” I gazed at him suspiciously as he added, “If I go back inside, it will be another fifteen minutes before I make it back out. Your curfew is at midnight, right?”

  He had a good point, but I couldn’t outright ignore the alarms going off in my mind. It went against everything my parents managed to teach me before they were both stolen from me. “You didn’t spike it or anything, did you?”

  “Why would I do something like that?” he asked while staring ahead. His jaw tightened as he quickly pulled away from the curb. Maybe I insulted him. Before I could apologize, he barked, “Hurry up. We can’t have this in the car.”

  “Just toss it out the window.”

  “It’s a college party. Cops are always nearby. I don’t want to get pulled over for littering and have them figure out it was alcohol. My dad will kill me.” Right then, we passed a cruiser waiting along the darkened part of the street. I snatched the cup and quickly downed the contents. I had to lean my head back when I felt the alcohol heat my blood and fuddle my brain.

  The last thing I remember was Aaron glancing my way, sporting an accomplished grin and lust in his eyes.

  Chapter Two

  Promises are made to be broken.

  MIAN

  Eighteen Months Later

  “Mian, we have to let you go. This isn’t working out.”

  I turned my face just in time to save myself from his smelly spittle. Jerry had a disgusting habit of spraying his words all over his victim’s face. The sweat sticking to my face from my two-mile run and his saliva was a deadly concoction I wanted no part of. Everyone knew to give Jerry wide berth when he was speaking to avoid being assaulted by his fishy saliva. I, however, made it my mission to kiss Jerry’s ass as much as possible. Shifts were hard to come by at the small diner.

  “Mian? Did you hear me?” I was too busy holding my breath to avoid as much of his to hear anything he’d said. Seriously, how can his breath always smell like fish when he never actually ate any? According to him, he wasn’t a fan.

  “Are you breaking up with me?�
�� It was a weak shot at humor, but that was because I refused to use tears. It seemed my desperate attempt to make it to work by running two miles had proven fruitless. I pulled my white dress shirt from my sweaty skin and smiled, but it was weak.

  I couldn’t lose this job.

  This was my fifth job in less than six months.

  “I’m sorry, Mian. You’ve only been here five weeks and have repeatedly been late or have failed to show up at all.”

  “Jerry, please don’t do this. I’ll work an extra shift for free tonight, just please don’t fire me. I can’t lose this job. I have Caylen.” I was counting on tonight’s tips just to make it through another week.

  “I’ve tried to be sympathetic to your situation, but it’s gotten out of hand. There are many other people who need to work as well. People who can show up for their shifts.”

  He walked away, but I couldn’t let it end there. I’d beg. I had no options, and no options meant no pride. I pleaded with the manager and made every promise possible that I knew I couldn’t keep until he lost any show of sympathy and forcefully showed me, with his hand on my arm, to the door.

  The sound of the restaurant door slamming behind me as I stood on the street echoed ominously around me. This waitressing gig was my only source of income, and now it was gone. I balled my fist and entertained the idea of shattering the front window. If I could afford the hospital bill after I broke my hand, I might have tried. I knew it wasn’t Jerry’s fault I lost my job. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that I was the world’s biggest fuck-up.

  When it became clear Jerry wouldn’t offer me another chance, I started down the street. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside since we were in the middle of summer. The heat made me consider the impossible, but then a cool breeze swept by, and I decided to outrun the sun was best left to the professionals.

  My walk gave me plenty of time to agonize over what awaited me when I made it home. Maybe the sun would take pity on me, and I’d go up in flames.

  Chicago moved around me, completely oblivious to my own world crashing around me yet again. I needed a distraction. My fingers itched for my pencil and pad. I could create another world with the stroke of my hand and get lost within it.

  And by lost, I meant hide.

  The hustle and bustle of the city used to excite me but now it only made me miss home.

  But home wasn’t home anymore—not without my father.

  He used to bring me to the city, and we’d visit our favorite ice cream shop and goof around for hours, sometimes days, during the summer. Of course, that was all before my mother died and he decided he preferred to avoid me.

  I relocated permanently when my aunt and uncle kicked me out after graduation. I spent the first half of my summer pretending to wait for my first semester of college. That lasted until my aunt walked in on me stepping out of the shower and caught a front row view of the invasion in my belly.

  I was thrown out on my ass that very day, and the next thirteen months became a constant battle for survival.

  I wanted to hate my aunt and uncle more than I already did, but that would mean denying my pregnancy hadn’t been my fault.

  And Aaron’s.

  When I tried to come clean about what resulted after that night, he pretended we were strangers. Aaron’s denial was the final turning point down a path different from the one my father paved for me. Daddy’s dream that I’d go to college died by my hands. My aunt and uncle helped long before I’d gotten pregnant. The money my father hid from my aunt and uncle had only lasted me a year before it ran dry. While my father entrusted his brother to me because he had no choice, he still took measures to protect me from them. When I was kicked out, I used the funds he set aside to get by. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been enough. Turns out, my aunt and uncle’s hospitality came with a hefty price tag, which cut into the money he was able to leave me.

  I stretched every penny and saved, but none of it mattered in the end.

  Daddy had been sentenced to twenty-five years in maximum security. His sentence killed our hope of being reunited sooner than later. I remember watching my father when the verdict was delivered and later when he was sentenced. He never reacted. He sat there unmoving and unsurprised.

  He’d lied to me.

  He knew he wasn’t going to get off. He played me to lessen the pain only to amplify it the day he was taken away in cuffs for the final time.

  Our first and only visit occurred two and a half years ago. That was when he forbade me to come back.

  “I don’t want you to come back. Not for me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come see you? You’re my dad. You’re all I have.”

  “You have so much time left. I don’t. I want you to use your time to make something better. This is it for me. Your future is the only thing I can make right. And that means I can’t be a part of it anymore.”

  I can still feel the heat from the tears I shed over him, the hurt in my heart, and the emptiness I was left with when he turned his back on me for the last time.

  After five minutes of struggling through the June heat, I reached the quarter-mile mark of my journey…the bus stop. Behind me, I could hear the rumble from the exhausted bus engine approach. My feet stopped moving, and I watched it roll to a stop. The hiss of the brakes engaging and then the door swinging open, greeted me.

  Fuck it.

  Weakly, I ascended the few steps and reached inside my bag to pay. My tattered wallet was already open and staring back at me was an empty pocket.

  The driver became impatient and grumbled, “It’s two bucks to ride, miss.”

  I nodded.

  Embarrassed and worn, I wordlessly stepped down. Bus rides were a luxury best reserved for when time wasn’t on my side. I figured we’d eat more often if I didn’t make city transportation another monthly reason to struggle.

  Yesterday, when I was in danger of missing my shift, I had no choice but to catch the bus.

  And so went the only two bucks I had to spare. I didn’t always end a shift with a pocket full of cash. Yesterday’s tips had been spent on groceries and supplies for the week and the two measly bucks I had before my shift was spent to save a job I no longer had.

  If today had gone as planned, there would have been no sun, and I wouldn’t have needed to be saved by a bus. I would have walked through a dangerous city at night with a pocket full of cash I made from tips, and everything would have been okay.

  But today wasn’t a day for plans.

  I survived the rest of the trek to the subsidized apartment building I called home. My clothes stuck to my skin as I entered the run down building. As much as I dreaded facing the music, I wanted out of them more.

  After I had been evicted from the decent apartment I rented while pregnant, I was forced to lower my living standards. The payments became too hard to make each month, and the manager was no longer willing to offer extensions without him getting blown on occasion. After I had refused him, the smell of piss stained hallways and the drug addicts that decorated them became my new reality.

  I held my breath and waded through the living dead looking for their next hit and made my way to the stairs.

  I hated the stairs as much as I hated the building.

  It wasn’t the way a few of the boards were missing or how the ones still intact creaked. It was the constant groping and pinching I had to endure from the addicts and the dealers that chose to make the hallways their storefront.

  The elevator was no longer an option.

  The steel doors that were designed to keep people from falling to their death when closed were left open when it broke down, and the owners didn’t find it necessary to have it rectified.

  “You’re home early.” I trudged into my third-floor apartment and found, Anna, my friend and neighbor, waiting on my tattered couch.

  “Uh, yeah. I kind of got fired,” I confessed and toed
off my shoes.

  “Oh, no! It’s totally my fault!” She hopped up from the couch with her hands covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry I was late!”

  “It’s not your fault, Anna. You’re just a kid.” Anna was seventeen years old and the most genuine person I’d ever known. After she Caylen, she volunteered to babysit for free, which I readily agreed but under the condition that I pay her anyway. So far, I’d been able to hold up my end of the bargain—until tonight.

  “Yeah, but so are you,” she countered.

  “I’m a nineteen-year-old single mother. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  She fell silent as her face lost its normal perky hue. I kicked myself and stumbled to apologize just when her eyes brightened again. “Hey, I have a thought! In a few months, he should start walking.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, you’ll have a better chance of keeping up with him. My mom had me when she was only sixteen. She says she was lucky she was young enough to keep up with me after my father up and died and left her with a kid he forced her to keep in the first place.”

  I waited for the explosion of anger and hurt that never came. “She really said that?”

  She shrugged and didn’t appear bothered, which only broke my heart for her more. “Why wouldn’t she? It’s true.” Her gaze lifted from her feet and met mine. “It’s okay really,” she assured. She laughed, but even a deaf person could tell it was forced. “I’m used to being repeatedly told how I’m a burden who ruined her perfect body.”

  I wasn’t a violent person. I preferred avoiding people who upset or hurt me, but her mother made me want my first taste of blood. Anna’s father died in a car accident when she was six. A drunk driver t-boned his car, killing him instantly. Since then, she’s been under the sole care of her irresponsible mother. Her father and mother’s families had long written them off thanks to Brandi.

  When I moved in seven months ago, we formed an instant bond. Our friendship never felt forced because we had more in common than I’d ever had with anyone, including Erin. She’d still been around until Caylen was born and then decided a baby in the mix would cramp her style. I haven’t heard from her since, and even after twelve years of friendship, I didn’t feel any love lost.