I started to turn again. The girl was in trouble, and it wasn’t because she was crying to cry. She was crying in fear, the kind that comes from deep inside a person.

“No.” Ben pulled me back, firmer this time. He had stopped shaking so much. “You can’t go back there.”

“Okay, but why?”

His mouth closed and his lips pressed tight.

“Ben, you have to tell me or I’m going to kick you in the balls so I can go and see who that is.”

He winced and tried to cover himself with one hand. I snorted. That wasn’t going to help.

“Ben,” I started again.

The girl cried out again, but it was hushed by someone else. A male someone. The foreboding sense kicked into full gear. Disgust was next. I had to go. Whether this clerk was going to let me go or not, I was going. “I mean it. Let go or you’re never going to have children.”

“You can’t.”

“Why?”

“You just,” he faltered. “You can’t.”

Slap!

I started around the corner, dragging Ben with me. My blood was still pumping from adrenalin. I hadn’t gone numb like I usually did when I run. I was going to help whoever was back there. I’d been hurt. Someone came to help me. I was going to do the same.

“You can’t,” Ben grunted as he held me back. He was scrawny, but he was stronger than me. I was hauled back and then shoved towards the front of the gas station. “Budd Broudou is back there.”

I stopped. Ice cold water filled my veins, and I couldn’t move.

That was Budd.

So that was Kate. This was it, this was what he would’ve done to me if Mason hadn’t manipulated everything.

“Nnoo … AH! Wha—”

“Shut up,” he hissed at her.

I flinched. I could imagine him slapping his hand over her mouth. Then he continued doing whatever he was doing.

“Oh my god.”

“See.” Ben yanked me the rest of the way. “You can’t go back there. He’ll hurt you. She told him that you were Mason’s girlfriend and not her, but he didn’t believe her. You can’t go back there. He might not care and hurt both of you.”

“Call the cops.”

He stopped, and I ran into him. Shaking his head, he started trembling again. “Yeah, right.”

“You have to.”

“No.”

“Ben.”

“NO. No.”

“He is hurting her.” It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. If she hurt me, if she hadn’t. What he was doing—I didn’t even want to know, though I had a good idea—was wrong. Revulsion swept through me, but I shoved it down.

I’d been hurting. Someone helped me. That kept running through my head. I had to help her, no matter who she was.

“We can’t call the cops.”

“We have to. Do you have cameras? Anything? Her uncle is a cop.”

“He is?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” He still looked ready to piss his pants. “We have two cameras, no—three. We have three cameras.”

He stopped. Nothing.

I asked, “Where are they?”

“Oh. One is pointing towards the front. One is where they are and the other is inside.”

My heart sank. “So none on him?”

He shook his head and pushed up his glasses. They began sliding down right away, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to me and his hand went back to his hip, his very tiny, scrawny hip. I sighed. What the hell was I doing?

“His truck is over there.”

“What?”

He pointed down the road where his truck was hidden in a copse of trees. It was far enough away from the gas station and surrounded by healthy trees. If … a plan began to form, but as I went over it in my head, I couldn’t. There was no way.

“HELP—”

He slapped her again. It was followed by a thud.

I closed my eyes. He hurt her again.

That sealed it. Looking at Ben, there was uncertainty, but panic mixed with trust. He was trusting me, but I had no idea what I was doing. I did, but I held no promise it was going to work. It had to. I pushed all the fear down, and I remembered everything that had made me angry.

Analise.

David leaving me.

Jeff cheating on me.

Jessica and Lydia stabbing me in the back.

Adam lying about me.

Becky believing him.

Kate and her friends. She wanted Mason back. All of them hurting me.

And now Helen. I knew she didn’t want me to be with Mason. Everyone knew it. It was another obstacle in our relationship. I felt it coming, so did Mason, but neither of us knew how to stop it before it began.

By the time I remembered everything, all that old anger had mixed with the adrenalin from my run. I was heated. I was sick and tired of being hurt, being shoved down, being pushed around, being punched, stabbed, and being replaced.

“Ben.” My voice was firm.

He settled down and nodded.

“Turn your cameras off in the front. There can’t be any evidence of me.”

“There won’t, but,” he hesitated, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to distract him.”

“Okay.” Another beat of hesitation. “What do you want me to do?”

“Wait until I light it before you call the fire station.”

“Okay.” He rushed back inside.

I waited a second.

He rushed back out. “Light what?”

I took a deep breath. “I need some gasoline.”

His eyes popped out, but he went inside and brought back two full red containers and handed them over without a word. This was the time when I was making the decision to help someone else. This could cost me my life. I had no idea, but he was hurting another girl, and I couldn’t let that happen. There was no way I could walk away from it without losing a piece of my soul, so I took the two containers of gasoline Ben gave me, and I carried them to Budd’s truck. It was hidden, and I had no doubt that he was going to use the running trail to slip past the cameras and drive away.

That pissed me off even more. I had no idea why, but he wanted to get away with it, using my trails. Everyone got away with screwing people over.

Not this time.

I didn’t touch the truck, but I doused the entire thing with gasoline. When I was done, I heard Kate cry out again. He was still doing whatever it was he was doing. I closed my eyes and pulled my sleeves over my hands. I wiped down the containers. Ben told me to do that. He said they could maybe get my finger prints off of them. I had no idea what he was going to say when the police would come. He said he would turn the cameras off. He was an accomplice, but he told me not to worry about it. He had my back. Apparently, he had my back the entire time. Budd kept coming back to the gas station and questioned Ben about Mason’s girlfriend. He never told him, not once. I could only imagine what Budd must’ve put him through.