I look down and see a piece of broken off pipe not more than a couple of feet behind me and then look at the fence, which doesn’t appear to be electric. It’s now or never.
I take a step back and kick the pipe as hard as I can, my toe immediately telling me I made the wrong decision until I see all three dogs give chase. Darting at an angle away from the man I make a mad dash for the fence, jumping just as I reach it, my body slamming into the chain link and I quickly try and get my footing, scaling it as best I can.
“Oh no you don’t, you little shit,” the man says, grabbing me by the ankle and jerking me downward. My fingers hold on for dear life as he yanks me back toward the earth until my grip gives out.
“Got ya!” he says as I slide down the hot steel, which has been getting nuked from the Florida sun all day, and into his arms.
“And I got you, you son of a bitch,” a deep baritone says, as I feel my body rising just before the man releases me.
A big arm wraps around my waist and pulls me in tight, easing my feet to the ground. Stumbling backward I watch as Elijah holds the other man by the collar in one hand before his other hand grabs him by the back of his pants and he heaves him right into the fence.
“Let’s see you climb that fence and get away,” Elijah continues.
The security guard, or whatever he is, ricochets off the fence and stumbles back to it before trying to scale it. If his wobbling head is any indication he has no balance and no chance of getting away from Elijah…who wastes no time grabbing him by the back and yanking him back to the ground.
“You think you can act that way around women? Around little girls? Around my little girl?”
“I didn’t know she was your daughter?” he cowers, bringing his hand up to his face.
“She’s not my daughter. She’s my everything,” he growls into the man’s face. “Now apologize to her before I apologize to the property manager for snapping his supposed security guard in half.”
“I…I’m sorry,” he says, and from his trembling, I believe it.
“Sorry for what?”
“For scaring you. For threatening you.”
“For acting not like a man, but like the little bitch that you are,” Elijah adds, looking down at him in disgust. It’s only then I notice the three dogs have returned but aren’t barking or doing anything aggressive. They say in the animal kingdom the alpha predators are recognized, and despite there being three dogs that are known to be used for security and defense, they clearly recognize that Elijah is the leader of the pack. “Now get the fuck outta here,” he adds and the man drags himself to his feet and scrambles to the guard shack, pressing a button and the fence opens and he’s quickly a relic of the past.
I watch him go before turning back to Elijah, who’s eyes are throwing daggers in my direction.
“Don’t even think about following him, or trying anything like that again,” he orders, his stance wide and his hand on his hips as a vein in his neck ripples.
Before I even have a chance to get away Elijah closes the distance between us, picking me up and throwing me over his wide shoulder for the second time in the last hour. Afte
r what just happened I don’t even consider putting up a fight, instead just melting over his thick levator scapulae, that muscle that connects from his neck to his shoulder, like a clock in that famous Salvador Dali painting.
“Why, princess. Why did you run away from me?” he asks almost into the air as he lumbers back inside the harbor. “Are you scared of me?”
“You think I didn’t see what you just did to that guy? Or how my dad looked when he saw it was you in our apartment?”
“Those are men or more accurately sorry representations of the male species. They deserve what they get. You are a little girl, precious, tiny, and you need to know I’d never harm you, just like I’d never lay a finger on any woman.”
My mind shifts right back where I don’t want it to, to the idea of him putting not just a finger, but his hands, all over me…everywhere.
“Still, you can’t just go kidnapping people and beating up people who scare the person you kidnap.” I burst out laughing, hysterically. How messed up did that last sentence just sound. What in the world is going on right now?
And why do I now know, with one hundred percent certainty, that I am safer with him than anywhere else on the face of the earth?
I feel my body tilting like I’m attached to a spinning medieval torture device but instead of finding pain, my feet simply find the deck of Elijah’s boat. The thought of taking off once more rises up within me, but considering it’s nearing sunset already and I’ve seen the harbor a bit better, and the kind of shady characters that hang out in it, I decide better. Or at least I think it’s the better option.
“Here,” Elijah says, handing me the life jacket. “Put this on, sit down, and hold on.”
He fires up the boat and gets us ready to take off, again. This time there’s something different about him. His body language is slightly hunched forward, not defeated by any stretch of the imagination but also not the triumphant alpha male that he’s seemed to be since he broke down my front door. He seems…genuinely hurt that I tried to run away. Am I reading this situation correctly?
He looks at me one last time before we slowly leave the harbor, keeping a slow speed as required by all the signs that are seemingly posted everywhere, but the minute we’re past the last marker he hits the gas and I practically swallow my tongue, my heart in my stomach as we speed up the coast, not a word between us, although at these speeds I don’t think either of us would be able to hear if we even tried.
An hour passes by quickly and the design of the boat surprisingly whips the wind all around me. It’s like being in the world’s most aerodynamic convertible, without the messy hair.