Psychosexual [BoyxBoyxBoy]

💀 Chapter 24 💀

While waiting, I answered some messages on my phone. Few were from Dorian, one was from Jin asking if I was okay, and surprisingly one from Chance, whom I hadn't heard from in a while. I chose not to answer the last one.

The Uber took a little longer than expected due to traffic. When it finally arrived, we got in and drove off. The driver was a young woman, our age even. She didn't speak much, but neither did we. I just mostly sat in silence, thinking about how I was in another state, away from anything and anybody I knew, extremely vulnerable to getting kidnapped. My brain even went down a rollercoaster thinking of a possible scheme created by Elijah to get me to trust him so that I was more easily taken. Taken where? Maybe Russia. I heard stories of people getting kidnapped and being sold like slaves across the world to never be heard from again.

Gulp.

"Save that for later," Elijah whispered.

The ride to the mystery destination took a little over thirty minutes, by then the sun was nearly out. We were dropped off on the side of a strip mall. All of the stores were closed, but Elijah took us to one of them and knocked on the glass door. It was a bike store. Dozens of them were displayed by the window, each chained and locked to metal poles to stop thieves from stealing them.

After a minute or two, he knocked again, until a dim light appeared in the back of the store and a brunette woman appeared. She squinted her eyes as she walked to us until she recognized Elijah and smiled. She took out a large set of keys and opened the front door.

"Hey, babe," she said, leaning against the door frame. "Haven't seen you in a while. Where've you been?"

"Sorry, Amanda. Been all over the place."

"Looking for bikes?" She raised her arm and looked at the watch on her wrist. "At six in the morning?"

"It's an emergency."

She sighed, as if knowing exactly what kind of person Elijah was. "What do you need?"

"Just two bikes. Any bikes," he said as he followed her in with me behind.

"Any?"

"Yup. Any."

Elijah pulled out his wallet, which seemed to have oddly excited her. She did a little jump and hopped to the cash register.

"Love when you pull out your black card," she said.

I wandered around the store as they talked, or flirted — I wasn't sure, and I didn't care. The last time I was in a bike store was when I was seven. My aunt never wanted kids, so she was never prepared to deal with a child, and had no idea on how to go about it. The first year I lived with her, she forgot when my birthday was and had neglected every holiday, and on my mom's birthday, an aching sadness must have hit her. She took me to a bike store and let me pick one out as a gift. I was too young to realize it, but it was her way of apologizing to me. I was a smart child, so for many years I always reminded her that I had no hate for her in my heart or expected anything. I had a roof over my head and food on the table, so it was okay that both of us were lost.

A whistle woke me from my thoughts. Elijah was waiting for me by the door, holding two bicycles. I rushed over to him and took one, following him outside to the sidewalk near the street. The price tag was still on the handle and I loudly gasped when my curiosity took hold.

"We're gonna go on a little ride," he said, casually ripping off the price tags on both of the bikes and tossing it to the side.

"Where? And why bikes?"

"It will give me an opportunity to make sure we weren't followed. We'll take some detours to lose any tails if we have any and then we'll head straight to where Cedric is."