If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was survive compromising situations. So, when that guy came and pulled the other one off me, I ran, and I didn't look back.
Not even when I smacked straight into that other girl, nearly sending us both crashing into the ground.
"It's okay," she kept trying to assure me, but she was stupid. She didn't know anything.
She pulled me behind some bins, and crouched in front of me, sheilding me with her body. She was tiny, far smaller than me, what did she possibly think she could protect me from?
We waited until the sounds of fighting died down from across the street, hearing the pounding footsteps as two people ran, but, even then, neither of us relaxed. The other girl pulled a knife from her shirt and tensed, ready to spring, and I heard what she must have been listening for.
There were two more pairs of footsteps approaching us, stopping right beside our hiding place, and the other girl sprang on the taller of the two men that had approached us, pinning his hulking mass with her tiny body. The girl was crazy.
I shrank further into the shadows, my heart hammering in my chest, my hands shaking, ready to flee. Then, I heard them speaking, and girl turned back to me, holding out her hand.
"Hey, it's safe to come out."
No it wasn't. She really was stupid.
"Come on, it stinks behind there." She wasn't wrong about that, at least.
Slowly, reluctantly, I crawled out from behind the bins, staring at the ground.
"They hurt you, sweetheart?" The man that the girl had just pinned, with the longer hair and the scar across his face, carefully touched my shoulder, as though he was trying to determine whether or not I was injured. His touch felt like an electric pulse over my skin. Automatically, I leaped away from him.
"No, it's fine, he won't hurt you," the girl insisted, but, isn't that what they all said, right before they did?
Why do men always feel that they're entitled to touch me? Like I was some prize they could snatch away and keep for their greedy selves? I wanted to glare at him, show him how much I hated him. I knew his kind; used to getting his own way only because of his chiseled jawed good looks.
I knew the glint in those cold eyes, the one they all had when they were about to hurt you. He was violent, he liked hurting people, and this girl was even stupider than I thought if she believed he was any different.
The guy gave me some space, which surprised me, going to stand beside the second man, the one built like a bull, and I realised then, that he had been the one who had saved me from those others in that laneway. Why?
"Do you know who those guys were?" The girl asked me. "Why were they attacking you?"
I didn't know them personally, but I knew who had sent them after me, and I knew what they were going to do to me if these people hadn't stopped them. I couldn't explain that to her, though. The more she knew, the more danger she was in. She was stupid, but she was kind, at least she seemed it, and I didn't want her to get hurt because of me. I was like her, once.
"I don't know," I answered her instead.
"What's your name?"
I took too long to answer, trying to decide if I should give her my real name, or the name I'd been given. This girl reminded me of an angel, with her delicate bone structure and creamy skin, the way she'd defended me without a moment's hestitation. I decided I could trust her, at least with my name.
"Jenna."
"I'm Bonnie," she told me with a kind smile, then waved a hand toward the two men sitting a little way away on the curb, watching us. "The guy with long hair, that's my partner, Clyde, and our friend, Ace."
I eyed the two of them as they studied me curiously. Ace, in particular, was intently focused on me, and I backed away another step, into the shadows to escape his scrutiny. He wasn't leering at me, the way I was used to, but his face was too kind, too sympathetic. He was nothing like the men I'd always known, which made him unpredictable. Unpredictable people were dangerous people.
"We'll walk you home to make sure you get there safe," Bonnie continued, breaking me away from my thoughts and back into the present. "Where do you live?"
How do I tell someone that I live where ever I'm sent to live, with whoever paid the highest amount for me?
It wasn't exactly normal, I knew, though it was normal for me. But, I left that shit behind me, and I was never going back, so, now, normal meant hiding out from the ones who would try to make me go back, sleeping on the streets and trying to avoid attention.
Unfortunately for me, attention was all I'd managed to draw, as three pairs of eyes bore into me, waiting for a reply.
I shrugged, receiving three confused looks.
"We won't hurt you," Bonnie promised, handing me her knife, like some sort of peace offering, and I held it to my chest. "Here."
"Bonnie," I heard Clyde growl, his deep voice low in warning.
He hated that I had a way to defend myself, now, that Bonnie had left herself vulnerable. He wanted me to stay defenseless, to be afraid of him, of what he could do to me. I bet he'd like that, for me to be completely defenseless, cowering before him as he fulfilled whatever twisted fantasies he had.
I tightened my grip on the knife.
"It's fine," Bonnie reasoned. "It's not like she's going to need to use it on us."
Her implication was that they were no threat to me, but I didn't like Clyde's cool tone, or Ace's silence. At least I knew where I stood with these two, it was Ace that worried me the most. I could tell what he was thinking, or what he might try to do.
Ace remained silent.
"How do I know I can trust you?" I asked Bonnie, lowering my voice in the hope that only she could hear.
I don't know why I even bothered to ask. She could tell me anything, it didn't mean that she would keep her word.
"Our boy just had his guts kicked in defending you," Clyde said gruffly, roughly thumping Ace. "If we wanted you to get hurt, we would have let those assholes stitch you up."
I stared at the ground again as Bonnie told him off, then turned back to me.
"Come on, let us walk you home," she urged. "The boys will look after us."
She didn't understand, and I envied that. She was so fearless. Either she didn't know what true danger was, or she was stupid, stupid, stupid. Those men would only look after us if they thought there was something to gain out of it. They didn't care, and why should they? I didn't trust them, and I didn't trust her.
"They won't," I told her.
Even if, by some miracle, they did have my best interests at heart, I wouldn't want to drag them into the shit I was in. Even if those two intimidating guys wanted to protect us, I doubted that they could.