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“This is me,” he says. If he has any idea of what I was thinking, he doesn’t indicate it. Instead, he simply opens up the passenger door to his pickup truck, and I climb up inside. He closes the door, and I’m enveloped in the silence. The safety.

I want to weep with relief.

He gets in the driver’s seat and starts the engine. The truck roars to life. It’s a nice truck.

“I take it the rodeo has done well for you,” I say.

“Yeah. I’ve done all right for myself.” He’s minimizing it, I know. Probably because I’m pitiful, and he doesn’t want to brag.

I realize that I know very little about his life. I had no idea that he’d found his father, not all this time.

“What’s your… What’s your family like?” I ask as he pulls the truck out of the parking spot, and onto the driveway that will take us out of the Expo grounds. “I’m just curious. I… This whole time I imagined that you’d stay ed in care. I was heartbroken when I had to leave you behind.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough. “I pretty much lost it when you left. And after that was when my dad found me. Like I said. I think I made his life hell there for a minute. But I didn’t really know how to be loved.

I’m not sure that I do still, but I have no interest in making my dad’s life hell.

Especially not when… I mean… My stepmother’s amazing.

And the kids… My half-siblings, it’s great to have them, even though I’m not home with them.

And they’re still little. Four and six.”

“Oh,” I say. “They are little.”

“How about you? You have siblings?”

“I think so. I think a couple of them are in care, but I’m not sure.

I think my mom has a couple other kids she lost custody of, but they were older than me so I don’t know them.

As far as my bio dad, I just don’t really know him.

I don’t know for certain, but I feel like I heard that he had some kids. ”

“You haven’t done one of those DNA tests?” he asks.

I huff out a laugh. “People with lives as dysfunctional as mine know better than to do those.”

He makes a speculative noise in the back of his throat. “You don’t want to find people you’re related to?”

I don’t really know what to say to that.

Obviously, finding his family has been a great thing for him.

But I can’t imagine it being the same for me.

Not even remotely. Everything I know about my family suggests they’re nothing more than a bunch of dirtbags, and I can’t really trust that any random person wouldn’t just be…

A disappointment at best, dangerous at worst. Because that’s my experience. You can’t trust just anyone.

In fact, you’re better off not trusting anyone at all .

In high school I read that ducklings will imprint the first thing they see move, which means they identify their source of comfort, care and safety, and they never look at anything else with that kind of trust.

That’s me with Dallas.

I’m a fucked-up duckling who imprinted on him when I was eight.

I saw him, and I just knew . I knew that he was my survival, my safety, my comfort, all in one. From that first moment, everything in my soul recognized that he was mine.

Not romantically or anything like that. Just real and true and deep.

But other than that, I don’t trust anyone.

“It’s just right up here,” he says, gesturing to the small roadside motel right off the highway. I should’ve known it wasn’t anything fancy. There are fancy places here, but they’re the sort of place you vacation in with your family, not the kind of places you just crash for a couple of nights.

Sisters is small. Cute, but small.

He pulls his truck to the front of one of the red doors and gets out. I follow him, like the sad little duckling I am.

I have a backpack with me that contains one night’s worth of stuff. Because I’m hopeful in the face of adversity, I guess, and I wouldn’t have said that I was an optimist of any kind, but bringing the bag suggests I might be.

Or maybe I’m just desperate, and I was going to attach myself to him like a rabid raccoon-duckling I am.

“Home sweet home,” I hear him say through the window of the truck, and I smile. I get out and close the door behind me. It locks, and then I walk up to the door, walk inside ahead of him.

There’s only one bed .

A strange memory twists through my stomach. We used to sleep in one bed all the time, but again, I’m pretty sure now that’s weird. And I might be weird, but not so weird that I don’t know that.

“I’ll take the floor,” he says.

He’s a step ahead of me as far as the one-bed weirdness goes.

“No,” I say. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor. This is your room. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

I’m not going to suggest we share a bed.

We’re not kids. Not only that, I don’t actually know him.

As he closes the motel room door behind him, I’m struck by how foolish this is on the surface.

I knew Dallas when he was fifteen. To say that I know him now is a stretch.

I knew him way back then and have a sense that I can trust him based on my own gut feeling, which is probably not the most reliable.

Though it does tend to be suspicious, I suppose. So, I have that going for me.

I set my backpack down in the corner, and I look at him. The truth is, I’ve just gone willingly into the motel room of a man I really don’t know. Me . Who literally has every reason to be suspicious of and generally dislike men.

Yet, here I am.

I don’t feel panicked, though. I feel something else. Something I can’t quite define, and don’t necessarily want to.

I feel weak and trembly, but I don’t want to reflect on what that feeling might be.

“You’re ridiculous,” he says. “You’re not sleeping on the floor. I’m a gentleman, Sarah. And that’s simply not something I’m prepared to allow.”

He’s standing there with a cowboy hat on, a button-up shirt, a big belt buckle, and blue jeans, and he does not look like a gentleman.

He looks like a manufactured fantasy of classic masculinity, wrapped in this protectiveness , this care that I know for a damn fact you don’t usually find on this kind of man.

“You can’t be this nice to me,” I say. “It’s not sustainable. I’m going to get spoiled.”

He scowls, his handsome face contorting. I see new lines next to his mouth, between his eyebrows. I like his more mature face. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It’s nothing. But you know… It wasn’t a good thing that I went back to my mom.”

He nods slowly. “I’m sure. Sarah I… You’re the only person who really knows ,” he says.

“I love my family. I love my family, and they have no idea what it’s like to be in the system.

They have no idea what it’s like to experience that kind of uncertainty.

You know. You know what it’s like to have to pack all your stuff up in a plastic garbage bag.

To wear the same pair of shoes until they're falling off your feet. Until you have blisters on your toes, because nobody remembers that they need to get new supplies for you. You’re the only person in the fucking world that I know who has any idea what I’ve been through.

It’s just really great to see you again.

You can have my bed. You can have whatever you need. ”

I take a deep breath. “I forgot what it was like to have somebody on my team.”

“Fuck,” he says.

Then he’s closing the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me. I’m enveloped in his heat. In his warmth. The security of him. He’s so much taller now. More solid. He’s like a wall of muscle and comfort. Everything I’ve ever dreamed about, honestly.

His arms. His touch .

Him .

It has never, ever been more than a deep desire for security. But right then I feel the stirring of something else, something low in my stomach, and I shove it to the side.

And I just let him hold me. I let myself feel secure. Which is something I simply don’t have a lot of experience with. Something I gave up on ever feeling.

He releases his hold on me. “I need a shower.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah. Of course.”

There’s an open suitcase sitting on the other side of the bed, and he reaches down and grabs his clothes out of it. I perch myself on the end of the bed. “Should I… ask for extra blankets at the front desk?”

“I’ll handle that,” he says. “I don’t want you walking out of here, and I don’t want you answering the door for anyone while I’m in the shower.”

“I don’t think I’m in that much danger,” I say.

“But you don’t know that,” he says.

The truth is, he’s right. I don’t know that. I haven’t known for sure the whole time, that’s why everything feels so terrifying.

I don’t know what kind of revenge that man wants on me. If it’s just to make me feel small, helpless again, if he wants to hurt me. I don’t know. Foolishness would be tempting finding out for sure if I’m in danger.

Dallas disappears into the bathroom, and I hear the water running.

I open up my backpack and take out my pajamas.

I decide to dress quickly while he’s in there.

My pajamas – such as they are – are a pair of oversized men’s sweats.

But nobody ever sees what I sleep in, so it’s never mattered whether they look nice or not.

Though I think as I look in the mirror, they definitely don’t. Which seems a little bit sad now. Not that I care what Dallas thinks about my pajamas, I guess. His shower is quick, and I find myself imagining the steps he’s taking when he gets out. Drying himself off and getting dressed.

I do my best to shut my brain off as those thoughts get a little bit too intimate.

The door opens, and he steps out. The first thing I do is laugh. He’s wearing a pair of black sweatpants that look identical to mine.

“Well,” he says. “That’s a greeting.”

“Not meant to be offensive,” I say.

But then, my eyes moved to his chest, which is bare and sculpted, and I find it harder to tear my eyes away than I should. I can honestly say I’ve never been this close to a half-naked man who looks like him.

I’ve never tried to be. Men are, and have been, low on my list of priorities. Which isn’t to say that he isn’t singular. Because that’s certainly part of it. His is an above average physique. Even I, with my minimal experience, can recognize that.

“I’m going to go get blankets.” He reaches down into the suitcase and takes a white T-shirt out, shrugging it on. I realize that I’m watching his every movement with the sort of forensic care. Which is weird, but I try not to worry too much about that. Or maybe worry isn’t the right word.

“Lock the door while I’m out,” he says.

He slips on a pair of slides, and heads out the door, and is gone for about ten minutes.

I pace around the room, and I don’t let myself look in his suitcase, because that would be creepy.

I’m struck again by the level of intimacy he’s allowing.

Letting me, a functional stranger, stay in this room with him.

But I suppose as a woman, the risk is greater on my end.

He says that he has a weapon .

I can imagine it. He seems like that kind of guy. There’s a quiet strength about him. Something that many might mistake for being easy-going. There always has been.

There’s also always been anger in him, below the surface. Anger that I could sense because it mirrored my own.

I’m tempted to go through his suitcase, but I’m not that feral.

Only rabid. So, I don’t. I just sit on the end of the bed with the motel silence bearing down on me.

I can hear trucks on the highway, and my heart throbs as I imagine Chris somehow figuring out where I am. My car isn’t in the parking lot.

Still, panic is beginning to rise up inside me, and I don’t want Dallas to see me having a full-blown meltdown in his bedroom.

When the door opens, and Dallas appears, the enormous amount of relief I feel is enough to make tears sting my eyes. We haven’t been together for so long, but suddenly I feel calm. Like maybe everything is going to be okay, and I can’t remember the last time I felt that.

He has a bundle of blankets in his arms, and he smiles at me as he throws them down on the floor, like it just isn’t a big deal that he’s giving the bed up for me. Like he’s happy to do it.

“Get your rest. You probably haven’t been sleeping very well,” he says, as he spreads the blankets out.

He’s right. I haven’t been getting rest. He’s right, I can’t sleep because I’m afraid that Chris is going to find me. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me.

I’m afraid he’s going to make me that eight-year-old girl that I used to be. Powerless, trying to get someone to believe me. Being hurt and abused by the people I should be able to trust most .

I’ve worked so hard to make a life for myself. To let that stuff go. To not be defined by something I didn’t choose. It’s the most unfair part about being a victim of anything. That somebody takes you and imposes all their darkness onto you.

That a grown man had the power to make a young, innocent girl feel afraid of her own body. Afraid of every man. Afraid of being touched when touch is so desperately needed. He isolated me. And in the end, that might be the worst of it.

Except this. Except for him terrorizing me now.

“Thank you,” I say, snuggling underneath the blankets and curling up into a ball.

Dallas reaches up to the bed and takes a pillow, and suddenly, it reminds me so much of who we were back then.

Suddenly, I don’t feel so terrible. I was always safe when Dallas was there.

And happier too. He lies down on the floor, and I stay firmly planted in the bed, even though I’m tempted to lean over and look at him one more time.

I don’t. Instead, I lie there until his breathing becomes even.

Until I know he’s relaxed enough to sleep, because that’s how I know it’s safe.

Maybe that’s weird. Maybe it’s against all kinds of survival wisdom.

But I don’t care. I fall asleep listening to Dallas breathing again.

And for the first time in a long time, I feel safe.