all I really want to do

Mia tip-toed carefully through the little Prairie Schooner. Hayden was finally asleep. She hoped.

Maybe this time she'd really do it. Run away. She'd find Liam and maybe she would go to college and it would be a new beginning. Yet, she knew the reality would be a terrible ending. Hayden would go off the deep end. Smack her. Maybe even knock her out cold.

He'd done it before. He could be brutal. But it would be worth it...if she got away.

Of course, she listened to his little stories. How he had to protect her. How she needed him. Even now.

"But isn't that what a big brother does?" She asked before. But he shot her down quick, that she was his and no one elses.

She knew he'd never listen to her. How he needed to let her go. How she needed to find her own way. Not his way. As it was they lived in an old trailer behind an old truckstop. She worked for tips, and he worked at the gas station when he felt like it.

Why couldn't it be better? Who was he really hiding from?

If only she had a backbone, she thought. She wanted to. She very well wanted her own life. Not this. This was hell. Possibly. But then again, she knew it could be worse. It was just, she wanted to smile again. She'd found her smile with Liam.

He was so funny in a goofy kind of way. Really, she hadn't meant to hurt Hayden. It was just this chance to be happy. Why did she have to belong to Hayden?

She argued with Hayden in her dreams. She would say things like, "I don't belong to you! I'm not your slave! I deserve better!" But she couldn't make herself say these things to him. Because a little of her thought, she might be the only thing left that might make Hayden human.

Just what was he really running from?

But she walked by him carefully, edging through the moonlight. Yet, she was caught in his grasp before she got to the door.

"I don't think so." He whispered. His hand wrapped around her throat. "What do I have to do? To make you see, we have to stick together."

She gasped for air then. His hand clinched tighter. A part of her thought this was it. It could very well be it. Next thing she knew he was pouring some cough syrup down her throat. She coughed even more from the burn inside her throat. Tears emerged as she tried to breath once more.

"Now go to sleep. I need sleep." He pushed her down in the bed then. She looked up at his face in the moonlight. She knew exactly what he was then. Her keeper who could take her out, anytime he wanted.