Page 108 of Equilibrium
There were only three bikes parked on this side of the clubhouse, and I hoped that one of them belonged to Creed.
There was a button on his keys, and after pressing it, the beeping sound went off from one of the bikes and I knew that it was most definitely his.
Huh, I didn’t even know that they could make keys like this for bikes.
“Ophelia!” I turned around to see Creed exiting from the house, a pissed-off look on his face.
Well, sayonara, bitches. I am getting out of here.
I was just a few steps away from the bike when he called out again.
“Don’t you dare get on that bike, Ophelia!”
“Fuck off, Creed!”
I pushed the key in and jumped on. I’d only ridden a motorcycle a couple of times, but I still remembered how to turn it on. Was I going to crash and burn somewhere? Most probably. But I didn’t care anymore.
As I turned the key, pushing on the clutch and turning the ignition on, the rumble of the bike spread through my body, leaving the tingling feeling between my legs.
Damn, I should’ve gotten a bike earlier.
“Ophelia!” I turned around only to see Creed running towards me. “Storm is—”
“I don’t fucking care!”
“Don’t! Ophelia!”
But I didn’t want to listen to him anymore. They had the chance to tell me what the fuck was going on. They had the chance to tell me why exactly I was being holed up here, but they didn’t.
Liars. They were all liars.
“Have a nice life, Creed.” I grinned at him and flipped him off before I took off.
His voice carried after me, but he didn’t try to follow. I knew that I needed to put as much distance as possible between me and them. It wouldn’t take them too long to track me down and bring me back.
The difference was, this time they would be taking me back in a body bag, because I wasn’t going to come back willingly.
Fear.
It lives inside our minds, taking over our bodies, preventing us from doing what we really want to do.
And what I wanted more than anything else in this world? I wanted to be fucking free.
Free of these chains my family put on me. Free of everyone’s expectations of me. Free of all these men that thought they could control me. Just free.
As I drove through the streets of Santa Monica under the cloak of night, I felt free. As the wind hit my face, my head was clear. For the first time in I didn’t even know how long, it was completely empty.
There were no second thoughts, no anxiety haunting me. There was no assignment I had to think about. Storm, Kieran, my father, my sister, they weren’t there.
Maybe I would be able to do this, to completely disappear. Maybe after I found Maya, I would be able to just vanish into thin air and try to forget this part of my life. This constant chasing, constant pain, constant bloodshed, and worry.
I could start anew somewhere where nobody knew who I was. Yeah, I could definitely do that.
I didn’t notice anyone following me, but I knew that I had to get rid of this bike as soon as possible. I’d been driving for almost four hours and I knew that I wasn’t too far away from Las Vegas now.
Tiredness started taking over my body, and my eyes started closing by themselves. I couldn’t go to any of the hotels, what with the lack of money and no identification. But there was an abandoned warehouse the Nightingales used to use that was just on the outskirts of town.
If it was still abandoned, I could crash there and then get going in the morning. If I could just get rested for a little, I would be good to go. The trip between here and Chicago was going to be a tough one, but it wasn’t as if I could just get on a plane and get my ass there. I had to get my head in the game.
