By Caroline Campbell

We all have demons to hide from.

We all have something—or someone—that keeps our legs pumping and our lungs burning. Keeps us running in circles.

For me, it was him.

He was all sharp edges and plunging curves. He was the type of guy with a siren laugh and a crooked smile that could burn you in the most inappropriate places. He’s a drug and has turned you into an addict. You walk away—crawling on your hands and knees—just begging for enough strength to stay gone. He pulls you right back with three simple words.

I love you.

They burn through your heart. You stay for those three words and you only know you made a mistake when they blow away with the wind. 

The wind whips across my face and whooshes in my ears. I feel the world shaking below me as my heavy boots pound their way through the forest. I push through branches that tangle in my hair, crunching across a path of noisy leaves that don’t whisper their last breath.

Roots snake out from trees decades and centuries old alike, bringing me crashing down. I have cuts and bruises and scars—ones you can see and ones you can’t. I’m broken, inside and out.

The roar of trucks and cars soothes my breath and I push through the rest of the thick underbrush of the woods, barreling out into the sidelines of a highway.

“Goddamn it Cheryl!”

Everything around me slows. Everything around me stops.

I want to turn back to him. There is pain in his voice—there is a strain to it that nobody can fake.

But he can. He has. Three words and you’re his again. Three words weaken your knees and send your heart racing. Three words replace a frown with a smile and ugliness with beauty. 

Three words—you’ll hear them again. You’ll hear them soon. 

They fall from his lips in all forms—shouted at the top of his lungs; breathing heavy and eyes soft with promise; at the end of the fight to draw you closer before the last blow; and through the woods you might hear them in a minute. The simple call you cannot ignore. The begging voice that your mind pleads your heart not to trust.

But as they say, the heart wants what it wants.

The voice in my head taunts me, it’s truth cutting deep. My eyes snap open and I close my hand into a fist, stretching out in front of me. My thumb points to the sky, sturdy and bony and a knob of last hope.

Headlights blind me and I throw my arm over my eyes to shield myself from their blinding gaze.

“Hey kid? You gettin’ in or what?”

I stop, my breathing heavy, my heart pounding.

Shading my eyes from the neon lights dancing through the dark to surround me I smile.

“Yes.”

And it is then that I know I am saved. It is then that I know there is hope in the dark—there is light.

The man must have a kind heart, to help a girl like me. He must be trustworthy, to stop in the middle of the night and pick up a stranger who has nowhere else to go.

“Thank you,” I recite the words I know so well, sliding into the passenger seat.

The door shuts, locking me in my freedom. 

He shuts his own door and straps himself into his seat. He signals and looks both ways before merging onto the road once more, his left foot tapping consistently in tune to the Beatles song on the radio.

“Where are you headed?” I ask, wanting to know this man that has saved me from a worse fate than anything the world can throw at me.

“Home,” he replies, the sweet term sending butterflies raging in my stomach.

“Do you think you could drop me somewhere like a bus station or a train station? Anything with transport?”

“No, sweetie, we ain’t got none of that shit around here.”

I flinch, the vileness of his words sinking in.

How could he say that? What prompted the unnecessary language? Was it me? Did I do something wrong already?

He signals once more and turns down a steep road.

We wind our way through the trees, deeper and deeper into the woods.

The doors unlock with a click.

I look over at him, fear uncoiling in my chest. My heart races and my lungs struggle to take in air. A smoothie of the worst feelings soccer punches me in the gut and it takes all my strength not to crumple over and heave, “What are you doing?” I ask, my voice cracking and breaking.

“This is when you run.”