“Hey, Sugar. You okay in here?” he asked me gently as his eyes ran up and down my body as if checking for himself.

I wanted to answer him. I’d been waiting so long for him to come get me, but once the moment was there, I was still frozen in my little corner, silent and unable to move. It wasn’t safe out there. I knew that now. It wasn’t safe in my house, it wasn’t safe anywhere. If I moved, they could find me, whoever those men were. I was too afraid to do anything but stare at him.

“Callie, sweetheart, I can’t get in there. I’m too fuckin’ big.” He watched me closely as I silently twirled my hand round and round in my hair. “You’re gonna have to come to me, baby.”

I jerked my head once and began rocking again, the nervous habit forcing my body back and forth as he watched, unable to reach me.

“Calliope, I’m not gonna let anything hurt you, but we gotta get out of here. There’s still crime scene tape on the door—” he stopped when I flinched at his words.

He was leaning on one elbow, and the arm that had been resting on the floor reached up into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cell phone. I watched in confusion as he typed something out on it and then set it back in his pocket. I jumped when my own phone went off in my hand. I looked between the phone and him a couple times before reading the text. “You gotta come out of here. I promise I won’t let anything happen. Come to me.”

The text message brought everything back together and my eyes snapped up to his. It was as if the tornado in my mind had come to a complete stop and left one single thing undisturbed. One thing to focus on. One thing to count on. This was the man I’d been waiting for. This was the man that had saved me. Grease. Asa.

I slowly crawled toward him, my knuckles scratching on the unfinished floor because I refused to let go of my phone. But he didn’t move out of the way so I could climb out of the storage. When I reached him, he gently lifted his hand and slid it across my cheek and behind my head, pulling me to him so my face was resting against his neck. I scooted my knees under my body and knelt on the floor, letting him soothe me with whispered promises and a gentle hand running through my hair.

I’m not sure how long we sat there, but eventually a voice outside our cocoon told us we needed to go. Asa pulled back and started scooting his big body out the door, moving his hand from resting on the floor to grip my thigh, never severing the connection between us. When he was mostly out the door and on his feet, he slid his hand up my torso and down my arm, never once letting go, in order to grip my hand tightly.

“Okay, baby. Almost there—come on out,” he told me gently, watching my face closely.

I scooted to the doorway, wincing as the waning sunlight coming through the windows hit my eyes. I closed them tight, shuddering as I tried to make my way out. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself get out of the space. Fear slammed into me with the power of a freight train, and I whimpered as once again I was unable to make my limbs move. My hand went limp in his, but before I could scoot back into my safe haven, Asa had made a growling noise in his throat and grabbed a hold of me under my arms, lifting me like a child.

I twisted once, trying to pull away, before he jerked me to his chest and put his mouth to my ear.

“You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re okay. Just hold on, I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” he told me over and over again until it finally pierced the paralyzing fear in my head. I wrapped my body around him like a monkey, and he wrapped his arms under my thighs to support me, finally leaving us in a somewhat comfortable position.

I was holding on to him as he turned to leave, when another voice spoke up in the room, jolting me from the little comfort I was feeling.

“Man, she’s gonna fuck up your leathers. Girl stinks to high heaven,” the voice warned, instantly reminding me that I had peed my pants and causing me to let go of Asa as I tried to scramble off him. I started crying again, like a baby, and for one minute I wasn’t thinking about how very afraid I was.

“Shut the fuck up, Tommy,” Asa growled in a voice I hadn’t heard him use before, his chest expanding as one of his arms wrapped around my back to hold me in place. “She’s fuckin’ fine where she’s at.”

He walked out of the room as I quietly cried and buried my face in his neck, afraid to see the hallway where I’d left my mom. He walked me straight through my room and into the connecting bathroom without stopping, pausing only once to switch on the light and shut the door before he loosened his arms around me. He let go completely and set me on my feet, but I was too embarrassed to look at his face as he studied me, instead watching my brightly polished toes.

“Hey, pretty girl, look at me, yeah?” he mumbled gently, running his hand up the side of my face and into the hair by my ear, gripping it so he could tilt my face up. “You ain’t got nothing to be embarrassed about. Anybody’d stink after being stuck in a fucking storage closet for eleven hours. Coulda been worse, baby, what if you’d shit your pants?” he asked with a smile, trying to tease me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice raw from disuse.

“Fuck that, Callie.” His grip tightened in my hair. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. You coulda been covered in shit and vomit and I still woulda carried you outta there. I got you, Sugar, nothing’s gonna change that.”

He waited until I nodded, acknowledging his words, and looked around my bathroom. “You need to take a shower and get dressed. Can’t get on my bike the way you are,” he informed me, embarrassing me again before clarifying, “shorts and a tank top ain’t gonna work. You want me to grab you some clothes?”