The Runaway

1

Roseanne hadn't meant to set the church on fire. But there was truth in the saying sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. She'd had no choice. It was either getting married to some guy chosen by her dad to make 'family ties' or running off while the church burned and everyone dispersed in panic like headless chickens.

Ashley, her older sister had at least agreed to an arranged marriage for the good of the family, Roseanne however had been tricked into coming to Las Vegas under the pretense of a family trip. But if Dad thought she'd just let that stranger put a ring on her, then he had another thing coming. If there was something Roseanne wasn't bending to, it was being bargained with as if she were a breeding cow to be sold to the highest bidder.

Catching the long-distance bus had been a spontaneous decision, but she felt much safer in one of its rough, somewhat dirty seats than in the street, where any of Dad's men could spot her from a mile away in the white wedding dress.

Roseanne flinched when two fire trucks and an ambulance whizzed past the bus, blaring their sirens at full volume. She knew exactly where they were going.

Well, too bad. Maybe Dad shouldn't have tried to force her into making a decision he knew she wouldn't accept without coercion.

She jumped in panic when her phone buzzed in the tiny white clutch bag she'd been given along with the wedding dress her brother, Jay, had sprung on her as if she were supposed to appreciate the surprise.

Her heartbeat went through the roof as she stared at the screen with Dad in bold letters, and she did the one thing that came to her blank mind. She threw the phone out of the window as if it could give her smallpox.

"Oh, no..." Roseanne whispered the moment the device left her hand. The phone became a brief flash of light in the air, only to crash to the asphalt and disappear from sight, but it was too late to change that decision, so she would suck it up. She still had her Australian passport on her at least, so contacting the embassy would be an option if all others failed. She had no money since she spent all the cash she had on her on the bus ticket that would take her away from Vegas, but she would work something out. If push came to shove, she could always sell her panties to some perv on the internet for hundreds.

Shit. No phone meant no internet. Maybe she could sell those panties from a library. Everything would work out. She was resourceful and could defend herself. She even managed to rip away a chunk of her wedding dress crinoline, so that what was left was more manageable to travel in, even if she still stuck out like a sore thumb on a night bus filled with people in sweatpants and T-shirts.

But this was Vegas, and no one asked any questions.

As the outskirts of the city rolled past her on the other side of the window, she made sure to cover her blonde hair and hide her face behind her white shawl, just in case a camera with facial recognition technology caught her image as the bus drove by, but an hour into traveling, fatigue and the aftermath of stress made Roseanne's eyelids heavy, and she finally dozed off despite the air-con lowering the temperature to uncomfortable levels.

The rocking motion lulled her in and out of sleep, and she blocked everything out—people's voices, the dull sound of music coming from the earphones of the guy sitting across the aisle, the cars outside.

She had no idea where she was heading, but it would surely be safer than her family's hotel suite in Vegas.

The big hand squeezing her shoulder yanked her out of sleep, and she stopped herself from hitting back in the very last second.