Hitched

Hitched Lauren Biel Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Biel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hitched/Lauren Biel 1st ed. Cover Design: Pretty in Ink Creations Content Editing: Sugar Free Editing Interior Design: Sugar Free Editing For more information on this book and the author, visit: www.LaurenBiel.com Please visit LaurenBiel.com for a full list of content warnings. This book is dedicated to all my readers who will never look at a hitchhiker the same way again Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Epilogue Connect with Lauren Acknowledgments Also by Lauren Biel About the Author Chapter One Lex A shiver rakes my skin as the rain pelts me. My shirt sticks to me, the water pressing the fabric tight against my body. It’s horrible, but it’s better than where I came from. I’d walk through a hurricane as long as I was heading away from the guarded world I ran from. Despite the rain worsening by the minute, I keep walking. Every bad decision I’ve ever made put me right here, on the side of the road, in the middle of the night. During a fucking storm. Another pair of headlights washes over me and breezes by. I scoff, exhaling drops of water that cling to my lips. I can’t be mad, though; I wouldn’t pick up someone like me, either—a large, rugged, tattooed man, as dangerous as they come. A very real threat to society, as I’ve been told in front of a jury of my peers on more than one occasion. There are two types of people in this world: those who stop for a stranger on the side of the road and those who keep on driving. If they’re wise, they keep on fucking driving. Regardless, being on the side of the road in this storm is better than prison. I’d endure a tsunami if it meant I was outside my fucking cell. I had just gotten back my privileges when I escaped. I might have gone a little overboard with the newfound freedom they gave me. Took a whole fucking yard instead of an inch, but that’s how I’ve always been. Men like me don’t deserve freedom, but we sure as shit chase after it. Another car drives by, kicking up mud and a torrential roar of water as it passes. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to center myself like they taught us in therapy. The only useful thing I learned in prison was how to deal with the things I can’t control. But I hate losing control . . . now. Didn’t mind it so much as it fueled the rampage that landed me in prison in the first place. Didn’t mind it when the loss of control made me kill one inmate who was trying to fuck another. I didn’t really care about the man pinned against the wall. How could I when consent never really mattered to me, either? But he had stabbed me, and it was an opportunity to catch the fucker with his pants down—literally and figuratively. He was too interested in the meal in front of him to notice me or the white t-shirt I used to strangle him. His last breath meant nothing to me because I was already a lifer. The best part about life in prison was that it kind of became a free-for-all. They kept slapping more time onto my sentences, but I still only had one lifetime to give them. All that blood I shed in prison was essentially free. Anything I did cost me nothing. Even my little escape won’t matter. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, before they shove me back into isolation with only my fucked-up mind for company. And fucked-up it is. * * * Selena My fingers thrum against the wheel. I lean forward, trying to see for the millisecond after the wipers whoosh by before the rain obscures my windshield again. I hate driving in the rain, especially when it’s a downpour like this. My wipers can’t keep up, and the glare from signs and lights fucks with my eyes. It’s already hard for me to see at night without the lines in the road melding with the rain-covered asphalt. I pull over, flashing my emergency lights. I’ll get myself killed at the rate I’m going, blindly driving down a highway at night. I turn off the car and sit in the near silence. Only the patter of hard rain against the car breaks the quiet. It makes different sounds as it collides with windows or the car’s metal frame—almost like music. Fog climbs from the hood, clawing at the windshield. There’s a knock on the glass, and I snap my attention to the passenger-side window. That sound definitely isn’t the rain. It’s too loud and purposeful. My heart skips several beats and climbs into my throat. The wind shifts and the rain changes direction, and that’s when I see the shadow outside my car. The giant hand knocks on my window again. I turn off the ignition and lower the window a mere inch. Even with such a small gap, the rain finds its way down the window and onto the seat. “Can I help you?” I call over the pounding downpour. “Would you be willing to give me a ride to