When her car sputtered and died a mile outside of Las Vegas, Kagome Higurashi considered staying where she was and baking to death under the brutal Desert Sun.
She had only $10.30 to her name in her back pocket and a long stretch of road behind her that led to nowhere. She was lucky to have even that pitiful amount of cash on her, as her bag had been stolen outside a diner in Oregon, the night before.
The crappy chicken wrap was the last meal she had and she figured the stray 10 she found in her back pocket was the last miracle she could expect. Both her job and her home in Washington were gone.
She had no family and no one to go back to. She felt she had every reason for tossing her clothes into a suitcase and driving away from what had been and what would have been had she remained.
She drove towards west because her car had been pointing in that direction and she taking it as a sign. She promised herself an adventure, a personal Odyssey, and a new improved life.
After constantly reading about women who braved the world, took risks and accepted its challenges... No.
She was not going to continue to waste her life any longer. "That life wasn't enough.."...so she told herself as the miles on the odometer of her ancient and loud truck clicked away before her eyes... It was time to take something for herself or at least try.
If she hadn't she would have fallen in line.
Again.
Done what she was told.
Again.
And spend her life haunted by dreams, forgotten hopes, and regrets. But now, one long week after sneaking out of town and in the middle of the night like a thief, she wondered if she was destined for the ordinary.
Perhaps she'd been.. born to follow all the rules. Maybe she should have been.. content with what life offered and kept her eyes cast down instead of constantly trying to peek around the next corner.
Kouga Okami would have given her a good life, a life she knew many women would envy. With him, she could have had a lovely home kept by a loyal staff, closets bursting with conventionally stylish wife-of-the executive clothes... A Summer Place in Miami, winter getaways to Tropical places.. she would never be hungry and never do without.
All it was required was for her to do exactly as she was told, exactly when she was told. All it required was for her to keep buried every dream, every longing, every private wish. It shouldn't have been hard, she been doing it all her life
But it was.
Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on the steering wheel. 'Why did Kouga want her so much?' she wondered. There was nothing special about her. She had a good mind and an average face. Her own mother had described her just that way often enough. She didn't believe it was so much a physical attraction on Kouga's side.. though she suspected he liked the fact that she was a small woman of a fairly lean build.
Easily dominated.
God, he frightened her! She remembered how furious he'd been when she'd gotten her tattoos. Matching detailed wings on her back, and a continuous vine that slithered from her writs to her calves.
Well, she liked it, she thought with a little Spurt of defiance. And it was her body, damn it, she added, pushing her fingers through her newly dyed hair.
They weren't married yet, thank the big guy in the sky. He had no right to tell her how to look, how to dress, how to behave. And now, if she could just hold on he would never have that right...Never!
She should have never agreed to marry him in the first place. She'd just been so..so tired. So afraid and confused. Even though the regrets and doubts had set in almost immediately, even though she'd given him back the ring and apologized, she might have gone through with it rather than stand up under his anger and live through the gossip of a broken engagement. But she'd discovered he manipulated her, that he was responsible for her losing her job for the threat of eviction from her apartment...
He'd wanted her to buckle. And she nearly obliged him, she thought now as she wiped the sweat from her face with the back of her hand. To hell with it she decided and pushed herself out of the car. So she had less than $20, no transportation and a couple of miles to hike ahead of her.
She was out from under Kouga's thumb. She was finally, at the age of twenty-three, on her own. Leaving her suitcase in the trunk, she grabbed the weighty and worn messenger bag that contained all that really matter to her and headed off on foot.
She burned her bridges. Now it's time to see what was around the next corner.