Saving Charlie (Stories of Serendipity Book 9) (33 page)

Les drove as fast as he dared down back roads, darkness cloaking their escape. The girls were visibly tense in the backseat, undoubtedly either envisioning the beatings they’d receive from their pimps, or wondering which frying pan they were jumping into. One girl looked older than the other, and the pucker on her lips spoke of an intelligence, possibly running through escape routes to get back to the only life she was familiar with.

Rachel met them at the intake center. Coming out to the truck, she tossed a wink to Les and Charlie over her shoulder before ushering the girls inside.

Rachel and Charlie had become fast friends in the last few months. To Les’s knowledge, Rachel was the only girl friend that Charlie really trusted. He’d watched her try with the other women in his group, but her contempt with Renae was hilarious in his mind. Charlie referred to her as a “raging imbecile” at her lack of attention to Les when he’d thought he was in love with her. She’s warmed a little toward the new-again mother, but he didn’t hold high hopes of them becoming fast friends anytime soon.

She was friendly toward Casey though, which Les was grateful for, since he spent so much time with her husband, Brent. Something about the tattoo on her leg had drawn the women together. That part was still a mystery to Les, how Casey knew that particular detail. When he asked her about it, she smiled at him mysteriously and called it women’s intuition. Women’s intuition was one of those mysteries of life that had always eluded him, like remembering dreams right after he woke up. And why women always went to the bathroom in clusters.

Three days later, Charlie was pulling up her stockings and attaching them carefully to the holders in the belt, wrapping the present she knew Les had longed for his entire life. Today was the day she would give him his deepest desire.

All of her days, Charlie had been an empty box, wandering around through a valley so dark she couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open half the time. Les had not only filled her box with love, acceptance, and hope, but he had led her across the valley and opened her eyes to see the light of life. She would give him everything she had back. She’d finally realized that’s what loving someone was all about.

As she wrapped herself in the cream colored silk, she imagined Les’s able fingers unwrapping his gift. She tied the multi-colored sash around her hips and looked in the mirror, again losing her breath at the beauty she saw there. Her tattoos, which had been armor up until now, were emphasized by the colorful sash on her waist, calling attention to the beauty and strength that they represented to Les. He’d taught her to love herself, to find beauty in her own image. As she painted her face carefully, she didn’t use the makeup as a mask, but as another, complimentary, feature.

She smoothed her hair over her shoulders, for once feeling the silkiness of it, wondering if Les felt the same way. Then, instead of chiding herself for doing all of this for a man, she patted herself on the back. She was finally getting the whole reciprocation part of relationships.

Most women didn’t do this alone, but Charlie was enjoying her last slice of solitude before joining Les on the embarkation of the rest of their life together. She smoothed the lip gloss over her painted lips before pressing them together and looking at the full effect in the mirror. She knew what Les would say.

“Fucking stunning.” She could almost hear his words in her head, and she smiled to herself, imagining his reaction. The alarm on her phone went off, telling her it was time, and she turned to walk out the door.

Entering the sanctuary, Charlie couldn’t focus on the strains of the Wedding March that Jason belted out on the saxophone, nor the sea of smiling faces of Les’s friends and family. She could only focus on the one face, beaming at her at the front of the church.

Les’s mother wanted him to be married in their church, and as Charlie walked down the aisle, focusing on the heart-stopping smile Les flashed at her, she was glad for it. She didn’t necessarily believe, but the fact that most of these people did, and were wishing their union well in the face of the God they had faith in, gave her faith that something was looking out for her, finally. Even if it was a mass-delusion of all these people. Positive energy in any form was good, wasn’t it?

She prolonged the anticipation, purposefully slowing her steps as she smiled at her groom. He bounced on his heels, looking stellar in his tux, his eyes roaming her body before landing on her face. He mouthed the words, “I love you so much,” as she continued her trek up the aisle, and she winked back. At the front of the church, Charlie turned to face Les, as he brought his hands up to her face to wipe tears she hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

Tears of happiness of course. Charlie had finally been saved.

Thank you so much for sticking with me through the telling of this story. When I listened to a woman speak about the Refuge of Light at a women’s group two summers ago, I knew I had to do more than sit around and eat sandwiches and talk about the horrible situation.

So I wrote Charlie’s story, and Les was really the only man for her.

The Refuge of Light is a real organization in my area, raising money for the construction of a safe house for the girls they get out of trafficker’s clutches. While there is no Liberator, they are a dedicated, assertive team of volunteers who strive to get as many girls out of pimps’ hands as possible. They are currently trying to put them someplace to heal from the injuries (spiritual, mental, and physical) inflicted. At the moment, the girls are put into juvenile facilities, or in the best case scenarios, foster care. Neither of these situations is ideal. The Refuge of Light would like to provide a holistic approach to rehabilitating the girls and getting them back into society, in most cases, better situations than they were in before they were trafficked.

What shocked me on a personal level was the fact that this is not just an urban dilemma. Sure, children in large cities are at risk, but so are the youth in rural areas. When I realized how many kids had been taken from my tiny little piece of idealistic country, enough for the need of a safe house, I noticed more and more flyers for missing girls at convenience stores. Each time I see one, I wonder if they’re hiding at a friend’s house, or if they’ve been trafficked.

For more information on human trafficking of children in the United States, please read this document prepared for Congress in 2012:
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41878.pdf#search=Sex Trafficking

For more information on the Refuge of Light, and how you can help them (they provide goods and services as well as gift registries if you don’t want to donate cash) please visit
www.refugeoflight.org

If you enjoyed this story, I would like to encourage you to leave a review, and tell your friends. Thank you so much.

Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She’s been writing for public consumption for the last four years. Currently she is writing two romance series. In Stories of Serendipity, she explores real people living real lives in small town Texas in a contemporary romance setting. In The Four Winds, she chronicles God’s four closest archangels, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, falling in love and becoming human. She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head. Check out her blog, 
www.anneconley.com
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Welcome to Serendipity, Texas, a town where real people deal with real problems. Meet characters in their thirties and forties struggling with day-to-day issues and managing to find love in the process. Visit Serendipity, where the days are hot, and the nights are steamy! 

The Four Winds series are Paranormal Romances dealing with the Archangels. They are the biblical archangels, so there are aspects of Christianity in them. But the conflict in the stories are about the archangels falling in love and turning human, so they are dealing with human emotions and feelings. Due to various reactions of shock and outrage, I feel the need to put the spoiler out there: These books have sex in them, but also Christianity. So if either of those bother you, please don’t buy these books. First book in the series,
Falling for Heaven
, is free!

A group of misfits come together to form
Pierce Securities & Investigations
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Fixer Upper

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