by Zoey Parker
Gigi wouldn’t turn out like her. She would know good people, have good things, get a good education. Jamie was the sort of person who could give her that, with my help.
Was I really thinking about sharing custody with a stranger? The thought made me sick, but I couldn’t stop thinking it over as we got to the bus station. I had to get my mind on business. I couldn’t keep distracting myself. It was all fantasy until I got my hands on Rae.
“Jax, see if there’s a back door you can guard. Slate, I want you at the front door, but hang back a little for now in case she’s not here yet. I don’t want her to see you. Flash, you come in with me.” We parked away from the entrance so Rae wouldn’t see the bikes if she showed up after we did. Jax went around back. I slid in my Bluetooth earpiece and started a conference call on my cell. In a minute, I had all three of my guys on the phone with me.
“Okay, guys. Keep your eyes open.” I looked around the inside of the bus terminal. The first thing I noticed was the way it smelled. Fuel. It was enough to give me a headache.
The next thing was the size of the building. It was fucking huge. Would I find her in such a huge place? When I did, would I catch her if she ran?
I couldn’t let those worries get in the way of what I had to do. I needed to catch her. I needed to know what she got herself into. It was all I could focus on. I had to imagine catching her, having her with me.
“Flash, hang back by the ticket booth, just in case. I’ll wait by the buses. I see the one she’ll be looking for.” The bus to New York sat in the middle of a row of buses. The door was shut, so nobody had boarded yet. I checked the time. Still twenty-five minutes until it left.
“Jax, you in position?” I muttered, looking around.
“Yeah. I’m by the back door.”
“Good. Just keep your eyes open. I’ll let you know if I see her, and if she’s coming your way.” I swept the space with my eyes. There were rows of benches, all clumped together. Some of them had people on them, but a lot were empty. I wished I had thought to put on something else before I left the clubhouse. If she saw the patch on my kutte, she’d run right away.
“Everybody, take off your kuttes. I just thought about it. I don’t wanna spook her.”
“You think she’ll freak out as soon as she sees us?” Flash asked.
“I think she’ll figure it out pretty quickly. Rae’s a lot of things, but she’s not totally stupid. She has to know I’m looking for her.”
There were so many people walking around. That surprised me the most. I didn’t think a lot of people still took the bus. I would rather fly. It was cheaper, though, and you didn’t need ID to get on a bus. If she were running, that would work in her favor. She could hide easier that way.
I was glad for the crowds and annoyed with them at the same time. I didn’t want them getting in the way, and I didn’t wanna miss her. But they kept me out of sight, too. She might not be able to recognize me in the middle of all those people. I hoped that was the case.
“Let me know if you see her,” I said.
“Of course we will.” That was Slate.
“Sorry. I’m a little nervous right now.”
“We’ve got your back,” Jax murmured.
“Thanks.” I watched and waited. Every minute that passed felt more like a year. When would she get there? I checked the time. Ten minutes.
“Still nothing,” I muttered, getting pissed. “I swear, if she doesn’t fucking show up…”
“She will,” Flash said. “If she bought a ticket, she’ll show. She wants to get far away.”
“What if he found her, first?” I didn’t need to say who I meant. They knew. What if he had? Up to that point, I hadn’t thought about it. With only ten minutes until the bus left, it looked like a good possibility. Shit.
Just then, Flash cleared his throat. “She’s coming.”
Every sense went into overdrive. I was completely focused. I slid behind a pillar, watching as the door between the ticket area and the waiting area opened. There she was.
“Fuck, she looks like hell,” I muttered. I hadn’t seen her in almost eight years, but it could have been twenty. She looked that much older.
“I almost didn’t recognize her,” Flash admitted.
“Yeah, I’m not sure I would have. Good looking out.” I stared at her. It was hard to believe I ever thought she was cute. I did, though, and she was. Before the needle fucked everything up.
“Come out here, Flash. Slowly. I want you guarding that door.” I stayed where I was, watching as Rae looked for the bus. She was jumpy, fidgety. Looking around like she was afraid. “Stay back, though,” I added. “She’s jumpy as hell. She’s looking for somebody.”
“Probably afraid he followed her,” Flash muttered. I saw him come out, maybe twenty feet behind Rae. He stood off to the side, where a bus blocked some of him. She wouldn’t notice him if she ran by.
“Yeah, she’s on alert. I have to be cool about this.” Her clothes were clean looking, at least, but old. Faded. Like they had been washed a hundred, two hundred times. Holes in her jeans. Her hair was dirty, tangled. Circles under her eyes. She looked sick. I wondered when she shot up last.
“Okay. I’m going after her. Cover me, guys.” I stepped out from behind the pillar and walked toward the bus. She was standing in front of it with a backpack over her shoulders. It was almost as big as she was.
“Rae?” I was ten, maybe fifteen feet away from her.
She turned, eyes wide.
Chapter Eighteen
Jamie
“Where did Lance and everybody else go?”
The girls and I exchanged a look. The kid didn’t miss anything, that was for sure.
The four of us were in the kitchen, washing dishes. We did our best to keep Gigi occupied and happy, but it wasn’t enough. She was the sharpest kid I ever knew, definitely my smartest student in all the years I’d been teaching.
“They had to go take care of some things. You know how you asked me earlier whether they have jobs? This is something for their job.” Erica shrugged behind Gigi’s back, and I nodded. It was as good an excuse as any.
“What, though? What do they do?”
“Why do you ask, sweetie?” I watched her closely.
“I don’t know. You’re sad. I can tell.”
“I’m not sad,” I assured her.
“You have a sad face.”
“I’ll fix my face, then.” I grinned. She smiled, but she didn’t look any happier than I was.
“Your dad’s a pretty neat guy,” Traci said.
Gigi perked up. “Is he?”
“Oh yeah. He tells everybody what to do, and they have to do it. That means he’s pretty powerful around here.”
“You have to do anything he asks you to do?” Her eyes were very round, and she stopped tapping a wooden spoon against the bottom of a pot. What a relief.
“Well, not anything. If he asked us to do something silly, like jumping off the roof, we wouldn’t have to do it.”
“But he would never do that,” Erica added. “He’s a very good president. He’s smart and wise. He makes good decisions.”
“Solomon was wise,” Gigi said, tapping again. I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth. I wondered if there was aspirin anywhere nearby.
“Solomon? Is that one of your mommy’s friends?” Traci asked.
“No, silly.” Gigi giggled. “Solomon was a king, a long time ago. Like, a thousand years.”
“More than that.” I grinned. I then gently took the spoon from her hand. She gave it up agreeably enough.
“What did Solomon do?” Traci asked. She and Erica had such a good way with Gigi. They seemed to understand exactly what she needed. At that time, she needed a distraction. If she was telling stories, she was distracted.
“He was the best king in the world. He did lots of good things. People used to come from all over the place to ask him questions.” She spoke with great reverence, and I turned away so she wouldn’t see the
smile on my face.
Traci stopped what she was doing, sitting on the prep table beside Gigi. “Then what?” I wondered if she wouldn’t make a good teacher if she went to college. I knew neither she nor Erica had.
“Then, one day, two ladies came in. They were both so upset. One of them had a baby in her arms. They both said the baby was their baby.” I stopped working, and felt Erica’s eyes on me as Gigi went on. “They wanted Solomon to decide whose baby it really was.”
“Did he ask the ladies why they both said it was their baby?”
“One lady—the one who didn’t carry the baby—said the other lady killed her baby by accident. She rolled over on him when he was sleeping. So she took the first lady’s baby and pretended it was hers.”
“That’s awful,” Traci said, putting the right emotion in her voice.
“I know. It was so sad. So Solomon thought and thought about. It was just a baby. Babies all look the same.”
“Yes, they do.” Traci giggled.
“So he came up with an idea. He said, ‘Bring me a sword!’ And somebody did.”
“What would he do with a sword?”
“He said he was gonna cut the baby in half so both ladies could have half of it.”
“No! Did he do it?”
“Well, he was gonna, but the one lady—the one who didn’t have the baby in her arms—she said, ‘No! Don’t do it! Let the other lady keep the baby!’”
“And did the other lady tell him not to do it?”
“No. She said she didn’t care.” There was smugness in Gigi’s voice. “That’s how Solomon knew the first lady was the baby’s mommy. Because she would give up the baby if that meant the baby would be safe.”
“Wow. He was really very wise.” The two of them kept talking about whatever came to mind, but I couldn’t join them. I held onto the side of the sink with white knuckles, closing my eyes.
“You okay?” Erica whispered.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“From the mouths of babes, huh?” Erica chuckled, shaking her head. I shook my head, too. From the mouths of babes, indeed.
What if Rae refused to give Gigi up? What if she came back for her one day? I’d kill her first. She had to have some self-awareness. She was an unfit mother—all it would take would be a walk-through of the house to prove it. There were plenty of witnesses, too. Like the other teachers at the school, and Vickie. She had to play it cool, obey by the school board’s rules. But if given the chance, she’d testify against Rae in a heartbeat.
Still, that would only matter if Rae went about it legally. What if she kidnapped Gigi? There would be nothing we could do. She was her mother, Gigi had lived with her for her entire life. The police might not even try to help us.
I hoped if the time ever came, Rae would be like the mother in the story, willing to give up her child if it meant giving her a better life.
“What else about my dad?” Gigi asked. It was sweet, hearing her call him her dad. I wondered what he would think of it, and had the feeling he would grin when he didn’t think anybody else could see him do it.
“He’s the best. Really. Probably as wise as Solomon.” Traci hopped off the table and came back to the sink to help us.
“One time, he helped me when I was very sad,” Erica said.
“Why were you sad? What did he do?”
“I was sad because my daddy had to go away. I missed him a lot. See, my daddy was one of the guys in the club—you know, like Flash or Jax. And he knew your dad really well. They were friends. So when he went away, I was very sad, and so was Lance. I thought that if my daddy wasn’t here anymore, Lance wouldn’t want me to be here anymore, either. But he let me stay. He gave me a job. It was really nice of him.”
“That’s pretty nice,” Gigi agreed.
“And he’s always nice to everybody,” Traci added. “He makes people laugh, and that’s important when you’re trying to do a business deal with somebody. You want them to like you, so you can get what you want. Sorta like Solomon would do. He knows just how to talk to people.”
“So how come he always fights with Jamie?”
I turned back to find Gigi grinning like a little imp. I thought she knew more than she was letting on.
“Oh, well, that’s different,” Erica joked.
“How is it different?”
“Can we not talk about this, maybe?” I asked, keeping my tone light and happy. “Miss Jamie is right here in the room.”
“Oh, you’re Miss Jamie, now?” Traci snorted.
“Cut it out.”
“What’s wrong, Jamie?” Gigi sounded genuinely distressed. I turned to her with a smile.
“You want to know why we fight?” I asked, folding my arms.
“Yeah. Why do you fight if he’s so nice?”
“Because sometimes he makes me mad. Remember earlier, when we were talking? Like I said, sometimes grownups just fight about things. That’s all. It doesn’t mean he’s not nice, or I’m not nice. We just don’t get along all the time. Don’t you sometimes have fights with your friends?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“That’s what it is. Sometimes. That’s all.” I hoped and prayed she’d leave it there. I wondered if there wasn’t a little bit of talk about Lance and me when we were upstairs.
“So it’s not because you’re hot?”
“What?” I glared at the girls, who looked horrified.
“Gigi, we already talked about that.” Erica put her hands on her hips.
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
Erica sighed, glancing at Traci. “One of the guys made a comment when you went upstairs to fight with Lance.” She glared at me, sending a message. Oh. So that’s what they told Gigi we were doing up there. I blushed.
“Okay. Which one?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It was Jax,” Gigi piped up.
Erica and Traci scowled.
“Oh, it was? Jax is lucky he’s not here right now.”
“Would you fight with him, too?” Gigi asked.
Traci snorted. I shot her a withering look before turning to Gigi.
“No, honey, I wouldn’t fight with him. I might give him this, though.” I clenched my fist, waving it in front of my face. “A knuckle sandwich.”
“All joking aside, I would pay good money to see you do that,” Erica said. Traci nodded in agreement.
Chapter Nineteen
Lance
Our eyes met. At least her eyes were still blue. That was one of the only things that didn’t change about her. I hadn’t seen her in so long. Seeing her again was almost like coming home. Everything else went away, faded into the background. It was just the two of us. I felt a sharp sting of sadness when I saw what she turned into. I wished I had known so many things. I could have helped her somehow. I could’ve paid for rehab, moved her to a new city where she wouldn’t be around her old friends. Her life could’ve been better if she had told me she had a baby. I would have made things as good as I could.
“Rae,” I whispered. I held out a hand to her.
She only waited a split second before running.
“No!” I took off after her. She dodged between two buses. I followed her, knocking straight into a group of people waiting to board. “Stop her!” I called out to a pair of guys by the back of the bus, but it was too late. She was already past them.
I fought through the crowd, then sprinted after her. There were so many buses waiting to leave, dozens of them. She could have hidden behind any of them—but not for long. She had ten minutes until her bus left for New York. Still, small and fast as she was, she could keep me looking for that long.
I looked around, my head swiveling, my heart racing. I heard a woman cry out three buses down and went in that direction.
“Where is she?”