“It’s Shayna,” she snaps.
Oops.
I glance at her nametag again, disappointed that I’m giving her even more reason to keep talking. However, her nametag clearly reads Shayla. I want to laugh, but feel even more sympathy for her now. “Sorry. But you do realize your nametag says Shayla, right?”
She immediately flips the nametag up on her smock and frowns. I’m hoping this is embarrassing enough that she doesn’t look up at me again, but it doesn’t even faze her.
“When did you get back?” she asks.
I have no idea who this chick is, but she somehow knows me. Not only does she know me, but she knows I had to leave in order to come back. I sigh, disappointed that I still underestimate everyone’s penchant for gossip.
“Last week,” I say, offering up no further explanation.
“So are they gonna let you come back to school?” she asks.
What’s with the “let you” part of her question? Since when was I not allowed back at school? That has to be attached to some sort of rumor.
“Doesn’t matter. Not going back.”
I haven’t really decided whether or not I’ll be enrolling tomorrow, since I failed to do it today. It really all depends on my conversation with my mother tonight, but it seems easier just to give the people what they want, which is more fuel for their gossip. Besides, if I dispel every single thing everyone has said about me for the past year, I’ll be leaving everyone with no one to spread rumors about.
“You suck, man,” my cashier says quietly as he removes the debit card from my hand. “We had bets on how long it would take her to realize her nametag was misspelled. She’s been wearing it for two months now and I had dibs on three. You just lost me twenty bucks.”
I laugh. He hands me back the debit card and I place it in my wallet. “My bad,” I say. I pull out a twenty-dollar bill and hold it out to him. “Take this, because I’m pretty sure you would have won.”
He shakes his head, refusing to take the twenty.
I’m placing the money back into my wallet when I notice out of the corner of my eye someone in the next checkout line. The girl has completely turned around and is staring at me, more than likely trying to get my attention in the same way that Shayna/Shayla tried. I just hope this chick doesn’t start up with that same baby-talk voice.
I glance up at her to get a quick look. I really wanted to avoid glancing at her, but when people are staring you down it’s hard not to make eye contact, if even for a second. But the second I actually do make eye contact with her, I freeze.
I can’t look away now, even though I’m trying like hell to shake the image standing in front of me.
My heart stops.
Time stops.
The whole world stops.
My quick glance turns into a full-on, unintentional stare.
I recognize those eyes.
Those are Hope’s eyes.
It’s her nose, her mouth, her lips, her hair. Everything about this girl is Hope. Out of all the times in the past I thought I’d spotted her when glancing at girls my age, I’ve never been more sure than I am right now. I’m so sure about it that it completely inhibits my ability to speak. I don’t think I could say her name even if she begged me to.
So many emotions are coursing through me right now and I can’t tell if I’m angry or elated or freaked the hell out.
Does she recognize me, too?
We’re still staring at each other and I can’t stop wondering if I look familiar to her. She doesn’t smile. I wish she would smile because I would recognize Hope’s smile anywhere.
She tucks in her chin, darts her eyes away, and quickly turns around to face her cashier again. She’s obviously flustered and it’s not in the same way that I tend to leave girls like Shayna/Shayla flustered. It’s a completely different reaction, which only makes me all the more curious if she just remembered me.
“Hey.” The word rushes loudly out of my mouth involuntarily and I notice her flinch when I speak. She’s hurrying her cashier at this point, grabbing her sacks in a frenzy. It’s almost as if she’s trying to get away from me.
Why is she trying to run from me? If she didn’t just recognize me . . . why would she be this disturbed? And if she did recognize me, why wouldn’t she be happy?
She exits the store in a rush, so I grab my sacks and leave the receipt with the cashier. I have to get outside before she drives away. I can’t just let her go again. I head directly through the exit and scroll over the parking lot until I spot her. Luckily, she’s still loading her groceries into her backseat. I pause before walking up behind her, hoping I don’t come off as crazy, because that’s exactly how I feel right now.
She’s about to shut her door, so I take a few steps closer.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared to speak.
What do I say? What the hell do I say?
I’ve imagined this moment for thirteen years and I have no fucking idea how to approach her.
“Hey.”
Hey? Jesus, Holder. Nice. Real nice.
She freezes midmovement. I can tell by the way her shoulders rise and fall that she’s taking a calming breath. Does she need calming because of me? My heart is racing at warp speed and thirteen years’ worth of pent-up adrenaline is making its way through my body.
Thirteen years. I’ve been looking for her for thirteen years and I very well may have just found her. Alive. And in the same town as me. I should be elated, but I can’t stop thinking about Les and how I know she prayed every single day for this moment. Les spent her whole life wishing we would find Hope and now I’ve found her and Les is dead. If this girl really is Hope, I’ll be devastated that she showed up thirteen months too late.
Well, maybe not devastated. I forgot that word is on reserve. But I’ll be pretty damn pissed.
She’s facing me now. She’s looking right at me and it’s killing me because I want to grab her and hug her and tell her how sorry I am for ruining her life, but I can’t do any of these things because she’s looking at me like she has no clue who I am. I just want to scream, “Hope! It’s me! It’s Dean!”
I grip the back of my neck and try to process this whole situation. This isn’t how I pictured finding her. Maybe I fictionalized it and played it up all these years but I thought her recovery would be way more climactic. I thought she would have way more tears and way more emotion and not appear to be nearly as . . . inconvenienced?
The look on her face right now doesn’t register as recognition in the least. She looks terrified. Maybe she doesn’t recognize me. Maybe she appeared flustered inside because of the idiotic way I was staring at her. Maybe she appears terrified now because I practically chased her down and I’m giving her absolutely no explanation. I’m just standing here like a creepy stalker and I have no idea how to even ask her if she’s the girl I lost all those years ago.
She eyes me warily up and down. I hold out my hand, hoping to ease some of her fear with an introduction. “I’m Holder.”
She drops her gaze to my extended hand and, rather than accept the handshake, she actually takes a step away from me.
“What do you want?” she says sharply, cautiously peering back up to my face.
Definitely not the reaction I expected.
“Um,” I say, not really meaning to appear taken aback. But honestly, this isn’t going in the direction I was hoping it would go. I don’t even know what direction that was at this point. I’m starting to doubt my own sanity. I glance across the parking lot at my car and wish I had just kept walking, but I know if I did, I’d regret not confronting her.
“This might sound lame,” I warn, looking back at her, “but you look really familiar. Do you mind if I ask what your name is?”
She releases a breath and rolls her eyes, then reaches behind her to grab the doorknob of her car. “I’ve got a boyfriend,” she says. She turns and opens the door, then quickly climbs into the car. She starts to pull the door shut, but I catch it with
my hand.
I can’t let her leave until I’m positive she’s not Hope. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life and I’m not about to let thirteen years of guilt and obsessing and analyzing her disappearance go to waste just because I’m afraid I might piss her off.
“Your name. That’s all I want.”
She stares at my hand holding open her door. “Do you mind?” she says through clenched teeth. Her eyes fall to the tattoo on my arm and my adrenaline kicks up a notch when she reads it, hoping it’ll spark some recognition on her part. If she can’t remember my face, I’m almost positive she’ll remember the nickname I gave her and Les.
Not even the slightest jar of emotion flashes in her eyes.
She attempts to pull the door shut again but I refuse to release it until I get what I need from her.
“Your name. Please.”
When I say please this time, her expression eases slightly and she looks back up at me. It isn’t until she looks at me this way, without all the anger, that I realize why I’m so flustered. It’s because I care more for this girl than any other girl in the world who isn’t Les. I loved Hope like a sister when we were kids and seeing her again has brought back all those same feelings. It’s causing my hands to shake and my heart to pound and my chest to ache because all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and hold her and thank God we finally found each other.
But all those feelings come to a screeching halt when the wrong answer comes out of her mouth. “Sky,” she says quietly.
“Sky,” I say aloud, trying to make sense of it. Because she’s not Sky. She’s Hope. She can’t not be my Hope.
Sky.
Sky, Sky, Sky.
She’s not saying she’s Hope, but the name Sky is still eerily familiar. What’s so significant about that name?
Then it hits me.
Sky.
This is the girl Grayson was referring to Saturday night.
“Are you sure?” I ask her, hoping for a miracle that she’s as dense as Shayna and just gave me the wrong name. If she really isn’t Hope, then I completely understand her reaction to my seemingly erratic behavior.
She sighs and pulls her ID from her back pocket. “Pretty sure I know my own name,” she says, flashing her driver’s license in front of me.
I take it from her.
Linden Sky Davis.
A wave of disappointment crashes around me, swallowing me up. Drowning me. I feel like I’m losing her all over again.
“Sorry,” I say, backing away from her car. “My mistake.”
She watches me as I back up even farther so she can shut her door. In a way, she looks disappointed. I don’t even want to think about what kind of expression she’s seeing on my face right now. I’m sure it’s a mixture of anger, disappointment, embarrassment . . . but most of all, fear. I watch as she drives away and I feel like I just let Hope go all over again.
I know she’s not Hope. She proved she wasn’t Hope.
So why is my gut instinct telling me to stop her?
“Shit,” I groan, threading my hand through my hair. I’m seriously messed up. I can’t get over Hope. I can’t get over Les. It’s getting so bad it’s to the point that I’m chasing random girls down in the damn grocery store parking lot?
I turn away and slam my fist down on the hood of the car next to me, pissed at myself for thinking I finally had it all together. I don’t have it together. Not in the least.
* * *
I’m not even completely out of my car before I have Facebook pulled up on my phone. I enter Sky’s name and no results come up. I swing open the front door and head straight up the stairs to get my laptop.
I can’t let this rest. If I don’t convince myself that she isn’t Hope, I’ll drive myself crazy. I open my laptop and enter her information again but come up empty. I search every site I can think of for over half an hour, but her name doesn’t return any results. I try searching by her birthday, but come up empty again.
I type in Hope’s information and immediately have a screen full of news articles and returns. But I don’t need to look at them. I’ve spent the last several years reading every article and every lead that’s reported about Hope’s disappearance. I know them by heart. I slam the computer shut.
I need to run.
Chapter Eight
She has no distinct features that I can remember. No birthmarks. The fact that I saw a girl with brown hair and brown eyes and felt she was the same brown-haired, brown-eyed girl from thirteen years ago is quite possibly borderline obsessive.
Am I obsessed? Do I somehow feel as though I won’t be able to move past Les’s death if I don’t rectify at least one of the things I’ve fucked up in my life?
I’m being ridiculous. I’ve got to let it go. I’ve got to let go of the fact that I’ll never have Les back and I’ll never find Hope.
I have these same thoughts for the entire two miles of my run. The weight in my chest lightens little by little with each step I take. I remind myself with each step that Sky is Sky and Hope is Hope and Les is dead and I’m the only one left and I’ve got to get my shit together.
The run begins to help ease some of the tension built up from the incident at the grocery store. I’ve convinced myself that Sky isn’t Hope, but for some reason even though I’m almost positive she’s not Hope, I still find myself thinking about Sky. I can’t get the thought of her out of my head and I wonder if that’s Grayson’s fault. If I hadn’t heard him talking about her at the party the other night, I probably would have moved on from the grocery store incident fairly quickly and I wouldn’t be thinking about her at all.
But I can’t stop this growing urge to protect her. I know how Grayson is and somehow, just seeing this girl for even a few minutes, I know she doesn’t deserve what he’s likely going to put her through. There isn’t a single girl in this world who deserves the type of guy Grayson is.
Sky said she had a boyfriend at the store and the possibility that she might consider Grayson her boyfriend gets under my skin. I don’t know why, but it does. Just thinking she was Hope for even a few minutes already has me feeling extremely territorial about her.
Especially now as I round the corner and see her standing in front of my house.
She’s here. Why the hell is she here?
I stop running and drop my hands to my knees, keeping my eyes trained on her back while I catch my breath. Why the hell is she standing in front of my house?
She’s at the edge of my driveway, propped up against my mailbox. She’s drained the last of her water bottle and she’s shaking it above her mouth, attempting to get more water out of it, but it’s completely empty. When she realizes this, her shoulders slump and she tilts her face toward the sky.
It’s obvious she’s a runner with those legs.
Holy shit, I can’t breathe.
I try to recall everything on her driver’s license and what all Grayson said about her Saturday night because I suddenly want to know everything there is to know about her. And not because I thought she was Hope, but because whoever she is . . . she’s fucking beautiful. I don’t know that I even noticed how attractive she was at the store, because my mind wasn’t going there. But right now, seeing her in front of me? My mind is all over that.
She takes a deep breath, then begins walking. I immediately kick into gear and ease up behind her.
“Hey, you.”
She pauses at the sound of my voice and her shoulders immediately tense. She turns around slowly and I can’t help but smile at the wary expression strewn across her face.
“Hey,” she says back, shocked to see me standing in front of her. She actually seems more at ease this time. Not as terrified of me as she was in the parking lot, which is good. Her eyes slowly drop down to my chest, then to my shorts. She looks back up at me momentarily, then diverts her gaze to her feet.
I casually lean against the mailbox and pretend to ignore the fact that she totally just checked me out. I’ll ignore it to
save her embarrassment, but I’m definitely not going to forget it. In fact, I’ll probably be thinking about the way her eyes scrolled down my body for the rest of the damn day.
“You run?” I ask. It’s probably the most obvious question in the world right now, but I’m completely out of material.
She nods, still breathing heavily from the effect of her workout. “Usually in the mornings,” she confirms. “I forgot how hot it is in the afternoons.” She lifts her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun while she looks at me. Her skin is flush and her lips are dry. I hold out my water bottle and she flinches again. I try not to laugh, but I feel pretty damn pathetic that I freaked her out so much at the store that she’s afraid I might actually do something to harm her.
“Drink this.” I nudge my water bottle toward her. “You look exhausted.”
She grabs the water without hesitation and presses her lips to the rim, downing several gulps. “Thanks,” she says, handing it back to me. She wipes the water off her top lip with the back of her hand and glances behind her. “Well, I’ve got another mile and a half return, so I better get started.”
“Closer to two and a half,” I say. I’m trying not to stare, but it’s so hard when she’s wearing next to nothing and every single curve of her mouth and neck and shoulders and chest and stomach seems like it was made just for me. If I could preorder the perfect girl, I wouldn’t even come close to the version standing in front of me right now.
I press the bottle of water to my mouth, knowing it’s more than likely the closest I’ll ever get to her lips. I can’t even take my eyes off her long enough to take a drink.
“Huh?” she says, shaking her head. She seems flustered. God, please let her be flustered.
“I said it’s more like two and a half. You live over on Conroe, that’s over two miles away. That’s almost a five-mile run round trip.” I don’t know many girls who run, let alone a five-mile stretch. Impressive.
Her eyes narrow and she pulls her arms up, folding them across her stomach. “You know what street I live on?”
“Yeah.”
Her gaze remains tepid and focused on mine and she’s quiet. Her eyes eventually narrow slightly and it looks like she’s growing annoyed with my continued silence.
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