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I shrugged. “I think it’s a girl. Maybe a woman. I’m not sure. But the finger and shoe prints I saw make me think it is.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “How the hell did she even get in here?”
“You left your window unlocked.”
“What?” he yelled, stabbing his fingers through his hair. “I left it unlocked… Motherfuck, I put you in danger.”
“Stop, please. You didn’t put me in any danger. It was just a homeless girl looking for a place to sleep safely.” My heart hurt just thinking about her. Then I remembered my cousin Delaney, out there somewhere, and tears stung my eyes. “I locked the window and took the blanket out to the woods so she would at least have something to keep her warm. Sh-she must have been trying to find somewhere else to take shelter at night.”
Maverick’s arms wrapped around me, and I pressed my face into his chest as a sob snuck up on me. “Baby, don’t cry,” he pleaded. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry.”
“I just…I feel so bad…for her. I know I couldn’t let her sleep here anymore, but I wish I could have done more.” My tears soaked into his T-shirt. “She’s probably all alone and scared. She might not have anyone who even cares about her. But I care. I don’t want h-her to get into trouble.”
He cupped the sides of my face and bent his knees until we were eye level. “I’ll fix this,” he vowed. “We’ll find this girl and make sure she’s okay. Maybe Jack’s mom can let her stay at the women’s shelter.”
My heart lifted. “Really?”
He wiped away my tears with his thumbs, his eyes tormented. “Yeah. Just let me make a few calls. We’ll get this taken care of. I promise.”
I was so relieved, but my tears only fell faster. “Y-you’re the best,” I sobbed. “I-I don’t deserve you.”
“Ah, fuck, River,” he groaned, tucking me against him again. “Don’t say shit like that, baby. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.”
Nineteen
Maverick
How hard could it be to find one homeless girl in Creswell Springs? Especially when the residents were already spooked at the thought that someone was breaking in to random busi
nesses.
A fucking lot harder than anyone would think.
This girl really was like a ghost. In a town as small as ours, a new face would stick out big-time. Yet no one had seen her. Ben put the word out that he was looking for the girl, but since no one knew what she looked like, everyone was just looking for anyone they didn’t recognize. After I told Dad about what River said, he’d called Uncle Bash and had all the brothers keep their eyes open for a sign of anyone new as well.
Hell, we weren’t even sure if this was a girl or not. It could have been a little boy if we were going off the fingerprints and shoe size from the picture River had taken of the footprints outside of the shop. But I trusted my girl’s instincts, so if she thought this was a girl or a woman, I would assume it as well.
It was driving me crazy that we hadn’t found her yet, because it was worrying River. And I hated when she was upset. She’d just started to get better after the miscarriage, and now she was all lost again over some girl she had never even set eyes on before.
“You okay over there, brother?” Kingston asked as we sat outside the high school entrance a few minutes before the last bell was supposed to ring. “You’re looking a little murderous.”
I blinked at my friend and MC brother, shaking away the thoughts of how down River had been that morning. “Yeah, man. Just worried about River.”
He grimaced but nodded. “Yeah, I noticed she hasn’t been herself lately. What with her graduating this weekend and her and Mila getting the store ready for the grand opening next month, I thought that she would be bouncing around with excitement. But when I took her lunch yesterday and ate with her in the cafeteria, she was all kinds of spacey and moody. Fuck, man, I thought for a minute she was going to cry, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Kingston had a helpless look on his face as he remembered, and I knew exactly how he felt. I experienced that emotion at least once a day when it came to my girl. Not being able to fix something for her—especially when I’d promised I would—was driving me insane. I was failing her.
The bell rang, and the school buses started up on one side of the school, while the drivers in the parent pickup line started their cars just as students started coming out of the exits. The majority of the high school students drove or rode with friends, so there weren’t nearly as many pickups as there were at the other schools, which meant traffic wasn’t as bad as it would be across the street where the middle school was.
With only this week left for the seniors, and the following week the last one for all the other students before the summer break, everyone was starting to calm down a little for the first time since Ramirez had sent men to attack Nova. But I couldn’t relax until River and Nova were safely at home each day.
“There’s Nova,” Kingston said as he watched his cousin climb onto the back of her dad’s bike. Her blond hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, and she had her backpack slung over her shoulders. It took her a moment to get comfortable before she hugged her father’s waist and he merged into the line of traffic to leave the school property.
As Uncle Jet pulled onto the highway, she waved at us. Kingston blew her a kiss, and I waved back before returning my gaze to the exit River normally came out of. I’d dropped her off that morning instead of letting her drive herself. She hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, and I didn’t like her behind the wheel when she was sleep-deprived.
Between graduation, working at the shop and the store to get it ready, as well as worrying about the homeless person and still healing from her miscarriage and surgery, my girl was going nothing but fumes lately. But she couldn’t seem to turn off her brain at night to get some sleep. I was thinking about taking a week or two off from work so we could go on a vacation. Get her away from all the shit going on around us and making her soak up some sun down in Mexico.
It would be good for her.
