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I eye her skeptically and already know this is a bad idea. I have to tell her no. I need to stick to my plan of avoiding her until she’s gone, and then everything can go back to normal. The way it should be.
“Fine.” The word tumbles from my lips like a goddamn traitor. “But just this once.”
Chapter 9
Madden
“Where the hell are you?” Ace demands.
I look up at the hotels and try to pinpoint the answer myself but fuck if I know. I’ve been wandering these streets for three days now, and everything looks the same.
“Tell him to send us his location,” Birdie yells in the background.
“Here, you talk to him.” The phone crackles as Ace gives it to his wife.
Birdie is bossing me around a minute later, telling me what to do like the little hellfire she is. I send them my location because, at this point, it doesn’t really matter. I haven’t seen the blue-haired girl again. They can come and try to drag me home if they want, but it won’t make a difference.
“Just sit tight,” Birdie tells me. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I take a seat on the stairs in front of a mall and watch the people pass me by. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m off the weed I use to get through my days. I wanted my head to be clear so I have no doubts when I see her again. But without it, the pain in my back is a living, breathing beast, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll last. On top of that, I’ve got a goddamn migraine. Vegas is flashy, loud, and it reminds me too much of the past. But people come here to get lost, and I’ve done a good job of that. Now I can’t help wondering if that’s why she’s here too.
“There you are.” Birdie drags Ace along the busy sidewalk, weaving through pedestrians until they’re standing in front of me.
“We’ve come to take you home,” Ace grumbles. “This bender has gone on long enough.”
“I’m not on a bender,” I tell him. “I saw her. She’s here.”
He exchanges a look with his wife, and I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what they’re thinking. They’ve probably already drawn up the papers to have me committed.
“She’s been dead for five years,” Ace responds bluntly.
“Presumed dead,” I remind him. “There’s no body.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “Look, brother, I get it. Shit is rough right now. These bodies popping up in Texas have got you feeling some kind of way. But I’m asking you to think this through. It’s not a coincidence that you’d find someone who looks like her. Hell, you could probably find twenty girls who look like her if you really wanted to. Because your mind plays tricks on you, and you saw what you wanted to see when you were high as fuck. But you know that girl is gone. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore. You need help—”
“Just wait a second.” Birdie gives him a look to shut him up and then turns her attention to me. “We don’t know, okay? We just need to calm down, breathe, and try to figure this out.”
Ace tips his head back and tries to rein himself in, but this entire situation has obviously frustrated him. I’ve helped him wrestle plenty of his demons, and he thinks he’s doing the same for me. But they don’t get it.
“It’s her.” I force the words through gritted teeth. “I’m telling you I didn’t fucking imagine this.”
“How can you be sure?” Ace bites back. “How do you know it’s not some poor girl who happens to look like her?”
“Because I just know.”
I realize how insane it sounds, even to my ears. But I can’t admit how many times I lost myself in Bianca’s eyes. How many hours we spent talking while I memorized every detail of her face. It wouldn’t be right to say those things. Not when she didn’t belong to me.
“So you spoke to her, but she didn’t recognize you?” Birdie asks carefully.
“She ran away after I said her name.”
The weight of that reality settles over me again, confirming the truth I’ve slowly come to accept over the past few days.
“She’s been out there this whole fucking time.” I close my eyes as a rage unlike any I’ve ever known clouds everything around me. “I’ve spent years living in this hell of uncertainty, searching for her body, and wondering if I actually murdered her. I’ve driven myself to the brink of insanity trying to piece it all together. And here she was the entire time, living her life with zero fucks that she ruined mine. Those two years I spent locked up, the trial, the media circus, my career going up in flames… she was out here, and she knew. She left Adam to die and walked away like it was nothing. I have to know why. I have to know if she did it.”
