AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There wasa man staring at her. Crispin tried to push him away. He was almost on top of her.Lookingat her. But her hands…her hands, she couldn’t move them. She turned her head. And screamed when she saw the duct tape wrapped around her wrists.
She screamed again.
Until a hand reached out and cracked against her cheek. “Stop that, young lady.”
Crispin took one look at the big man with blond and graying hair and knew something was just broken about him. Mad. She tried to shake the cloud in her head. Tofocus.To figure out what had happened. “Why did you bring me here?”
He stepped closer to her. Stared into her eyes. “You are her daughter. You have a greater purpose in this world. You always have.”
He’d saiddaughter.Maybe he’d mixed her up with someone else. That other girl who had to look like her or something.
“Who? My mom’s name is Bonnie. She’s a nurse in PICU, that’s the pediatric intensive care unit, at Finley Creek Gen. You have the wrong person.”
She really wanted her mom right now.
“Bonita is not your mother! She never should have had you. Taken you from your mother.” He slapped her across the cheek again. It wouldn’t bruise, but it stung really badly. “Don’t call Bonita your mother ever again.”
“Do you mean my other mother? The one who left me with her sister Bonita?” Crispin had made a point of never even thinking of her first mother by name. “Bonita adopted me, she is mymom.”
Bonnie was her mom, notDenita.Bonnie was her mom. Not Denita. “Denitaleft me on the living room rug like trash! She didn’t want me. She willnever be my mom.Ever!”
She wasn’t even certain what time she had been born. Or at what hospital. Her mom had said she thought Crispin had probably been a home birth. And her first mother had registered her birth at the county clerk’s office after that. Or a midwife had done that part. They’d used her mom Bonnie’s identification for Crispin, too. So Denita could avoid the authorities who had been looking for her after she’d abandoned Cashlyn.
Crispin didn’t even know if her birthday was correct on the forms.
A DNA test had proven she was Bonnie’s niece and Cashlyn’s biological half sister six months later. Then her mom had officially adopted her—claiming her first mother had abandoned Crispin to her—and since she already had Cashlyn, sisters should be kept together.
Her mom and Grandpa Otis had had tofightto keep her. No one had wanted to give a woman with nine other girls a baby—even though Marcia had already been working as a teacher and could help.
Crispin’s mom had fought for her. And kept fighting.
No matter what.
Well, Crispin was going tofightto get back to her mom now.
No matter what.
“She didn’t leave you. Bonitatookyou. Took all of you from her. Your motheradoredyou. She would have loved to see you now. I promised her. Promised you’d be…the perfect…you…and your sister. But you are flawed. I need to think. I need to think.”
And then he just left her there on the bed that smelled like dust and a little like mold. Crispin just shivered and cried.
She wanted her mom.
She just wanted to go home.
77
When Zoey opened her eyes,there was a man staring down at her. He was tickling the side of her face.
With the cat's tail.
Peachy was curled up around her head on her pillow. Something that silly cat did often—she'd probably never know how he kept getting in. And when she was out of Garrity forever, she wouldn't know what happened to him. She was going to miss the cat. "Think the Millers will let me take Peachy with me to Finley Creek?"
"I don't know about this cat, but...you can take me with you to Finley Creek. Anytime you want."
There was something so serious in his tone, she fought the urge to tense.Thispart of relationships was what she wasn't good at. The communicating part. Even if he was saying exactly what she was feeling. "What exactly are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'm the man who seesyou,Zoey Sofia Daviess. No matter how you spell it, I seeyou.And the you that you are is all I've ever wanted. But I know I'm not the kind of guy for your fancy world, so if you want nothing more than this, well, I'll still be the man who sees you forever."
