Page 18 of Cash

8

Carissa

Well, that was fun.

Making a stuttering, blushing, tongue-tied fool of myself was fun. At least I had an untold number of days to keep going through the same discomfort.

There’s a lovely thought.

For one thing, I could breathe freely when I was in the car. Even when he was in his room, I could feel Cash nearby. It was unnerving. Beyond. There was no relaxing—not that I particularly needed to relax while I was doing my work.

He kept me on my toes, at any rate.

I had never been as acutely aware of any other person as I was when he was around. Which was all the time, while I was in the lab. Even with a wall and a door between us, I knew he was there. Watching TV. Working out. Getting sweaty.

“What is your problem?” I muttered under my breath as I left the compound, driving through the gate with its sparkling spools of barbed wire. I was a scientist. He was a specimen. My test subject. So what if he had the most perfect set of abs I’d ever seen outside of Photoshop?

He had to know what he did to me. I groaned and only half-wished I was dead. How many times had I blushed like an idiot? How many times had I stuttered and fumbled around? More times than I wanted to remember. How could I ever hope to maintain credibility with him? He knew I had the hots for him.

He was probably used to it, too. How could he not be? One look into those impossibly green eyes, at that blinding, self-assured smile, and panties would melt. Victoria’s Secret could likely attribute a portion of their profits to him. He probably had to elbow his way through his admirers just to walk down the street.

Of course, if that were true, he wouldn’t think badly of me for acting like a doofus. Not if it were an everyday occurrence. I tried to tell myself that, in an attempt to self-soothe. Like a baby sucking its thumb. It was all I had to give me the courage to go back the next day and look him in the eye.

A glance at the clock told me it was already four-thirty, and I needed to hustle if I was going to make it to Tommy’s school in time to avoid paying extra for a late pickup. I had only made that mistake once, back in the beginning, when I wasn’t yet used to building my schedule around the needs of a child and left the lab later than I should have.

It wasn’t the extra money that was a problem, of course. It was the tired, hollow-eyed look on Tommy’s face when I arrived. Like a little old man in a five-year-old body. Resigned. He knew it was coming. I would let him down. He expected it. I had wrapped him up in a tight hug and promised to never, ever be late again.

Over time—not that night, but in the weeks afterward—I’d gotten more and more of the sad, disappointing story of his life. Where had Chrissie lost her way? I remembered her pregnancy, how scared and thrilled and full of hope she was. That was before Zack left, naturally. When she was pregnant, they had big plans. She hoped they’d get married. They didn’t. He stuck around long enough to meet the baby two days after the birth, then left town without a word.

Even after that, she held on. My sister was a hard-headed girl. She was determined to be happy and threw herself into it the way she threw herself into everything. Including being a mother. When I called to ask how things were going—and admittedly, I hadn’t called nearly enough—she had always injected a smile into her voice and assured me everything was great. Super. Fantastic. Tommy was healthy and happy and smart as a whip.

How was I supposed to know about the methamphetamine if she never told me about it? How she started taking pills to keep herself awake for her second job. How the pills weren’t enough after a while. How so much of her life began to revolve around finding more. How so little of her life revolved around Tommy anymore.

She had started to neglect him. To miss school pickups. To forget to take him to school in the first place. He would go to bed hungry. He would go to school in dirty clothes or clothes that were too tight because he’d grown out of them. He always told me these stories in a matter-of-fact tone, the same tone he’d used when he told me about his friend getting an iPhone. Just the facts, nothing more. I wondered if he would ever forget those days—he was young enough that he might. He might be able to have a happy life, well-adjusted. And that was up to me. I couldn’t let him down the way my sister had.

But she had good intentions, too. At first. She hadn’t planned on falling apart. Nobody ever did. Life happened. What if life happened to me?

Thinking about it was pointless right now, since I was only blocks away from the school and wanted to be in a good mood for him. He’d want to hear about Aunt Cari’s First Day of Work, and he deserved to see and hear me at my best. I hadn’t given details. He didn’t know who I was working with. But he was proud of me. I wondered what any of us did to deserve the love of animals or small children. The purest souls.

I was smiling, thinking about that, as I jogged up the front stairs to the school. The administrators knew me, and I waved my fingers in greeting as I walked the familiar hall leading to the library, where the kids whose parents and guardians worked late waited and did their homework.

“Wait a second, Carissa! He’s not here. Why are you?”

The secretary’s voice stopped me in my tracks and turned my blood to ice.

I turned slowly, oh, so slowly. A million scenarios flew through my brain at warp speed, one more terrible than the other. Zack had come back for him. He was sick and had to go to the hospital. Or injured. Or there was an emergency, and the kids had to be evacuated.

Or a stranger had…

“Where is he?” I whispered, glaring at her.

She frowned, pointing to the door. “He’s gone. For the day. I thought you…”

“What?” I rushed at her and had her by the shoulders before I knew my feet were moving. “What are you saying? He’s gone? Somebody came and got him? They signed him out?” My desperation grew with every word, just like the volume of my voice. By the time I finished, I was screaming.

“Let’s see who it was.” The old woman was shaking as she rushed to the office.

I pushed past her and spun the clipboard to face me, eyes searching frantically for his name.

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