Page 89 of Over & Out

I give a nod, and because the kid’s back is to us, I reach over and take Chris’s jaw in my hand. I lean in and kiss her. It’s chaste, just lips, but it feels like I’ve been fucking scorched.

“Hopper!” she glances over at the girl, whose head is still dipped down.

“Three days, Chris,” I breathe. “It’s been three fucking days.”

She looks at me admonishingly. But still, her fingers go to her lips, her cheeks pink. She felt it too. I give her a wink. A smirk too.

She play shoves me. Or maybe real shoves me, and I laugh, letting her. But as we walk over to the kid, it takes everything in me not to slip my hand into Chris’s. Fighting the urge is like trying to hold a tsunami back. But if the kid sees, that’s one too many people who’ve seen us together. It doesn’t matter how sweet and well-intentioned people are; I can’t trust them not to talk, and she could corroborate the customs agent’s story.

I don’t fucking care.

“I had to gas the stupid truck up,” I say as we crossthe muddy track. “And then help an elderly lady across the road.”

Chris laughs. “That’s funny.”

“I’m not even kidding,” I say. “No one was helping her!”

Chris laughs, and I want to bottle the sound. “Were you a boy scout?”

“Always wanted to be.”

There’s clearly a note of truth in my tone, which has her looking curiously at me. I give her a smile to make myself seem not quite so pathetic. “My dad wasn’t into that kind of thing.” The truth was, he hated anything where he had to interact with other parents. He assumed they were all idiots, or that they were judging him. That latter part was probably true, even though it certainly wasn’t his most egregious parenting moment.

When we get to the bike, the kid stands straight, looking at me with huge, round eyes. It’s normal for people to look like that when I turn up. That sounds cocky as hell, but it’s just the way it is. I stopped wishing years ago that I could enter a room like a normal human and instead forced myself to just get used to it.

“Hey,” I say, holding out a hand. “I’m Hopper.”

She doesn’t take my hand.

“It’s okay, Shay. He’s my friend,” Chris says in a tone like she’s speaking to a skittish kitten. “Well, boss, actually. He’s cool, I promise. Hopper, this is Shay.”

I casually switch my hand to a wave.

Shay swallows. “Hi,” she says. “I—I didn’t know it wouldn’t start again. It’s never happened before, but Chris said it’s normal. I’m sorry for the trouble. I canmaybe pay you for the ride? I don’t have much money, but I have some.”

Chris looks confused. “Shay, honey, please don’t worry about that. Hopper’s happy to help, right? And please, just think of him like a normal guy. That’s all he is to me.”

She looks up at me, a beseeching lift of her eyebrows indicating I should play along.

Normally I’d give Chris a hard time for the “that’s all he is to me” line, but I don’t because I’m too busy grinning and being genuinely pleased. I’m pleased not just to be giving this poor shy girl a ride home, but because she doesn’t know who I am. It happens sometimes. Usually around little kids or older people. But it’s always a nice surprise. Like cosplaying my life if I’d never gone down this path.

“Iama normal guy, for the record,” I say to Shay.

Chris frowns and I stick out my tongue at her, which makes her even more confused.

But Shay cracks the tiniest of smiles.

“Let’s get this bike loaded up,” I say. Between being with Chris again, feeling like I’m genuinely helping this kid, and that little smile, I feel on top of the fucking world.

As we drive away from the kid’s house, I’m feeling less pleased with myself and considerably more hopeless. But it’s nothing compared to the way Chris is looking.

“Did you see that place?” she whispers, tapping herhand anxiously on her folded arms. “We shouldn’t have let her go back there.”

“Chris, you said yourself there’s nothing we could do that wouldn’t be classified as abduction.”

“I know. It’s just so fucking unfair.”

It’s only when I glance over and see the sheen of tears on her cheeks that I realize the gravity of this situation. It wasn’t just the run-down house with the dilapidated barn out back and junk on the lawn. Or even a girl returning to a tough situation. This is personal for her. Chris told me she was in care for six years until she aged out of the system. I don’t know the specific details of what happened during that time, but I know enough. I wish I knew what to do to help her. I wish I knew what to say.

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