Page 54 of One Last Chance

Chapter 21

I forcedmyself to go back to my bed. The book I’d been trying to get lost in was still sitting on my bed. I flopped down on the mattress, groaning loader than it screeched and pulled the book into my hands. With everything in me, I tried to focus on the words spilling off the page. Tried to think about everything and anything that didn’t have to do with Kash. The problem was, everything in me wanted to peek through the window to see if he was still out there waiting for me to change my mind. I’d known he would try something like this. No attempt to apologize, no contact all day, and now there he was at my bedroom window trying to pick up where we left off.

Unless he had come to apologize. I half-rose off the bed before I shook my head at myself and hunkered down under the covers, glaring at my book. I knew Kash better than that. He was expecting the whole argument to blow over. Brush it under the rug. Leave it so long that it would soon go forgotten. Maybe that had been my fault. When, in all the time that I had known him, had I ever insisted that he apologize to me or admit that he was wrong? Almost never. I let that boy get away with murder—I snorted at my own mental slip of the tongue.

Maybe I literally did.

I shut those doubts down as quickly as they occurred. I didn’t actually think he did it, I’d established that within myself long ago, I was just thinking with my anger. I had to focus, or any future conversations would only go around in meaningless circles.

Of course, I was pissed at him. Pissed at him for playing fast and loose with his freedom. Pissed at him for even considering going back to dealing. Pissed at him for behaving like a damn fugitive and trying to run away to Mexico. That was all, nothing more and nothing less. I was pissed. I held onto that, solidified it within myself, and took it to work with me the next day.

The library was quiet as usual all morning, with a handful of freelancers and retirees making up the majority, until two thirty when the high schoolers descended upon the building like a bunch of frantic locusts. Every class had some big project due Friday that they had all obviously forgotten about, and I was their designated savior.

“Yo, miss librarian,” some kid with a torn leather jacket and a pathetic excuse for a mustache said. “Can we get some help over here?” He mumbled something else and his friends laughed.

I glanced at him warily.

He was clearly the leader of the group—there were six of them, all obviously trying to look hard and tough. They leered at me, snickering amongst themselves as though the funniest thing in the world wasn’t the fact that they thought typing up some paper would be their tickets out of this town. I rolled my eyes. Ten bucks said they were about to ask me to find a book by I.C. Weiner or something.

I sucked in a deep breath and bit back my frustration.

“How can I help you?” I asked with a hint of warning in my tone.

“Yeah, um, we were just wondering—”

Snickers broke out around the table and he interrupted himself to glare at his friends. He looked back at me, a creepy grin on his peach-bristle face.

“Can you grab that book for us?” He pointed lazily at a green and gold book on the top shelf.

I blinked at him. “Is your back broken?”

His grin widened until every single one of his jagged, yellow teeth were on full display. “Maybe it is,” he laughed.

Wanting to get whatever this was over with, I did as he asked, stretching up to my tiptoes to grab the thing.

Snickers and whispers scratched the air behind me, and I realized that the leggings I was wearing weren’t quite opaque enough for the length of my mini dress. Heaving the book down quickly, I slammed it on the table between them.

“Estrogen: The Answer to Hot Flashes. Nice choice.” I raised a brow at the rapidly reddening teenager. “Anything else I can get for you ladies? I could grab Why am I Bleeding, or Self-Defense Against Breast Cancer, if you like. They’re right up here.”

“Aw hell naw…”

He and his cronies had a few choice words for me, but I ignored them, moving my attention to a table that actually needed my help. Remembering how teenage boys could be after being embarrassed, I kept half an eye on them. They didn’t do much, just a lot of whispering and texting.

I lost track of them after a while and hoped it meant that they’d gone home, but kept my guard up. For such a small library, there were plenty of places to hide if you really wanted to. I would know. Back when I was their age, Kash and I ran circles around this very library. If we didn’t want to be found, there wasn’t a soul who was going to find us.

Eventually I forgot about the boys entirely—that is, until the head librarian, Mary, hustled over to me with a steely glint in her eye.

“Daisy, we have a problem outside. Go chase them off. Call the cops if you must. I will not have that filth on library property.”

Here we go again.

I huffed a sigh and hurried outside, where I found those same kids huddled together around a grown ass man with a sunburned scalp and a creepy smile. I vaguely recognized him, the way you recognize everybody in a one-school town.

“Excuse me,” I said firmly as I approached.

The kids all whipped their heads around guiltily, but the man just casually shoved his hands into his pockets, his grin firmly in place.

“Well, well miss Daisy, how has your garden grown.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose to look me up and down.

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