Page 6 of Little Bird
Well, I stopped being a person to her. That’s the only way to explain it.
I became a tool to be used. And a route to what my father left behind.
The truth is, I’ve been looking for a way out from under their thumb for years, now. And I’m so close. So fucking close. One more semester of school, and I’ll graduate and be on my own. This December, in just a few short weeks, I turn twenty-one. I’ll be legal. An adult.
Free.
I just need to hang on that long, so I can escape.
And everything inside me is screaming that if they see me here—if they come to jail and bail me out—that escape becomes a whole lot harder. I can’t explain it, and I’m not sure I even understand it, really. But I know I have something they want, or I will when I turn twenty-one, I’m afraid that if they save me now, it’ll give them the power to take what I have. They already control me, courtesy of my age, and if they step in and spend money to get me out of here...
Look, I don’t know how that works. I’ve never been in the mafia. But I don’t want my mother or Johnny to have any more control over me than they already do.
I need someone to bail me out, and it can’t be them.
They also don’t know I’m here yet, because I haven’t told anyone who I am, and that means I’ve disappeared. One moment I was in that diner in the city, and the next...
Vanished.
I almost smile at that. If I can get out of here before anyone figures out who I am and calls my mother…
God, I could actually win my freedom right now, and suddenly I’m breathless with excitement at the thought.
I walk quickly toward the back wall of my cell, my mind racing with ideas in the stark, white-washed room. When I hit the wall, I turn and walk back toward the bars, my eyes on the unfinished floor. Then again. And then again. If I’m going to do this, I need to act quickly. Johnny has contacts everywhere, and I bet he has dirty cops on his payroll. Which means the moment these cops learn my name, the gig will be up.
I need safety. A place where my mother and Johnny will never look for me until I can figure out what to do.
And I sound like a fucking Monday night cop drama, thinking things like that.
That doesn’t make it any less true.
I can’t go to Stella’s. Her dad isn’t a Massimo, but those guys are all either friends or enemies. If he’s friends with Johnny, he’ll turn me over as a favor. If they’re enemies, he’ll hold me for ransom. Arden’s house is no better. She’s already told me her family is at war with the Massimo clan. It’ll be ransom for sure, and once Johnny gets me home, I’ll owe him for having spent money to get me back.
And I don’t know anyone else in the city. Not well enough to ask for help, anyhow.
“God dammit, think, Taryn,” I hiss. Who do I know that can help? Where can I go, and how can I get there?
A place where my mother won’t look for me. A place she won’t even think of. With someone who will agree to hide me for a couple weeks. A month. Just until I turn twenty-one and can sign my own paperwork legally.
Wait.
A place she would never look for me.
Because she hasn’t been back there in four years and pretends it doesn’t exist.
God, the answer is so obvious I want to hit myself for not having thought of it sooner.
Hawke’s Wood.
“Gunner,” I breathe, my heart in my throat and butterflies erupting in my stomach.
Gunner Hawke. My mother’s other husband. The one she married right after my father died. He lives in a village in the Adirondacks that his ancestors actually founded. It’s the epitome of a small town, everyone half related to each other and the outside world a distant echo they can barely hear. My mother married him when I was only twelve and transplanted us both to that small town, never mind that it took me out of school in the middle of the year and sent me into a home with a man I’d never even met.
My mother hadn’t cared about my welfare, or my feelings.
She also hadn’t expected me to get to Gunner’s house and fall in love with him and his son. It was four years of safety and sunshine, a real family after two years of me living with the ghost of my father, and when my mother divorced Gunner and pulled me back out of his life, his last words to me were that if I ever needed him, he’d come flying to me.
He was the last man who made me feel safe, with his rough auburn beard and his constant scent of freshly cut wood. The enormous cabin that always had a fire burning in it. My room, where he’d read a story to me whenever I asked. He became everything to me in the short time I knew him.
