I grab my purse and hightail it out of his car. I’m two hot seconds away from giving in to this nightmare I see no way out of and bawling my eyes out, and the last thing in the world I want is for Keith Dawson to catch me doing it.
4
Keith
* * *
I’m not sure I’ve ever been this mad in my entire life. And I have absolutely no right to be. I don’t know this girl. I don’t know her at all. She hit my car making an illegal right on red and I should have called the police, an ambulance, my insurance company, and left it at that.
But when she stepped out of her crumpled tin can of a car and looked up at me with those terrified, big brown eyes… fuck, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I just reacted.
And while she was rambling in my car and then unconscious in the emergency room, all I could do was stare. I kept looking at her hair and her adorable upturned nose and her full heart-shaped lips.
Her face.
I sat with her unconscious in the hospital and just continued to stare at her. Out of my mind incredulous. A touch scared shitless. A lot sick. And stared.
I took in every feature and tried to make sense of something that still doesn’t feel like it makes a whole lot of sense.
I blow out a silent breath, desperate to get myself back under control when it’s nothing short of impossible. This woman. This infuriating, stubborn, stunning woman knocked me for a loop and I’m not even talking about the accident.
I watch as the door to her building closes behind her. She didn’t even spare me a backward glance, and I’m grateful for that. I should go. I need sleep and a shower and to put last night behind me. Forget like it ever happened.
So why can’t I make myself leave?
I close my eyes and picture Maia, ignoring the ancient ache her face elicits. She’s all sass and sharp words. But her cadence is slow, and her voice is sweet. It’s different though.
She’s different.
She’s not her.
I heave in a deep breath and force the thoughts from my mind. Opening my eyes, I’m more than ready to leave. I stare out the window, taking in the neighborhood around me.
“You can’t save her,” I tell myself even as my gut twists with rage at that. A guilt embedded so deep I no longer know where it ends and the rest of me begins.
My hands scrub up and down my face.
This girl is not my problem and it is not my job to save her.
My hands fall to the smooth leather wheel and I take one last peek over at the front door to her place. She’s safe as long as she’s up there, but who will help her? She needs someone to check on her. Probably help with basic functions like cooking, showering, dressing. Doing things one-armed isn’t easy. I broke my wrist freshman year of school and that was a bitch. But that was nothing compared to her break, and I had my parents and sisters to help me out.
She has no one.
“Fuck,” I yell, the butt of my hand slamming repeatedly into the wheel. “Goddammit! She is not my fucking problem!”
I cannot go down this road with this girl.
I have enough of my own life going on and she doesn’t want my help. She said so herself. She doesn’t want to be indebted to me. She can take care of herself.
My hand hits the gear shift and just as I start to push it into drive, something vibrates on the passenger seat and I stop. Her phone. Her cell phone is sitting forgotten, and just like that, my resolve solidifies before I even have a chance to fight it off.
I lift her phone, and the text window pops up without my even having to unlock it. It must be from her temp agency as they’re telling her they’ll find someone else to fill her position in the law firm and to call them when her arm is better, and they’ll try to find her a new gig.
“Right, then.”
Clutching her phone, I turn off my car and hop out of my truck, hitting the clicker until the alarm makes that loud beep sound. It doesn’t matter. If someone wants to boost my car, I have no doubt they’ll have the skill to do so regardless of my warning.
“I wouldn’t leave your truck there, man,” a homeless guy says. He’s sitting in the alcove of the building next to Maia’s, an empty coffee cup in his hands. He looks youngish, maybe mid-thirties, and hasn’t seen a bed or a shower in a very long time.
“How long do you think I have? I need to run in and check on someone.”
“Miss Maia is a nice girl. She brings me leftovers from her restaurant sometimes.”
I hold up her phone. “She left it in my car.”
“I can holler out if anyone goes near your ride.”
I smile at the man and slip a hundred out of my wallet. I walk over and place it in his empty cup. “Thank you. I’ll give you another if it’s still here when I come back.”
The man’s dark eyes light up as he takes in the amount I gave him and nods.
Maia’s building has those push buttons to ring for which apartment you need, but there are no names written in any of the slots. Lucky for me someone exits before I can start pressing random buttons and I slip in behind them.
The building is dark and dirty and dank. It also reeks like someone is cooking up drugs. Either meth or crack, the chemical smell is already giving me a headache. I take the stairs up two at a time, going up to the fourth and top floor since she told me she had the penthouse. I hope that wasn’t a joke and she really does live on the top floor. Otherwise, I’m going to be banging on a lot of doors.
There are four apartments up here so I knock on the first one on my right. I wait, but there’s no answer and I move on to the next. A couple of floors below me a couple appears to be having a pretty heated argument in a language I mercifully cannot understand. I knock on the second door, my insides growing more restless the longer it takes to find her.
Just as I’m about to give up and go on to door number three, I hear someone moving inside. “Hello?”
It’s her. That’s her voice. “Maia? It’s Keith.”
She curses under her breath and I can’t stop my small grin.
“What do you want, Keith?”
“I have your phone.”
“Oh.” That got her attention and I hear about five different locks disengaging before she opens the worn door a small crack and sticks her hand out, keeping her face averted behind it. She’s got to be kidding me. I give her a look that says as much though I don’t think she can see it. “You can just hand it to me and go.”
“I need to use your restroom,” I lie.
That pulls her up short and the surprise has her slipping back a few inches to glance over her shoulder back into her apartment. I catch sight of her face and it’s obvious she’s been crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, the tip of her nose too. She finds me staring at her and turns away in embarrassment, wiping at the small mascara stain under her eyes. A blush creeps up her cheeks as she starts to worry her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Um. Well. It’s really not much of a bathroom.” Her eyes refocus themselves on me. “Besides, I’m sure you can hold it until you get home.”
“And what if I can’t?”
She blusters out an aggravated sigh. “Come on, Keith. What the hell are you doing?”