Chapter 7: The Only Number I Have

Maya's POV

I told myself sleeping in the car was temporary. Just for tonight. Just until I figured something out that didn't involve waking my mother at midnight to explain that her daughter had gone from almost-Luna to homeless in under twenty-four hours.

The back seat wasn't built for sleeping. I found that out slowly, one aching muscle at a time, curled up under the one coat I'd managed to grab before the landlord's patience ran out completely. I told myself I'd just close my eyes for a minute.

I didn't remember actually falling asleep. I only remembered the tapping.

Knuckles, light against the window, patient in a way that felt entirely too familiar even through the fog of sleep.

I cracked my eyes open, squinting against the grey morning light, half convinced I was still dreaming, and found Damon crouched beside my car door, dressed like he hadn't slept either, watching me with an expression that was working very hard to stay neutral.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said, voice thick with sleep and humiliation in roughly equal measure.

"Good morning," he said.

"How did you—" I sat up too fast, hit my head on the door frame, and decided the universe simply had it out for me personally. "Are you following me?"

"I told my driver to keep an eye on your building." A pause. "In case you needed anything."

"I look like I slept in a car."

"You did sleep in a car."

I dropped my head back against the seat and groaned, mortified in a way that went bone-deep, and it was in that exact moment — pride at its absolute lowest, dignity somewhere back on that ballroom floor with the champagne — that my phone rang.

Mom.

I answered on instinct, too tired to brace myself, and made the profoundly stupid decision to put it on speaker so I could rub my eyes with both hands while I talked.

"Hey, Mom. Sorry I didn't call last night, I—"

"Maya." Her voice was small in a way I'd never heard it. "Maya, they took the house. Karen had the papers ready this morning. Real ones. I couldn't—" Her voice cracked. "I couldn't stop them."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor of the car.

"Mom, where are you right now?"

There was a scuffle on the other end, fabric against the receiver, and then Karen's voice, bright and venomous, filled the car instead.

"Oh, Maya, sweetheart. Your mother's a little busy being reminded whose house this actually is."

"Put her back on the phone."

"Did you really think," Karen continued, ignoring me completely, savoring every word, "that kissing some Alpha was going to fix the fact that your mother raised a daughter with absolutely nothing to show for it? No house. No money. No pride left after last night, from what I heard."

"Karen—"

"She can stay in her car with you for all I care," Karen said sweetly. "Come get your things. What's left of them."

The line went dead.

I sat there, phone still in my shaking hand, the silence in the car pressing in from every side, and when I finally looked up, Damon hadn't moved. He was still crouched by the open door, watching my face with an intensity that made it very clear he'd heard every single word.

"I need to get to her," I said, already fumbling for my keys, hands not quite steady enough to make it work.

"Where."

"My aunt's house. Our house. Whatever it is now." My voice cracked despite everything I did to stop it. "I don't have anyone else to call. I hate that I don't have anyone else to call, but I don't, so—"

"You don't need anyone else." Damon straightened, already reaching for his phone, already moving toward his car with the kind of calm, contained urgency that made the whole parking lot feel smaller. "Get in."

"I said I didn't want your help."

"You did," he agreed, opening the passenger door of a car considerably nicer than mine. "That was yesterday. Get in, Maya. We're going to get your mother."

I got in.

Whatever pride I had left, I left it in the back seat of my own car, parked crooked and empty on a street I no longer had a home on.