جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 190

"Why are you sitting outside in the cold after getting in a car accident?""I needed some air. Don't worry, I was almost completely unharmed."His eyes lingered on the bandage on my forehead."Doesn't look like it."I touched the bandage, remembering how I'd gotten the gash."Oh, no, this was after. I was reaching through the window of the other car.""You were what?" he asked, his eyes widening. I started to explain, and the whole story spilled out. About the accident, and the woman I'd injured, and how I was sure that she hated me now. And then about the rest of my day, how angry I'd been with Michelle, how betrayed I felt, and how mad I was at myself for letting my anger get the better of me.Scott listened silently, and when I was done, he let out a whistle."Cassius, you've had a terrible 24 hours." He paused as if digesting further and then said, "Are you hungry? Let's go get some food, okay?"I didn't feel hungry, but I nodded anyway. It's not like I had anything else to do."D

At that moment, the door to the room opened, and my heart leapt into my throat.What is he doing here?I suppose it was my own fault that I didn't know his name, and therefore in my mind he was only Makayla's father. He'd left earlier that day and hadn't been back for hours. I was starting to hope he'd gotten the hint and wouldn't be back again. If only I'd gotten them to let me go home earlier, I would have been far away by now. Instead, here he was coming back into my room, anddear god, holdingflowers. He was dressed much more casually now, in a T-shirt and sweats. I would not have picked him for a sweatpants guy.Then I had a vivid flashback to that night in his room. He had been wearing sweatpants then...Get a grip, Deira,I told myself.Dani must have guessed this was the guy who caused the wreck, because she immediately stood up and crossed her arms. That indicated that no matter how impressed she was by the room, she wasn't planning to give him any credit. I watched her face fo

He raised an eyebrow. "And you couldn't just ask her?" I was trying to look through the rest of the information, and he was starting to annoy me."She didn't want to see anyone. And the hospital has rules in place." Rules I'd already bent, but he didn't need to know that. "This is all the information you found? I'll write you a check. What was the amount?"He told me, and he gave me a few tips about how the information was organized and his number should I have questions before I was able to usher him out of the office. I sat back down and continued looking through the folder. Nothing jumped out at me. Single mom. No partner. Part-time jobs, one at a flower shop. That explained the commentary from her daughter. It was actually an impressive amount of information, just none that seemed to answer my question about who this woman was to me. I sighed, and flipped to the last page.This was all information about the daughter. It was perhaps scarily informative, including her name ("Makayla

We got back to Dani's and I got Makayla started on her homework before launching into the job applications. I was filling out at least three a day, basically anything that seemed like they might hire me, whether it was a good fit or not. So far, I'd gotten nothing in response. That weekend, I had plans to scour a few neighborhoods for local shops that were hiring. A lot of them didn't put their jobs online, but just placed signs in their windows. That was how I'd found the flower shop job.After I exhausted the job search options, I looked over my budget again. I'd already eliminated basically everything but rent, food, and bills, but it still wasn't enough. It was time to start seeing which bills I could let slide for a month or two. It occurred to me that because we were staying with Dani, it wouldn't matter if they turned off the electricity. We were already behind a month, so I might as well let it lapse while we weren't there. I figured they'd charge me a fee to restart it, but h

I imagined finally finding her and confronting her. I thought about all the things I had to say to her. Maybe it wasn't her fault that she couldn't find me. Now, by some miracle, we'd met again. To have the audacity not to say anything to me, to have actually let me meet my kid without either of us even knowing it...I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. I wanted to hear what she had to say for herself.I wanted to...Something stirred within me, something just as fierce as my anger, just as hot. It turned out that imagining yelling at Deira just became... imagining Deira, here, in front of me. It turned out that six years on, she still had the ability to make me want her, even when she wasn't even here.The details of that night had faded over the years, but I could still remember her eyes, looking up at me. And I could still remember how itfelt. When she was on her knees, in front of me. When I was on my knees, making her scream with pleasure. When she was beneath me, and I was i