I type in Hope’s information and immediately have a screen full of news articles and returns. But I don’t need to look at them. I’ve spent the last several years reading every article and every lead that’s reported about Hope’s disappearance. I know them by heart. I slam the computer shut.
I need to run.
Chapter Eight
She has no distinct features that I can remember. No birthmarks. The fact that I saw a girl with brown hair and brown eyes and felt she was the same brown-haired, brown-eyed girl from thirteen years ago is quite possibly borderline obsessive.
Am I obsessed? Do I somehow feel as though I won’t be able to move past Les’s death if I don’t rectify at least one of the things I’ve fucked up in my life?
I’m being ridiculous. I’ve got to let it go. I’ve got to let go of the fact that I’ll never have Les back and I’ll never find Hope.
I have these same thoughts for the entire two miles of my run. The weight in my chest lightens little by little with each step I take. I remind myself with each step that Sky is Sky and Hope is Hope and Les is dead and I’m the only one left and I’ve got to get my shit together.
The run begins to help ease some of the tension built up from the incident at the grocery store. I’ve convinced myself that Sky isn’t Hope, but for some reason even though I’m almost positive she’s not Hope, I still find myself thinking about Sky. I can’t get the thought of her out of my head and I wonder if that’s Grayson’s fault. If I hadn’t heard him talking about her at the party the other night, I probably would have moved on from the grocery store incident fairly quickly and I wouldn’t be thinking about her at all.
But I can’t stop this growing urge to protect her. I know how Grayson is and somehow, just seeing this girl for even a few minutes, I know she doesn’t deserve what he’s likely going to put her through. There isn’t a single girl in this world who deserves the type of guy Grayson is.
Sky said she had a boyfriend at the store and the possibility that she might consider Grayson her boyfriend gets under my skin. I don’t know why, but it does. Just thinking she was Hope for even a few minutes already has me feeling extremely territorial about her.
Especially now as I round the corner and see her standing in front of my house.
She’s here. Why the hell is she here?
I stop running and drop my hands to my knees, keeping my eyes trained on her back while I catch my breath. Why the hell is she standing in front of my house?
She’s at the edge of my driveway, propped up against my mailbox. She’s drained the last of her water bottle and she’s shaking it above her mouth, attempting to get more water out of it, but it’s completely empty. When she realizes this, her shoulders slump and she tilts her face toward the sky.
It’s obvious she’s a runner with those legs.
Holy shit, I can’t breathe.
I try to recall everything on her driver’s license and what all Grayson said about her Saturday night because I suddenly want to know everything there is to know about her. And not because I thought she was Hope, but because whoever she is . . . she’s fucking beautiful. I don’t know that I even noticed how attractive she was at the store, because my mind wasn’t going there. But right now, seeing her in front of me? My mind is all over that.
She takes a deep breath, then begins walking. I immediately kick into gear and ease up behind her.
“Hey, you.”
She pauses at the sound of my voice and her shoulders immediately tense. She turns around slowly and I can’t help but smile at the wary expression strewn across her face.
“Hey,” she says back, shocked to see me standing in front of her. She actually seems more at ease this time. Not as terrified of me as she was in the parking lot, which is good. Her eyes slowly drop down to my chest, then to my shorts. She looks back up at me momentarily, then diverts her gaze to her feet.
I casually lean against the mailbox and pretend to ignore the fact that she totally just checked me out. I’ll ignore it to save her embarrassment, but I’m definitely not going to forget it. In fact, I’ll probably be thinking about the way her eyes scrolled down my body for the rest of the damn day.
“You run?” I ask. It’s probably the most obvious question in the world right now, but I’m completely out of material.
She nods, still breathing heavily from the effect of her workout. “Usually in the mornings,” she confirms. “I forgot how hot it is in the afternoons.” She lifts her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun while she looks at me. Her skin is flush and her lips are dry. I hold out my water bottle and she flinches again. I try not to laugh, but I feel pretty damn pathetic that I freaked her out so much at the store that she’s afraid I might actually do something to harm her.
“Drink this.” I nudge my water bottle toward her. “You look exhausted.”
She grabs the water without hesitation and presses her lips to the rim, downing several gulps. “Thanks,” she says, handing it back to me. She wipes the water off her top lip with the back of her hand and glances behind her. “Well, I’ve got another mile and a half return, so I better get started.”
“Closer to two and a half,” I say. I’m trying not to stare, but it’s so hard when she’s wearing next to nothing and every single curve of her mouth and neck and shoulders and chest and stomach seems like it was made just for me. If I could preorder the perfect girl, I wouldn’t even come close to the version standing in front of me right now.
I press the bottle of water to my mouth, knowing it’s more than likely the closest I’ll ever get to her lips. I can’t even take my eyes off her long enough to take a drink.
“Huh?” she says, shaking her head. She seems flustered. God, please let her be flustered.
“I said it’s more like two and a half. You live over on Conroe, that’s over two miles away. That’s almost a five-mile run round trip.” I don’t know many girls who run, let alone a five-mile stretch. Impressive.