Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Juniper

I didn’t turn off my phone, and I didn’t leave Miami.

I pretty much didn’t leave my car all weekend except for two 7-11 runs for cheap hotdogs and crap coffee, and a ten-dollar shower at a truck stop early this morning that I never wanted to think about again.

But I couldn’t turn off my thoughts, and his voice kept floating in my mind as two years ago blended with two days ago, and I didn’t know what to think anymore.

Except that I hated weekends, and I hated that I’d put myself in this situation.

Give me forty-eight hours.

Are you currently in Miami?

This wasn’t my plan.

Not that I had an overall plan for my life besides staying safe and keeping away from anything that would jeopardize that safety, but here I was, screwing myself over.

Again.

For the hundredth time, I stared at the Messages icon on my cell.

It hadn’t been forty-eight hours yet, but I hadn’t heard from him since I’d hung up on him. An irrational pang of guilt hit, and I shoved it down. I didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. He was the one who’d crossed the line when he’d asked if I was in Miami. Why would he have done that if he wasn’t planning on doing something?

Which was what had my mind spinning all weekend as I slept in my car, avoided Reena’s and my favorite coffeehouse, and hid from the world as much as anyone could hide in discount store and mall parking lots.

I wanted to know what Blade had planned.

And that was a giant problem.

Even more so than him asking about Florida and Miami.

The Florida part he could’ve guessed based on my slip about the temperature and humidity. And Miami wasn’t a stretch, either, once I’d stupidly said I was in Florida.

The greater Miami Metropolitan area was the largest in the state with six-point-one million people—a statistic I’d looked up before coming here because it was always easier to blend in when there was a crowd. Add in the average seventy-seven-degree year-round temperatures, the crazy-pretty beaches, a ridiculous annual number of sunny days, and about a dozen other factors, and it was a logical guess.

Miami was popular.

Everyone loved Miami.

I loved it.

Sort of.

As much as I could love any place where I had to hide. Which would be everywhere, unless I went to some remote foreign country. But I didn’t have a passport, and I didn’t know how to get a fake one.

So I’d spent my weekend with my cell phone on, stupidly obsessing over why a man I didn’t know, who hadn’t called or texted, asked me to give him two days.

The two days of the week I hated most because I didn’t work, and I didn’t have an excuse to go sit in Del Cielo’s for hours at a stretch and pretend I had a place where I belonged.

Weekends were usually when I caved and wound up breaking into Reena’s.

A few hours of air conditioning, a shower, some sleep if I was lucky.

But I didn’t go near there this weekend because I’d gotten spooked by a stranger asking if I was in Miami when there was an actual logical reason for the question that I’d been ignoring.

Or selectively overlooking.

I had a Miami area code. Reena’d had one. Which meant Blade had a Miami area code now if he’d gotten her reassigned number. Since I’d told him I was texting my bestie, why wouldn’t he assume I had a Miami area code too?

Except he’d never said his cell phone number was new to him.

But most of all, with a Miami area code, that could mean Blade was here.

And that was bad.

Mess my life up even more bad .

I glanced at the time.

It was close to forty-eight hours, it was Monday morning, Hailey would be working, and I needed caffeine and sugar. The good kind.

Then I had a plan.

I would go to the phone store, ask super nicely if they would give me credit for a cell phone that wasn’t in my name and that I didn’t buy. If the stars aligned and they went for it, then I’d see if the credit plus my weekly coffee budget that I was going to sacrifice would get me a cheap cell, a new number, and some prepaid minutes.

If that failed, then I’d pull the SIM card, hock the phone at a pawn shop, and get a crappy prepaid cell.

Either way, I was going to get rid of the number.

But first, I needed good coffee.

Then I was going to allow myself to text him…

Just one more time.