Chapter 43
forty-three
for how long?
Liam
“About that… I, um … I didn’t go anywhere.”
My head snapped up. “What do you mean, ‘you didn’t go anywhere’? You must’ve gone somewhere. Your parents made you move out. So where did you go?”
She mumbled under her breath.
“Pardon?” My voice came out sharper than intended, causing her to flinch. I injected my voice with calm before adding, “Come again? I didn’t quite catch that.”
She huffed, then, louder this time, repeated, “I stayed in my car.”
My chest tightened. “Tell me you’re joking,” I whispered. But somehow, I knew she was serious.
She shrugged again, avoiding my gaze. “I had nowhere else to go.”
An image, crisp and vivid, punched me in the chest. In it, an eighteen-year-old Maya is curled up in the back seat of a tiny car, struggling to get some sleep before heading to school to take her final exams. But … that wasn’t possible. Was it?
“No grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? Friends?” My voice rose with each suggestion, mirroring my mounting dread. “There must have been someone you could’ve stayed with.”
Everyone in her life failed her so spectacularly that she wound up sleeping in her car? It was beyond comprehension
When my parents died, there was never any question of where I would go.
Nana had opened her home to me with zero hesitation, despite my being an adult, and having been living on my own on campus most of the time, anyway.
She could have easily done what Maya’s parents had done—told me to find my own place, forced me to figure it out on my own.
But she hadn’t. Because of that, I’d always had a home to come back to during school breaks.
Maya released a humourless laugh. “My grandparents weren’t in the picture. I’ve never even met them because they kicked my parents out when they got pregnant with me. And neither of my parents has siblings, so no aunts or uncles.”
I gritted my teeth, the anger burning in my gut. I hated where this was going. “And friends? I’m sure someone’s parents would have let you crash for a few months.”
She shook her head. “I spent so much time focusing on school and working at my part-time job that I didn’t have many close friends. None close enough to ask for something that serious, anyway.”
“Jesus.” Slouching against the headboard, I rubbed at the growing heaviness in my chest. She’d had no one.
Her rueful laughter was a complement to the sombre mood in the room. “Tell me about it.”
Unable to stop myself, I took her hand and interlaced my fingers with hers, hoping she could feel the support that I couldn’t put into words. “That must have been a long summer before college started. I’ll bet you couldn’t wait to move into your dorm room.”
She tensed beside me as though remembering a particularly nasty detail of life in her college dorm. I could relate to that.
“What was it?” I leaned closer. “Bad roommate? I know what that’s like.
” Shuddering at the memory, I added, “My first-year roommate thought showers were optional. By the end of the first semester, I had taken to spraying him with fabric refresher while he slept, and smearing Vicks VapoRub under my nose any time I had to be in my room for any length of time.”
Maya huffed a laugh, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That doesn’t sound so bad. I’ve lived in worse places.”
A cold prickle of foreboding ran down my spine. “Worse places? I’m not sure there are worse places than college dorms.”
She watched her fingers as she played with her sleeve. “No, it’s not that. I actually didn’t go to college.”
My entire body went rigid as my heart raced. Suddenly, Where was this conversation heading? “What do you mean you didn’t go?”
“By the time my parents told me I had to leave, it was too late to figure out financing. I’d missed the deadlines for scholarships and student loans.
I had enough money saved for tuition and books, but I’d spent the rest on a car, thinking I’d be commuting from my parents’ house.
And I had already quit my job at the bookstore because I wanted to focus on enjoying the last few months of high school, make some real friends, maybe even find someone to go to prom with.
” She shrugged. “I figured I’d get a job closer to campus when I settled into my college classes. ”
My heart sank as I pieced it together. “So you stayed in your car. For longer than the summer.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Yes, I did. Much longer, as it so happens.”
I gritted my teeth, trying to keep my voice calm. “Did you at least have a safe place to park? An okay job?”
She huffed a bitter laugh. “Not quite. Turns out the sorts of jobs I could find not only didn’t pay well enough for me to afford rent, they came with the worst kinds of bosses imaginable.
” Softly, she added, “You wouldn’t believe what some men think they’re entitled to when they show the bare minimum of human decency to a woman. ” Her words hit like a freight train.
My vision ran red, but my voice stayed deadly calm. “Who? Where are they now? Did you call the police?”
“It never got bad enough for that,” she said, shaking her head. “I always got out before things escalated past unwanted groping and lewd suggestions.”
“You shouldn’t have to tolerate unwanted groping and lewd suggestions. You were at your job. You should feel safe there.” I needed to figure out who these guys were and pay them a visit. A painful one.
Before I could demand their names and locations, she smirked. “I crushed my fair share of testicles on the way out, though. So, there’s a bright side, I guess.”
Her confession shocked me out of my murderous train of thought, and I spluttered a startled, “What?”
Her lips tipped into a small smile. “And I don’t feel a single bit bad about it, either. One guy, my boss at this one crappy diner the first winter, offered me a place to crash because there was an extreme cold warning in the weather forecast that night.”
“That sounds like a nice gesture.”
She rolled her eyes. “He knew I slept in my car and said he’d feel awful if I froze to death when he had a comfortable couch and, you know, proper heat.
I wasn’t looking forward to waking up every hour to run the heat in my car for a few minutes so I could survive the night, so I took him up on it.
” Her slight grimace didn’t prepare me for what came next.
“We got to his disgusting apartment, and the second we walked through the door, he dropped his pants. He thought I would fall to my knees in gratitude for letting me sleep on his filthy couch. Yeah, right.”
My anger ratcheted up several notches, and I forced my jaw to unclench before my teeth cracked. “Did you squeeze his nuts until they burst? Give them the old twist and pull? Please tell me you left him unable to father children.”
She dazzled me with a grin. “I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, but I know I did some serious damage. And I didn’t use my hands. There’s no way I was touching that guy’s junk. I’m confident something popped under my knee, though.”
“Good.” I relaxed. “I hope he’s still writhing in agony. He deserves permanent damage.”
She chuckled. “Sometimes I think back on it and wonder if it was wrong of me to leave without doing more. What if they tried it with someone else?”
“Did you press charges?”
She opened and shut her mouth several times before speaking.
“I didn’t exactly have a great track record with the cops, you know?
Some of them had a real chip on their shoulder with the unhoused population in the city.
It didn’t matter how quiet I was, or how much I kept to myself; some cops just loved hassling anyone who didn’t have a permanent address.
” She must have noticed the horrified grimace on my face because she rushed to add, “Like, writing me tickets and scaring me awake and stuff. Nothing violent.”
“These cops found a young woman sleeping in her car and instead of helping, they wrote her tickets?” A fresh wave of fury tore through me. “Expected her to pay fines when she couldn’t afford a place to live?”
She forced a small smile. “Can’t fault them for doing their job.”
I snorted. “Maybe you can’t, but I sure as hell can.
” The more I learned about her past, the angrier I became.
She deserved so much better. “The stockpile makes more sense now. After having so little, I could see not wanting to run out of supplies.” She tensed, and to lighten the mood I added, “Not that I think there’s anything wrong with being prepared solely for a zombie apocalypse.
I’m still sticking with you if that happens, by the way. ”
She chuckled and shook her head. “It is nice knowing where my next meal is coming from at all times. And that I’ll always have access to basic toiletries.”
I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to my side, wishing I could protect her from her past hurts. Surprisingly, she relaxed into me, resting her hand over my heart.
We sat in silence until a thought hit me like a lightning bolt. “Wait, wait, wait.” I reared up, jostling her.
“What now?” She groaned in protest.
“How does living in your car relate to your Alan Rickman kink?”
She snorted a laugh. “It’s not a kink.”
“Okay,” I murmured, pretending to be unconvinced. “Your Alan Rickman obsession, then.”
She rolled her eyes. “I find his voice soothing, that’s all.”
“Sure. Let’s say I buy that.” I mirrored her eye-roll. “He does have a pleasant-sounding voice. But you still haven’t explained what Alan Rickman has to do with living in your car.”
She exhaled a beleaguered sigh. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
I grinned. “I like to call it annoyingly persistent.” With my arm still around her, I rubbed her shoulder, coaxing her to continue. “Now tell me. How did this Alan Rickman thing start?”
She huffed but leaned into my side again. “Okay, so … you remember how I was living in my car, right?”
“Yes, we’ve been over that,” I deadpanned, glad to see the lift in her mood despite the depressing direction our conversation had taken.
She snickered before continuing. “Well, one of the first things I discovered about sleeping in a car is that it’s both too quiet and too loud at night.
Even with all the doors locked, it doesn’t feel safe.
Every little noise sounds like a threat, and there are a lot of little noises.
” She dragged in and released a deep breath.
“But I couldn’t play my radio all night without my car battery dying within hours, if not minutes.
And I couldn’t stream music on my phone because I couldn’t afford a plan with data.
Plus, even if I’d had access to Wi-Fi, my battery wouldn’t have lasted.
And I refused to let my phone die—for safety. ”
My stomach clenched so tightly it stole my breath. She’d had nothing. No safety net. No home. No way to drown out the fear.
“And that’s when you discovered the wonder that is Alan Rickman?” I asked, forcing myself to pay attention to her instead of getting carried away with worries over things long past.
A small smile teased her lips. “I went to a thrift store and found an old portable CD player with some random CDs. The Alan Rickman disc was inside the CD player when I bought it, and it quickly became my favourite. His voice was soothing.” She paused, her gaze unfocused, as if she were reliving that time in her car all over again.
“Whenever fear threatened to overwhelm me, I listened to that homemade CD. Whenever I had to park somewhere new, somewhere uncomfortable, it gave just enough background noise to distract me. Something steady. Something familiar.”
“His voice was your security blanket,” I murmured. “Safety when everything else was uncertain.”
Her shining eyes grew distant. “Exactly.”
Jesus. My heart ached at this new image of Maya at eighteen, scared and alone, clutching a second-hand CD player in the backseat of her car, listening to Alan Rickman’s recorded voice to feel safe.
My parents’ death wrecked me, but at least I’d had Nana. Maya’s parents were still alive, and she’d had no one. Nowhere to go.
Her sole comfort was a stranger’s discarded CD of Alan Rickman’s voice that she’d found by chance in a secondhand store. The misery of it was almost too much to bear.
“Now I’m even happier that Nana found you on the side of the road and brought you home.”