Chapter Three
Runa
“She’s mine?”
I drew in a deep breath, my chest shaking with the effort.
“Yes, she’s yours.”
“Jesus,” the other man whispered, looking between the two of us with wide eyes.
“Not now, Velle,” York hissed under his breath.
“Look, I know this is a lot,” I said, voice calm despite the panic in my chest. “If you need to think about this and have me come back, I can—”
“What’s her name?”
“Denali,” I said. “I call her Denny a lot of the time, though.”
“Denali,” he repeated, his whole body going tight. “Like the national park?”
“Yes.”
“Like the shirt you had on when we met.”
“Yes.”
“Does she—” he started, but he had to pause to clear his throat. “Does she know who I am?”
My mouth opened and closed twice before I could find my next words. “How could she? When I didn’t even know you? She thinks we’re here to see a friend. I wasn’t about to tell her you’re her father if you were going to be a dick and slam the door in my face.”
“She’s never asked about me?”
“Not really. She hasn’t had a lot of time around other people’s fathers, so she hasn’t had a reason to ask yet.” She would be starting school soon—if I could get us the normal life she deserved. I had no doubt that other kids would get her to start thinking about that.
“Why now?” he asked.
“Because I finally got someone to tell me where you might be.”
“You’ve been looking?”
“I had feelers out.”
His gaze slid to the car again.
I couldn’t parse the look in his eyes, but I was at least pretty sure it wasn’t rage.
That was the only reaction I’d been concerned about.
I could understand confusion, disappointment, being upset, or even fearful.
All of those seemed like healthy reactions to me.
I’d gone through all those emotions myself when I found out.
I wish I could have come to him alone, had a sit-down, hashed all the details out. But there was no one to watch Denali.
“I get you need to process this. Do you maybe want to meet tomorrow?” I asked. His gaze cut back. “Maybe we could go somewhere that Denny would have fun—the aquarium or something like that—so she can be a little distracted while we talk.”
“She likes the aquarium?”
“She loves the aquarium.”
“We don’t have one close. There’s a zoo.”
“She loves all animals.” She’d been begging for a pet for ages. The second we got settled and safe, I was going to get her whatever she wanted.
“We could go there.”
“Okay. That works for us. Maybe… ten?”
“Ten,” he agreed, looking at the car again.
“Ten,” I agreed.
When he just stood there, too stunned to move, I turned and walked back to the car.
“We’re not getting out?” Denali asked when I climbed in the driver’s seat.
“Not tonight, munchkin. But guess what?”
“What?”
“Tomorrow, we’re going to the zoo with Mommy’s friend.”
“The zoo?”
That was all it took to make her forget about how long she’d been in her car seat, how much her butt probably hurt, how bored she was.
Suddenly the world had burst wide open and she was talking all about the animals she hoped to see there—the giraffes and elephants and the much less likely elephant seals and manatees, given it was probably a subtropical zoo.
But I wasn’t going to burst her bubble. When she got there and saw all the other animals, she’d forget all about the seals and manatees.
I used some precious data on my burner phone to look up local cheap motels that didn’t, you know, have bed bugs or reports of anything else creepy going on.
I hated motels. I’d much rather camp out in a tent in the middle of nowhere like I did before Denny. But that wasn’t an option anymore. So I had a system.
Once we got our room key, Denali carried my little cleaning caddy and I brought up a bag of bedding and trash bags.
Then she putzed around the room while I gloved up and completely stripped the beds, checked for bugs, shoved the motel bedding into the trash bags, put our bedding on, then got to work scrubbing the bathroom.
“Remember my pink room?” Denali asked when, finally finished, I tossed the gloves.
I didn’t need that little gut punch of guilt. But I plastered on a smile. “I do. That was a nice room.”
“When I get a room, I want purple.”
“Purple is a nice color.” And I liked that she said ‘when.’ I always tried to use those words. Not if. I wanted her to know the plan was always to get somewhere that was our own again. “Let’s go grab some of our stuff from the car, okay? Then we can have a little picnic for dinner.”
There was no budget for eating out, so everything we did was a picnic straight out of the cooler where I stored whatever groceries I’d picked up.
Sometimes we ate at gas stations, parks, sides of the road.
Thankfully, Denny didn’t have a lot of frame of reference for eating at tables and how that was the standard for most people.
One day, I reminded myself as I pulled out lunch meat and bread and started making sandwiches.
“Apple or carrots on the side?” I asked.
She eyed the apple, seeming to notice it was the only one, then told me carrots. Even though I knew apples were her favorite. She really was the sweetest damn kid.
“You know what? Can I have the carrots? I want my eyes to sparkle.”
“Okay,” she agreed, eagerly taking the apple in her chubby little hand.
The reality was, I would eat exactly one baby carrot and keep the rest for her for the next day. Money was running exceptionally low now that I had to drop money on the motel.
If York didn’t agree to help us, I was going to need to find work fast.
It wasn’t as easy as it had once been to find truly off-the-books jobs.
Everything was done with apps these days.
And the problem was, information online could be uncovered if someone was looking for it.
And someone was clearly looking for me. It was harder still to find work I could do while I had Denny with me.
My best bet would be finding cleaning jobs.
Florida would probably be pretty good for that work with all the vacation rentals around.
I’d never had a problem getting paid in cash for cleaning work.
I might even be able to snag some housesitting (and live-in pet-sitting) jobs, which would give me both a job and a free place to stay.
“What animal do you want to see?” Denali asked as she munched on a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in ranch dressing.
Yep. Ranch. My child was a serious dip addict.
Sometimes it was ranch, but it was also ketchup, honey mustard, barbecue sauce, marinara, or hummus.
There wasn’t much she ate that she didn’t dip in something.
Half of our cooler was full of bottles of sauce.
“Hmm. I think I’d like to see a white tiger, if they have one. Oh! Or an anteater. I think those are really cool.”
Denny’s nose wrinkled up. “They eat ants.”
“Yes, they do. With their super long tongue.”
“How long?”
“Like this long,” I said, spreading my arms to about a foot.
That got a fit of giggles as she stuck out her own tongue and measured it with her fingers.
“What animal will your friend like?”
“I don’t know! You should ask him when you meet him.”
Because we had such a nomadic life and she didn’t get a chance to interact with the same people often, I worried about her social skills, so I always tried to encourage her to speak to people when she came across them.
She was pretty extroverted with fellow kids or women, but had gotten pretty skittish around men.
Who could blame her after what we’d been through? What she’d seen?
And I was stuck in this weird place because I couldn’t tell her that she didn’t need to be afraid of strange men. Because, fuck, she did. We did.
“Is he a nice man?” she asked, dipping her sandwich a few times in a row—a little nervous tick.
“He’s going to be very nice to you,” I assured her.
No, I didn’t know York. Not in more than a carnal way, at least. But I’d seen how he was looking at Denny in the car, heard the soft way he’d said, “She’s mine?”
He wasn’t going to be mean to her. Confused, maybe a little awkward, but not mean.
“And nice to you?” she asked, looking up with big brown eyes. I hated that I knew exactly what was running across her mind.
“Yes, he’ll be nice to me too.”
It wasn’t like I’d been keeping Denali from him, after all. I hadn’t been able to find him. And, hey, maybe part of that was on him for sneaking out in the middle of the night. It wasn’t like he’d left behind a way to contact him if the condom hadn’t been effective.
“Okay,” she agreed, giving me a hopeful little smile.
“We’re going to go at ten, but I think we need to be in the car at nine to get there. So, we’re going to have to get up early to eat our breakfast.”
“So we need to go to bed early.”
“Exactly.”
“Right now?”
“Not right now. I think maybe you should take your shower tonight, so we have an easy morning.”
“And a little TV?” she asked, hopeful.
“Sure. A little TV.”
“Can I wear my princess shirt tomorrow?”
I was going to need to hand-wash it in the sink and then maybe use my blow-dryer to get it dry in time.
“Of course you can.”
“And my unicorn shorts?”
By “unicorn,” she meant they were pastel sequin-looking shorts.
“Yep, those too.”
I was, and had always been, the epitome of a tomboy.
I’d grown up on a ranch, spent all my free time in nature, in the dirt, climbing trees, ripping clothes, plucking leaves and brambles out of my hair.
That love of the outdoors simply never faded, just transformed to hiking and camping as I got older.
And hiking and camping and full-glam or pretty dresses simply didn’t mix.
Somehow, though, I’d produced the girliest girl known to mankind. She loved picking out her outfits, buying clothes, putting on accessories, and occasionally playing dress-up with makeup.
“Finish up your apple so you can take your shower.”
While she was in there, I loaded all our food into the mini-fridge in the room, glad to have a small freezer to re-freeze our ice packs.
Then I cleaned all our plates and cutlery in the sink while dreaming of having a real sink again.
Or, in a dream world, a dishwasher. And after brushing out Denny’s hair and putting her in bed with the TV on, I dreamed about a washing machine that didn’t require quarters.
Once the clothes were hung up, I made my way back out to find Denali had already passed out in the middle of her show.
I double-checked the locks before going into the bathroom to lean against the wall and sigh.
I really needed the trip to the zoo to go well. I needed York to be charmed by his daughter and want to do whatever he could to help her. Because I didn’t know what the hell to do if he decided to wash his hands of us.