Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗

I swallowed hard and nodded at Noelle.

When the event wound to a close, I skittered to the back of the parking lot, rubbernecking for signs of danger like an inquisitive—or extremely paranoid—giraffe. To my right, a woman with a baby on her hip unlocked her car. Beyond her, the lot was gloriously empty.

Clear.

My Buick’s windshield was the only shiny element of the vehicle, the luster from its burgundy paint long ago stripped away by years of winter salt. I slipped the key into the ignition, pulled out of the lot, and headed for the freeway.

A few times a week, I was a goddamn liar. Jake would throw a fit if he knew I still volunteered at the domestic violence shelter instead of working late like I kept insisting I was. I had been staying there when I met him, ruined and lost, stocking shelves at the drugstore where he worked. Maybe he wanted me to leave that part of my life behind as much as he wanted to leave behind the fact that he actually worked when we got together. And though I might have chosen a more creative name, I couldn’t let The Shelter go. They needed my help. Plus, it was hard to feel sorry for myself in the midst of so much suffering.

I clicked on the radio.

“—in other news, a local woman was found murdered in an Ash Park cemetery. Police have identified the woman as twenty-one-year-old Meredith Lawrence. If you have any information—”

I wonder what she did to make him mad.

I clicked off the radio with shaking fingers. Well, fuck.

I could almost hear his voice oozing like pus from some hidden corner of my brain: I’ll find you, Hannah. Don’t ever doubt it. And the weasel was back, sprinting around in my chest like he was on meth. I squinted through the windshield, waiting for his snarling face to appear against the glass, his nose irrevocably twisted from the lumber yard accident, his eyes that looked just like…mine.

Get it together, Hannah. He would have found you by now if he was looking.

I glanced down at my purse, searching for protection. I needed to pick up more pepper spray, though someone in my apartment building would surely complain; the last one dropped and broke in the stairwell, leaving everyone with runny eyes for days. Could lip balm be a weapon? Maybe if he startled me in a parking lot somewhere, I could whack him over the head with my journal. My therapist thought writing was a good way to get in touch with my feelings—had the woman known more about my history, she might have prescribed more than a pencil and paper.

I pulled a deep breath into my lungs and held it. I will always be broken.

Broken but funny. Well, maybe.

Dominic laughed at my joke.

On my dashboard, a one-armed panda bobblehead gave me a jiggly nod as I veered off the freeway. Litter-strewn residential streets crackled and crunched with empty Faygo pop two liters and broken beer bottles. Beside the shelter loomed an abandoned school, plywood windows surrounded by crumbling red brick.

The shelter itself was a lump of gray, but the back facade was covered with bright, lewd graffiti—as if a deranged city planner with a can of spray paint had walked up and said, “You know what this place needs? A giant orange dick.”

I parked in front of the tangerine penis and got out, surveilling my surroundings for crooked noses hidden in the shadows.

Crack! Something snapped at the back of the lot, where trees were steeped in evening dim.

My elbow smashed against the car door, and I pressed my back against it, trying to do that hold-your-keys-between-your-fingers-like-a-weapon thing. It didn’t help. An icicle shuddered up my back. I squinted into the trees.

Not a movement, except for a few rustling leaves.

I locked my car with my key-claw, dashed into the building, and punched in the code to quell the alarm.

“Hannah!” Ms. LaPorte’s swishing eighties pantsuit almost glowed, the electric blue and white as unabashed as their wearer. A whitish-blue perm rose from the top of her head like a snow-capped mountain peak.

The ice in my back thawed. “Hi, Ms. LaPorte. How are things tonight?”

“Good. We have a few new girls, but it’s been pretty quiet. I was just getting supper on.”

“I’ll help you. Brandy still sleeping?”

“Yes, dear.”

Brandy Lovelle was Ms. LaPorte’s one full-time employee; green hair atop a thin, bird-like frame, wiry arms sleeved in tattooed ink, lip ring glinting when she pulled her mouth into one of her ready smiles. She worked the overnights, starting around ten o’clock when Ms. LaPorte left to go home. Brandy was usually asleep in the evenings when I came by, which was a bummer because I suspected she was all kinds of awesome.

I followed Ms. LaPorte down the narrow hallway and into a tiny but functional kitchen outfitted with scuffed appliances. One wall had a hole cut in it for serving food, the chest-high opening finished with a large piece of plywood and covered with a floral tablecloth.

“How’s Mario?” I asked.

“He’s fine, dear. Just watered him.”

I stepped to the makeshift counter and ran a finger over one waxy leaf of the philodendron. Mario was poisonous inside, but if you just admired him from the outside, he was beautiful. Kinda like some people.

I’ll find you, Hannah.

I shifted my weight, let go of the leaf, and peered down the hallway toward the back door.

Ms. LaPorte hustled to the stove and cranked off the heat. The huge pot spluttered protests and speckled her shirt with reddish-orange. “Chili night. I should have known.”

I grabbed the faded apron from the hook on the wall and held it out. “You take it, Ms. LaPorte.”

“No, dear, I don’t want you ruining your pretty sweater.”

“I have a backup.” I tugged off my sweater like a bored stripper just trying to get to the point, revealing a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath. Bow chicka bow wow. “Problem solved.”

Ms. LaPorte’s smile was cut short by wailing coming from the front room. I handed her the apron and walked through the open doorway into a space that resembled an elementary school cafeteria, right down to the row of metal cafeteria tables that cut through the center.

Dragging those tables from the school next door in a moment of anarchistic fervor had been my proudest episode of thievery. Then, in a decidedly un-thief-like way, we had painted the walls a sunny yellow, knowing full well the nature of our work meant that the place had never felt truly friendly. Still, we tried, and that’s what mattered.

Around the perimeter of the room, women talked in groups of two or three. A few had small children clinging to their legs. Two little boys sat on the floor, running matchbox cars over the linoleum, their mothers looking on silently.

A tight mewl sounded near the front door—another little boy, about six. He gave me a sidelong glance and buried his face in his mother’s leg. She watched me with a mix of desperation and practiced suspicion.

“I’m Hannah,” I said softly as I approached. “Do you need a doctor?”

The woman poked gingerly at her head. Her black hair would have been lovely had it not been caked with dried blood. “No.”

“Do you need the police?”

Her features twisted in anger. “They’s the reason I got this.” She gestured to her head. “Trey didn’ like that I called ‘em on his ass yesterday. Shoulda never done it. Wasn’t even that bad.”

The child sniffled again, and the woman bent and whispered in his ear. He wrapped his bony arms around her, and she picked him up and cradled him against her chest, his head resting on her unbloodied shoulder.

I waited, feeling like an intruder, heart aching. There was so much hurt in that embrace, but there was love too. I envied them that, even as I reminded myself that I was there trying to help people not get their asses kicked. We didn’t receive state funds and weren’t under obligation to report, but seeing guys get away with hurting these women made me stabby. She looked back at me, and I realized the other women in the room were watching me too.

I swallowed hard. “It’s up to you,” I said. “We won’t force you to file a report. We’re here to provide temporary sleeping quarters and a nighttime meal.” I lowered my tone. “But if you need to get away from someone, a police record may be helpful.”

The woman shook her head. “It ain’t gon’ do no good.”

“Down here, they never show up until it’s too late anyway,” called a gruff voice. Behind me, the short, squat woman who had spoken sat with her hands folded over her protruding abdomen. “Then, he’s back at you before the next day is done.”

The other women nodded their agreement, and I resisted the urge to nod along.

Ms. LaPorte emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the apron tied to her waist. “Thirty-three minutes is no kind of response time at all,” she said. “Let’s have a look at you, dear.”

The words echoed in my ears. It was the same thing Ms. LaPorte had said to me nearly five years before when I had arrived at the shelter with two T-shirts, a pair of jeans, and a fluttering in my abdomen that wasn’t nerves. Do you have a game plan? She had asked. I’d nodded. Yes. And it needs to happen soon.

Let’s have a look at you, dear.

My knees wobbled. Relax, Hannah. No one knows who he was. Not even Ms. LaPorte.

If he knew where you were,