Chance Taken

But I do, very much, despite not wanting to at all. He’s hot and friendly and if I didn’t know what he really is, I’d want to get to know him a lot better. Which is all wrong and the last thing I actually want. It’s all so maddeningly complicated.

So for a start, I’d settle for finding a way to keep a clear head around him. That would do very nicely indeed, thank you very much.

* * *

Chance

I dreaded going to the foundation so much, that I couldn’t relax at all, not even a little bit, on my bike ride over. Then I spent almost ten minutes knocking, perpetually saying to myself that if she doesn’t open on the next one, I’ll just leave.

But Cross was clear in his instructions to me and I do want to get these hours done as soon as possible. Also, the alternative was going back to the hospital and sitting in the stuffy waiting room hoping Hunter wakes up soon. And the thought of doing that for another day and night actually made me stiff with dread. Because what if he doesn’t? What if these last couple of weeks of the strained relationship between us is the last time we ever spend together? What if I never get to tell him how much I appreciate his friendship?

Then Veronica opened the door and my mood instantly lifted. She stood there in her leggings and crop top, a band of her milky, soft-looking stomach visible over the band, her hair and makeup messed up like she’d just woken up after a night of passion and her glasses askew on her pretty face. She even smelled of sex somehow, or something very close to it. Her huge blue eyes and the startled look on her pretty face were priceless too.

She is smoking hot and normally we’d be doing it by now. But then she starts talking to me and that fantasy pops like a balloon.

But she was friendlier than I dared hope, until she woke up enough to become catty again.

I’ve been sitting next to her all morning now, and most of my initial happy reaction to seeing her is gone. She came back from her shower smelling like she’d dumped a whole bottle of perfume on herself and hasn’t said more than two words to me, let alone looked at me for more than two seconds.

She’s just sitting there with huge gold headphones on, staring at the screen where women of all shapes and sizes and in varying degrees of dishevelment are mouthing words I can’t hear. Only I can hear them, just not from their mouths, but from the mouths of the women on my screen.

The videos and interviews she records are damn depressing. I feel sorry for her, because she has to listen to these sad stories day in and day out. That must be the true source of her sourness. Maybe it’s not even just me personally. Though I’m probably deluding myself there. She thinks I’m one of the guys who traffics these women, and I still have no idea how to change that.

I’ve gone through two documentaries on her YouTube channel and three interviews she’s done and I absolutely can’t listen to another one. Plus, with every hour that passes and my phone doesn’t ping with news of Hunter, I’m dreading the next hour and what it might bring more. But maybe no news is good news.

I stand up and stretch, which wakes all the aches and pains in my arms and back then walk over to her desk. She’s so engrossed in the video she’s editing, she doesn’t notice me right away.

“Do you want to get some lunch?” I ask loudly causing her to look up in alarm, the same startled expression on her face that was there this morning.

She looks so damn lost and scared and it makes me want to just drop everything and protect her. A brainless impulse, seeing as she’s a total firecracker, who also hates me, but there it is.

“Some lunch?” I ask again once she takes her headphones off and looks at me questioningly. “I know a good sandwich place near here.”

Her eyes narrow at me like I’ve said the wrongest possible thing.

“They also do vegan stuff,” I add, thinking she might like that better.

Then her face brightens. “You mean Julio’s? Sure let’s go.”

She leaps out of her seat, sending her breasts bouncing under the loose, silky cream-colored t-shirt she’s wearing, and my mood instantly lifts. She’s still wearing her glasses, and she styled her hair in the same way she wore it at the festival, in long lazy waves falling down her back. For a while after she came back to the office, I tried to imagine just how soft her hair would feel if I ran my hand through it, but then she wouldn’t even look at me for hours and it all turned sour again.

But that’s different now. I even consider inviting her to ride on the back of my bike to the sandwich place, but she strides right past it, her hips swaying, sending the long pink skirt she’s wearing sashaying side to side and I’m thinking walking’s actually not such a bad idea.

“How many videos did you get through?” she asks as I fall in step beside her.

“Too many,” I say with a chuckle. “They’re so damn depressing. How do you handle it?”

The look she shoots me is sharp enough to cut through bone.

“Depressing? Those women’s stories are more than that. They’re tragic,” she says and the angry look on her face just adds a whole new dimension to her attractiveness. It’s not so much the anger, but her fierceness, I think.

“Yes, tragic,” I say. “That’s what I meant.”

I did, it’s not a lie, but she rolls her eyes at me like she’s sure it is.

I should begin convincing her I’m not the bad guy she thinks I am. Cross and the others were pretty clear on that too. I thought showing her that photo of me and Harper would start the ball rolling in the right direction, but I was clearly wrong.

“But I think one of the women wasn’t entirely truthful in her interview,” I say. “Shanaya or whatever. She wasn’t trafficked.”