Page 36 of Losing a Piece of Me

I laugh. “This is exactly why I don’t give out your number.”

He shrugs and moves to get in the truck.

“I’ll give her a call after I drop off the keys and get paid from this job. It’s still early, I can probably get it out of the way today. Did you happen to catch her name?”

“Hannah, I think.”

I nod at him and slip the paper into my pocket before jumping back into my truck and driving across town.

The young couple is ecstatic to have their first home finished and move-in ready. They give me the check and rush away to go check out their house.

I run by the bank and deposit the check, noticing they gave me a bonus with a note saying thank you.

As I’m sitting at the old-school drive-in restaurant, I pull the paper from my pocket and dial the number while I wait for my food.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Hannah?”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“This is Striker Murphy, I got your message about needing an estimate for an expansion on your store.”

The carhop places my tray of food on my window and I pass her a twenty and wave off the change.

“Oh, yes. Great, when can you come by and check out the store?”

“I actually just finished the job we’ve been working on, so I can come today if you’d like.”

She practically squeals. “That would be fantastic.” She rattles off the address and as soon as I finish my lunch, I’m on the road.

The two-hour drive seems to drag on forever. Whenever possible, I try to avoid the city. I hate the craziness of it all. Everything moves too fast for me.

The radio in my truck is busted, so the drive is quiet. It leaves my mind free to wander and, as always, it wanders to Lex.

I haven’t seen or heard from her since that day at the country club. My heart tells me to go after her, but my head says to stay away and let her come to me.

Luckily, I follow my head’s advice, because the tug of Lex’s presence and close proximity in the city is hard to fight.

I knew Gemma had to know where Lex lives. Even if she didn’t have an exact address, she knew something. I wanted to go to her many times and pry out any information I could get, but restrained myself - I didn’t know if I could handle seeing her and challenging her again.

I’ve always had to challenge her, but this last time, she was stronger and harder to break. She’s never been that way with me, she’s always unfolded and opened up completely to me, even if she was closed off to everyone else.

For the first week after she left, I had myself convinced that one day I would show up at home and find her on my doorstep. It didn’t happen though. Then I thought, Give her a month or two, let it all sink in, she will fold and come back to you. That hasn’t happened either.

When I pulled away from her, after our last kiss, I could have sworn I saw her walls crumble. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she hadn’t felt it after all.

I shake the thoughts from my head and pull up to a purple brick building. I check the address scribbled on the paper to confirm that this is the correct place, and climb out of the truck with a shrug.

The store is filled with clothes, shoes, furniture, and random stuff. The only common theme amongst everything is goth. Everything is black, and hard rock music is blaring over the speakers.

“Hey, can I help you?”

I look in the direction of the counter. A girl is standing behind it, dressed, unsurprisingly, in all black. Her rainbow hair is pulled up high on her head, falling all over in a messy sort of way.

“I’m Striker. Are you Hannah?”

She bounces around from behind the counter, giving me a chance to see her full outfit. Black leather pants, a black tank top covered in rips and held together by safety-pins, black shoes with a three-inch platform. “I’m so glad you made it. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

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