Page 46 of The Last Promise You Made

Her nails were leaving marks in her wrist again as she shook her head.

“Okay,” he said. “Sit tight. Gia and I are just going to get out and talk for a minute. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

He grabbed his hat and slid out. I did the same, and we met in front of the Escalade.

“What the hell?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know. That… I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think this is just her being scared of the people who killed her mom. This is like… I don’t know. Maybe she’s never been to a mall? Maybe she and her mom always had things delivered? Maybe it’s just the unknown?”

Ryder looked toward the mall and the people still darting inside as the rain lightened to a mist. Puddles glimmered along the blacktop, the car lights and the neon signs reflecting in them.

“Yesterday, I ordered her a toy online. A stuffed animal she said she’d lost.” His throat bobbed. “I guess we could try it that way. I have no idea what size she wears. Maybe I should have brought Mama or Sadie?”

It stung a bit that I was standing in front of him, and he didn’t think I could help him. But to be fair, I was as lost as he was. I watched as a woman walked by, talking on her phone, and an idea hit me.

“Why don’t I go in, and I can video call you? She can pick out things as I show them to her?”

“Still don’t know what size to get.”

I looked into the car. “Well, we can ask her. And if she packed her spare clothes I put back in her room after I finished the laundry, there’d be sizes on those.”

Ryder rounded the car, opened the back passenger door opposite Addy, and climbed inside it as I stood looking in at them.

“Gia says she’ll go in for us. She can call us on the phone, show us the items in the store, and you can pick things right from here. How does that sound?” he asked.

Addy’s little shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, her nails releasing her wrist. She nodded.

“We just need to know what size clothes to get you,” he said. “Can I look at your things in your backpack again?”

She nodded.

We pulled out the clothes she’d put inside her go bag, searching for sizes.

“How about your shoes? Can we see them for a second?” he asked.

She pulled one off and handed it to him. We looked around inside it until we found the size, and then he handed it back.

“Okay,” I said, taking my phone out of my pocket and handing it over to Ryder. “Put in your number.”

We both hesitated as our fingers brushed against each other. My skin broke out in goosebumps. It wasn’t just because our skin had touched. This was the idea of his number being on my phone. Of him having mine. As if there was something more between us.

Once he’d added it in, I started to shut the door, and he stopped me, fishing out his wallet and handing over a credit card. “Here. If you have an issue using it, I can show them my ID over the phone.”

I took it and jogged toward the mall entrance with the mist coating my makeup-free face.

I went into Target, figuring it would have pretty much everything we needed. First, I headed to the video games because that seemed to hold her interest the most. I dialed Ryder’s number, and my heart flipped at the sight of both their faces squished onto the screen.

“Hey,” I said. “So, just holler or tap Ryder or whatever when you see something you want.”

And that was how we shopped, moving from the video games, down the toy aisle, where she asked for Legos and puzzles with a smile taking over her face. She seemed uninterested in the clothes, but I added a coat, pajamas, underwear, and socks to a pile of jeans, leggings, T-shirts, and sweaters. In the shoe aisle, she only wanted another pair of shoes that looked like her Vans, but I threw in some boots because a girl always needs boots.

“Okay, almost done here,” I said. “Let me just grab a couple of things I need.” I went to the adult clothing area, throwing in a few items for myself so I didn’t need to be washing clothes every other day while I was in town. Ryder didn’t say anything, but when I looked at the screen, his eyes narrowed at the cotton underwear I tossed on the pile.

The cart was already overflowing when I breezed by the bedding department, and Ryder hollered at me to go back. He asked Addy what she wanted her room to look like, and she just did what she always did when she didn’t know—she shrugged.

“Mila loves rainbows. Is there something you love like that?” he asked.

I scanned the shelves, looking for anything that might intrigue her based on the limited time I’d gotten to know her. I was just about to give up when I saw, shoved at the back of a shelf, a fuzzy blanket with the dragons from the book she’d shown me yesterday. It wasn’t large enough for the double bed in the room, but it was something that added color and would be solely hers. I grabbed it without even asking and tossed it on top of the pile.

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