Page 10 of Blind Luck

“We’ll get your stuff.”

Kina disappeared with her friends in tow, leaving me alone in the kitchen with a man I didn’t know and a sudden swarm of butterflies. Great. I felt bad enough without a bout of nausea.

I’d begun inching toward the door, still blinking furiously, when he took off his sunglasses. Boy, he was handsome. Probably. I mean, what I could see looked good, but he reminded me of those witnesses they blurred out on true-crime shows. You could see them, but you couldn’t.

“I’m Rusty,” he said.

“Rusty at what?”

“It’s my name. Rusty.”

“Oh.” Between the pain and his proximity, I couldn’t think straight.

“Your name is Oh?”

“No, my name is Erin.”

Actually, my name was Joy, but I hated it. Erin was the name I’d picked out for myself, and Alexa had gotten me a passport, so it was official now. She’d offered to get me a driver’s licence too, but Ari had vetoed that idea after Kai gave me a lesson in his truck and I got distracted by a raccoon and then drove through a stoplight. I could kind of see her point.

“Good to meet you, Erin.”

He laughed, but why? “What’s so funny?”

My watering eyes? Or my blotchy face?

“Sorry. It’s just this whole…”—he pointed between us—“awkwardness. My momma always said laughter was the best medicine.”

“Laughter isn’t making my eyes sting any less.”

“You want me to call an ambulance?”

“No! Do you know how much those things cost?”

Right after I escaped from the Promised Land, I’d taken the first bus that was getting the hell out of California and found myself in Rockport, Texas, cleaning hotel rooms so I could afford food. One of my roommates at the time had been bankrupted after he slipped over on a half-melted ice cream cone and broke his wrist. He’d warned me never to go near a hospital, even if I was dying. Life would be easier if you spent your money on a nice casket instead of on a healthcare provider’s Christmas party.

I did have insurance now, my brother had made sure of that, but I still wasn’t going to ride in an ambulance when Ari’s passenger seat was an option. All I had to do was call her and explain the situation and?—

“There’s no phone on the table, only a book,” Kina said.

“No, I definitely left it there.”

“A girl sitting nearby said a blond-haired guy was looking at your stuff, and he left when he noticed her watching him. She didn’t see him take the phone, but it isn’t there now, so he most likely did.”

Just my freaking luck. I was half blind, and I couldn’t even explain that to my boss.

“You want to borrow my phone?” Rusty offered.

I screwed my eyes shut harder, trying to focus. What was Ari’s number? She’d programmed it into my phone, and I’d never bothered to learn it by heart. Dumb, dumb,dumb. I should have done that. Why hadn’t I done it? I remembered Kai’s number, but if I called him, he’d never let me leave Santa Cruz again. I wiped my eyes, but that only made them hurt more, and I’d put mascara on this morning so I probably looked terrifying.

“Is my room key still on the table? I can wait for my friend upstairs.”

Why was Rusty shaking his head? And Kina too? Or had my vision just gone really weird?

“You’re going to the hospital,” Rusty said.

“But—”

“Your eyes are red, and they haven’t stopped watering.” That was true, the watering part at least. “If you won’t ride in an ambulance, and you won’t take an Uber, then I’ll drive you there.”

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