Page 18 of The Pucking Wrong Number

She was gorgeous.

More than gorgeous. Golden and perfect. Her beauty hit me like a train wreck, knocking me into some sort of crazy trance. She was the kinda girl where you had to actually blink a couple times to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. My fingers traced one of the pictures. She was seated on the grass, her head tipped up into the sunlight, a soft smile on her face. She was blowing my fucking mind.

I dragged my eyes away from her perfection and read through the information he’d gathered.

She was an orphan. The death dates of both parents were listed, and it looked like she'd been in the foster system since she was ten.

I knew I should feel bad about this angel being alone for so long, but I also knew she probably felt like an outcast. Abandoned. Rejected.

Maybe she’d been waiting for me like I’d been waiting for her.

Maybe I could get her to want me as much as I was wanting her.

You're an asshole, my inner voice seethed, but as my eyes roved over her picture, reminding me that she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, I couldn't find it in myself to fucking care.

I was fucking hooked, like there was something magical about her.

I continued reading, noting the address he’d provided. It was in a really shitty part of town, and I immediately began obsessing over if she’d be safe getting to her place, especially since her preferred method of transportation was walking.

He’d found the companies she worked for—one sounded like a doctor's office and the other, “Great Food Kitchen”, sounded like some kind of restaurant. I scanned the rest of the list…which was short. She was taking classes at the local community college, and she had straight A’s.

There were two other pictures of her. One was the one I’d just been dying over, and the other was of her as a little girl that must've been in her state file. In the picture, she was staring at the person taking it with those big golden eyes, heaviness and sorrow there that you never wanted to see in a 10-year-old. I could feel the aching sadness that lived within her.

And that was what got me. That was what threw me over the edge, spiraling me forward where I wouldn't be able to control myself anymore. Because the look in her eyes, the pain reflected there…it was the same pain that I felt every fucking day. This was a girl that could understand.

Without thinking, I got up from the couch a moment later, grabbing my keys and clutching the paper with her address tightly.

A second later, I was racing my Corvette down the street, breaking every traffic law as I rushed to get to her place to do…I don't know what.

To see her in person? Even though I wasn't sure that was a good idea. I already felt like I'd chase her to the fucking ends of the earth.

But a part of me was still worried she wasn't real, that something inside of me had imagined all of this. Because a person as broken and worthless as me, he didn't deserve the stars to align like this. He didn't deserve a goddess like her.

But there was no part of me that cared.

Deserving or not… She was going to be mine.

* * *

I was two blocks away, in the shittiest neighborhood I'd ever seen, when I realized how much my lime green Corvette would stand out. She was sure to notice a vehicle like this if it was parked nearby.

I maneuvered the car into a tight parallel parking stall and climbed out. There was a group of kids playing on the sidewalk across the street, an abandoned basketball at their feet as they stared with wide eyes and mouths at my ride. I locked the doors and strode over to them.

“If my car’s still here, and still has all of its parts when I return, I'll give each of you a hundred bucks,” I told them.

The five little boys’ eyes widened even further, and they all nodded eagerly. I shot them a chin lift, and I set off down the street, annoyed that two blocks still separated me from her.

I growled when I turned the corner and saw the complex that matched the address on the paper. She lived in a shit hole. More than a shit hole. This place should have been condemned years ago. The front gate hung askew, and with the peeling paint and the decaying wood, the whole place looked seconds away from collapsing.

There was a homeless man camped out in front of the building, for Christ’s sake.

The street was pretty quiet though, and it gave me some time to plot how I would convince my girl to leave and move in with me.

Burn the place down?

I’d just had that thought when, like a mirage, she turned the corner. Her backpack was held tightly against her chest, and her face was pointing down, like she was trying to make sure she didn't make eye contact with anyone.

The pictures hadn’t done her justice. I was thirty feet away, and I was getting hard from the combined effect of that face…that hair…and that body…

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