“Your foster parents won’t try and take her in?”
She snorted. “You were in the system. You know that’s not how it works.”
She was right. I knew it should work to keep the siblings together. That was probably the intent in the beginning, but a bed under a roof was more pivotal than keeping siblings together sometimes. A milliondifferent thoughts were going through my head, but I was going to school for psychology. I didn’t know what graduate school I’d be doing afterward, and I hadn’t intended to enter back into the foster world, but here I was. And here was a teenager who needed some help, some real help.
I could do that. Or I’d do what I could.
“You know who I am?” I asked.
She frowned, her thin eyebrows burrowing together. She was playing with her phone on the sleeping bag between us, turning it over and then over and then over. It was a nervous habit. She did the same thing at the center sometimes with whatever was in her hand. Pen. Pencil. Scissors.
“You’re Miss Blake.” She said it slowly. “From the center.”
“No.” I grinned. “That’s not what I meant. I’ve caught the looks from some of you when the other staff aren’t looking. I’ve heard the whispers.” I leaned forward. “Do you know who I am?”
Comprehension dawned, and she nodded again, slowly.
“You know who protects me?” Whether I want him to or not.
Though a small voice reminded me that he backed away. He let me come into this warehouse by myself. He would’ve known the risks, and he still gave me space.
Some fear crept in her gaze. She lowered her head once more. “Yeah. I know.”
Well, that was an easier stepping stone to start with—
She raised her head, determination gleaming back at me. Her chin was firm. “It’s why I’m here.”
I opened my mouth, surprised.
She continued before I could say anything else, gesturing to the hallway. “He’s got a rule. You know that? No minor girls can be approached.”
I closed my mouth on a snap. “What?”
“If we approach the gangs, the pimps, the dealers, that’s different. But if we don’t, we’re to be left alone. Anyone who breaks those rulesare, well, you know what happens. They don’t show their face again. He did that. Neighborhood changed when he took over.”
“Creighton did that?”
She frowned. “I don’t know his name. They just call him Boss Lane or Boss Line. Something like that. The psychopath one, right? That’s what else they say about him, but everyone knows who you are.” She began grinning. “When I realized that you were the same Blake that’s the Boss Line’s woman, I almost shit myself. Crea thought it was so funny too. My sissie. I told her, too, when I figured it out. I had to sit down in the bathroom, right there in the stall. I was so shook up, I didn’t even get to the toilet. Had to sit on the floor. Good thing I know you guys clean those floors or I would’ve shit my pants all over again.”
Creighton protected the girls.
That was still rattling around in my head.
He did that for me. I knew he did. Or because of me. Because I’d been one of those girls.
He would’ve thought about it that way.
“He never told me,” I murmured, softly.
She grew quiet, angling her head to the side. “He didn’t? I’d think that’d be something he’d tell you right away. Make you feel good about it. You know?”
“No. Not Creighton.” He wasn’t like that. He didn’t do anything for credit.
“Anyways, you think you can help me and Crea somehow?” She shrugged at me. “I mean, that’s the reason you asked me if I knew who you were. Right? And why you told me you’d been a runaway too. You were doing all that to say that you can help us out? What are you going to do? You’re going to ask your boyfriend to help us somehow? I bet he’s got people everywhere. Bet he could grease the wheels and get my sister in my same foster home.” She quieted, but her lip was back to trembling again. She sniffled. “You think he could do that?”
“I think.” I needed to decide. To ask for Creighton’s help or not. But what was I doing? Of course I’d ask, and Creighton wasn’t spiteful. He would help merely because I asked him.
A new wave of gratitude swept through me, heating me up again. This was a new consideration for Creighton because a lesser man would have held this over my head, but he wouldn’t. He would never do that to me. That’s not the kind of man he was.
