Taming Hollywood's Baddest Boy - Max Monroe Page 0,75

all so fucking painful.

The drive is short, and thankfully, I only pass one other car on the road before I reach my destination—Earl’s.

But when I pull into the small gravel parking lot, I’m surprised to find a small crowd of people standing in the grass on the side of the shop.

There have to be fifteen or twenty people standing there, doing god knows what.

Probably preparing for some kind of Alaskan wilderness adventure.

That is what Earl is known for.

I hop out of my car and slide the yellow kayak out of the windows. It falls to the gravel with a thud, and I immediately look up to make sure Earl isn’t watching. Lord knows I’ll end up with some kind of damage fee if he spots me tossing his kayak around like a sack of potatoes.

Thankfully, he is nowhere to be found.

I lug the damn plastic banana toward the back of the store and place it against the side of the building beside the rest of his rentals.

Once I’m certain it’s stable and isn’t going to create some kind of domino effect of falling water equipment, I walk around the building and back toward the entrance.

But the crowd of people has spread out, and I’m having to weave through them to get to the store’s front door.

“Here ya go.” An older lady with a clipboard and bright white hair hands me a flashlight and a yellow ribbon.

I look at her in confusion, but she’s so focused on the clipboard, she doesn’t actually meet my eyes.

“Uh…what’s this for?”

“The search for the missing girl.”

My heart drops. “There’s a missing girl?”

“Yep,” she says and jots down something on her clipboard. “We’re going to start in the woods behind Earl’s and work our way toward the bay.”

And I thought I had problems. At least I know where I’m at. At least I’m not lost out there in the freaking forest.

“What happened? How did she go missing?”

“Well, we’re not sure. Her sister called Sheriff Townsend and let him know she hadn’t heard from the girl in days.”

“Can you tell me some information about her? How old is she? What does she look like? What’s her name?”

“She’s twenty-four. Blond hair…” The woman looks up from her clipboard and meets my eyes. “Green ey—” She pauses, and her jaw plunges.

“What? What’s wrong?”

The woman fumbles with her clipboard and tugs a piece of paper out from under the stack. She hands it to me with shaky fingers.

I look down at the sheet and see its information about the missing girl.

Age: 24

Appearance: Blond hair, green eyes, 5’2”, 105 lbs.

Name: Billie Harris

Wait…what?

I blink several times to read the name again.

Billie Harris

And then I look to the right of the page and find me, staring back at myself from a fucking picture. A horrible picture, mind you, but that’s probably not the biggest concern right now.

“It’s you,” the woman says.

“It’s me,” I repeat.

Holy hell, why is there a freaking search party for me?!

“Oh my goodness!” she shouts so loud I nearly drop the sheet of paper out of my hands. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” I can tell this woman is about two seconds away from bringing the rest of the search party—my search party—into this awkward conversation, and panic settles into my chest.

“Wait…n-no…” I attempt to stutter through an explanation. “I’m not missing.”

Confusion shoots across her face.

“I was never missing,” I add. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”

“You weren’t missing,” the woman repeats, but I think I’ve baffled her so much, her head is about to explode. “But why do they think you’re missing?”

“I have no idea.”

Again, why is this happening right now?

I go on a hiking trip with fucking Luca Weaver and come back with a broken heart and my face on a goddamn missing person’s flier!

Jesus, Mary, and all the saints, this has to be the worst day of my entire life.

It takes me over two hours to get everything straightened out with Sheriff Townsend.

Once the search party realized the missing girl had been found, it turned into a freaking circus. First, they were all relieved and asking me if I was okay and what happened, a small-town crowd of people surrounding me with concern and worry in their eyes.

But once I explained I was never really missing in the first place, the tone changed and they all kind of turned on me for wasting their time.

I can’t blame them. I’d probably be pissed, too.

But at the same time, I’m not the one who called in