Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,104

stuffing notebooks and laptops back into bags, and chucking our empty coffee cups. I shuffled out of the room after my study group. Beth was right. Even in my mind, these people weren’t my friends. I didn’t have too many of those anymore, but I looked at Beth with her severe hair and Andrew with his shirt buttoned up to his ears and tried to imagine them at one of our epic Evil-Doer parties. I tried to imagine me at another Evil-Doer party and couldn’t do it.

“Something smell bad, Haas?” Andrew asked.

“Nah,” I said, blinking as we stepped into the sharp June sunlight. “Just remembering some ancient history.”

“You probably have the Classics memorized too. Got some Odyssey up in that steel trap of yours?”

I met his gaze steadily.

“Speak, Memory—

Of the cunning hero,

The wanderer, blown off course time and again…Sounds like you, Andy.”

“Shut up. And don’t call me Andy.”

Sanaa hid a smile in her coat collar. “See you all Monday,” she said to the others, then moved to stand beside me. “You’re so mean to poor Andrew.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never met a guy with zero interest in hiding his short-comings.”

“He’s just jealous. He struggles to get this stuff down and it’s all so easy for you.”

I could’ve laughed at that if I wasn’t so damn tired.

“So.” Sanaa tossed a lock of silky black hair over her shoulder. “Any weekend plans? I have an extra ticket to The Revivalists at the Warfield tomorrow night.”

A couple of mild excuses came to me, but I was too tired to bullshit too. “I’m out of commission. No social engagements for me until graduation and the bar exam.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy.”

I shrugged and tried a smile. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Okay,” she said, with her own smile that barely contained her disappointment. “See you Monday, then.”

“Yep.”

I watched her walk away and the weariness hit me.

It did that sometimes, like being punched in the gut. The late nights and sleeplessness, stress and anxiety; it all bowled right into me. No beers with the guys. No dates with hot study partners. No sex, no parties...

“Suck it up, Haas,” I muttered into the wind as I began to walk. “This is what you signed up for.”

At the Civic Center Muni station, I got onto the J line for Duboce Triangle, and slumped against my seat. The train wasn’t crowded with rush hour commuters yet. Friday was my one early day; no late classes. I was usually home by four, instead of five or six.

The rumble of the train beneath me lulled my tired eyes closed. The Family Law code seemed projected onto the back of my eyelids—an unpleasant side effect of eidetic memory. The more I committed something to memory, the greater the chance it would stick with me forever.

…when one parent has left the child in the care and custody of another person for a period of one year without any provision for the child’s support, or without communication, that parent is presumed to have abandoned the child…

Those words I would never forget, and the gentle gyrations of the train took me back to last August. Ancient history. I wasn’t tired, then. Not yet.

The drab building with the Department of Family and Child Services sign loomed across the street. The sky was overcast; a chilly wind swept over me as I held the bundle in my arms more tightly. It didn’t feel like summer, but like a cold winter was about to set in.

“Tell me again what happens when I turn her in?” I asked.

Jackson gave me a wary, side-eyed glance. “They’ll try to track Molly down.”

“I tried that and got nowhere.”

“Then the baby goes into foster care.”

“Foster care.” I glanced down at the sleeping face tucked in the blankets. My arms were getting tired. Olivia was small, but holding her on the Muni, then the three-block walk was rougher on me than any workout at the Hastings gym. I would have taken an Uber but I didn’t have a car seat.

I had nothing.

“It’s the best thing,” Jackson said for the hundredth time since the party, six days ago.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “The best thing.”

He gave me a dimmer, sympathetic version of his mega-watt smile. “C’mon. The light’s green.”

He nudged my arm to walk but I didn’t move. My feet were rooted to the corner.

I cast my gaze over the busy city streets. The wind whistled through the cement buildings that rose up all around us, cold and flat and gray. I tried to imagine walking into the CPS