Page 24 of Runaway Road (Runaway 1)

She was probably seven or eight inches shorter than my six three. She was thin, but there was strength in her body too, especially those toned legs. Damn, she had legs that didn’t quit. Second to her eyes, they were my favorite feature.

She swallowed, using her napkin to wipe her soft, supple lips. “Have you heard of Temecula?”

“No.”

“It’s about ninety minutes southeast of LA. Great weather, which is a good thing, considering where I lived. When I was sixteen, I ran away from home.”

My jaw dropped. “Sixteen?”

“Sixteen,” she repeated.

“May I ask why?”

“My parents were more interested in drugs than their daughter.” She sighed. “I didn’t think anything of it when I was little. Isn’t that crazy? I was just a kid and thought everyone’s parents were stoned twenty-four seven.”

That wasn’t crazy but it was sad. A runaway? She didn’t seem hard enough to have lived on the streets. She seemed too refined and delicate.

“I learned soon enough it wasn’t normal. I learned how to take care of myself. And when things got really bad, I decided it wasn’t worth staying.”

At sixteen. It was unfathomable. “Where’d you go?”

“I stayed in Temecula, actually. I didn’t really have a plan when I left home. I was mad and a teenager and just . . . left. Rational thought didn’t really enter the mix at that point.”

Yeah. Because she’d been sixteen. “I can understand that.”

“So I left with a backpack full of clothes and some cash I’d been stealing from my parents. I was going to walk to LA.”

“What made you stay?”

“I met a friend. She’s my best friend to this day and was living with two other kids in a junkyard outside of town at the time.”

“A junkyard?”

Londyn nodded. “Yes. That junkyard became my home for two years. Eventually, six of us lived there. That Cadillac? That’s where I lived. I slept in the backseat.”

All I could do was blink with my mouth hanging open.

No wonder she hovered over that car.

“Did your parents ever . . .”

“No, they never found me. I don’t know if they even looked. As far as I know, they didn’t report me missing or contact the police. They just let me go.”

My jaw clicked shut and a rage of temper ran through my blood. Pieces of shit.

“Don’t get angry on me there,” Londyn teased, bumping my elbow with her own. “We weren’t completely without adult supervision. There was a man who ran the junkyard and watched out for us. It was his property, and Lou let us live there. He let us use the bathroom and shower in his shop. If we got sick, he’d get us medicine.”

I blinked at her. “He didn’t report it?”

“He knew that if the cops came, we’d be gone. And we were all better off in a junkyard than going back to the hells where we’d come from. He didn’t kick us out and that was more than any adult in my life had done for me before.”

“Foster care?”

She huffed. “I wasn’t going into foster care and no one was going to make me.”

“So you lived in a car for two years.”

“I did.” A small smile toyed on her lips.