Clara moves up to the counter to order while I check my texts. I quickly realize I have a new voicemail not a text. Strange, since I didn’t even hear my phone ring.

The call was from an unknown number, but I don’t think too much about it until I play the message and hear her voice.

“Hey, Jax, baby,” my mother says in the high-pitched tone she uses whenever she’s stoned. Even after not speaking to her for over two years, I still tense at the sound of her voice. “I was just calling to see how you were… see how stuff was going in North Carolina…” I hear rustling in the background then the bang of a door shutting.

“Okay, look.” Her voice rings with panic. “I need you to come home. I’ve gotten myself into a bit of trouble with the wrong people and if I don’t give them money, things are going to end badly. Jax, please pick up the phone. I know I’ve been a really shitty mother, but I’m still your mother and I—” Shouting cuts her off. “Jax help me. Marcus is going to k—.” It’s the last thing she says before the line goes dead.

I move the phone away from my ear and gape at the screen. Even with all the messes my mother has gotten herself into over the years, I’ve never heard her that worried. I don’t want to care about what’s going on, but I find my mind racing with different scenarios. All centered around one main thought, based on the last thing she said. She didn’t fully get out what she was going to say, but my mind fills in the blanks.

Marcus is going to kill me.

Chapter Two

Jax

For the next several seconds, time passes by in slow motion. I have no clue who Marcus is, but my bet is he’s a drug dealer my mom pissed off, maybe enough to kill her.

As Clara’s paying for the ice cream, I manage to snap out of my trance and dial back the number my mother made the call from. My pulse quickens when the operator announces the line has been disconnected.

“What the hell?” I mutter, checking the time and date of the missed call.

Yesterday morning. God dammit! I really need to stop ignoring my phone so much.

“Is everything okay?” Clara asks as she hands me a heaping cup of cookie dough ice cream. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I distractedly take the ice cream from her, still clutching my phone. “Heard from one is more like it.”

Her gaze falls to my phone. “Who was it?”

I look from my phone to the ice cream then at her. Her expression carries compassion, her lips are slightly swollen from our kissing, and her hair is tangled from me running my fingers through the strands. I want to focus on her and forget about the call. Want to live in the present, not the past. But my mother’s fearful voice is making it difficult to think about anything else.

Jax, help me.

“It was my mom,” the words slip from my lips.

Clara’s eyes pop wide. “Your mom was just on the phone? The mom you haven’t spoken to since you moved here?”

“Well, it was only a voicemail, but yeah.” Not knowing what else to do, I shovel a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth.

Clara absentmindedly stirs her ice cream as she studies me. “What did she want?”

The cashier is eavesdropping on the conversation as he refills the sprinkles, so I take Clara by the elbow and steer her toward the door. Once we’re outside, I let go of her and jerk my fingers through my hair.

“She said she needed help. That she’s in trouble with some guy named Marcus. That he’s going to kill her. Then the line went dead.” I blow out a stressed breath. “I know I shouldn’t be worried—she doesn’t deserve my worry—but I am.”

“Jax, she’s your mom, and you’re a good person, so of course you’re going to worry.” She pauses. “Do you care if I listen to the message? Or is that too personal?”

I easily hand over the phone. I trust her, despite the fact that she doesn’t trust me yet. She puts the phone up to her ear, and her skin pales as she listens to the message.

“I think you should call the cops,” she says as she hands me back the phone.

“And tell them what?” I start across the parking lot toward my car. “I’m not even sure what happened exactly. I tried to call my mom back but the line’s been disconnected. That’s normal, though. When I was growing up, I hardly ever had phone service because she’d spend the bill money on drugs.”

“Couldn’t you call someone back home to go check on her?”

“I don’t talk to anyone back at home anymore.”

“You could always file a missing person’s report. Then the police at least have to go look at the house, especially if someone is after her.” She stuffs a spoonful of gooey ice cream into her mouth.

“I doubt they’ll check on her, even with the voicemail.” I pat my pockets for my keys then open the door for Clara. “Not just because she’s an adult and there’s a certain amount of time she has to be missing, but because the police are way too aware that she pulls this kind of shit all the time.”

My mother has made it habit of vanishing over the years. Avery and I used to file reports when she was missing for more than a few days, but when I reached the age of about sixteen, I realized it was pointless. The police had stopped putting effort into finding a woman who had countless misdemeanors, including drug possession, prostitution, and assault. Besides, she always came back eventually.

She’ll come back again.