Losing Hope

absolutely no explanation. I’m just standing here like a creepy stalker and I have no idea how to even ask her if she’s the girl I lost all those years ago.

She eyes me warily up and down. I hold out my hand, hoping to ease some of her fear with an introduction. “I’m Holder.”

She drops her gaze to my extended hand and, rather than accept the handshake, she actually takes a step away from me.

“What do you want?” she says sharply, cautiously peering back up to my face.

Definitely not the reaction I expected.

“Um,” I say, not really meaning to appear taken aback. But honestly, this isn’t going in the direction I was hoping it would go. I don’t even know what direction that was at this point. I’m starting to doubt my own sanity. I glance across the parking lot at my car and wish I had just kept walking, but I know if I did, I’d regret not confronting her.

“This might sound lame,” I warn, looking back at her, “but you look really familiar. Do you mind if I ask what your name is?”

She releases a breath and rolls her eyes, then reaches behind her to grab the doorknob of her car. “I’ve got a boyfriend,” she says. She turns and opens the door, then quickly climbs into the car. She starts to pull the door shut, but I catch it with my hand.

I can’t let her leave until I’m positive she’s not Hope. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life and I’m not about to let thirteen years of guilt and obsessing and analyzing her disappearance go to waste just because I’m afraid I might piss her off.

“Your name. That’s all I want.”

She stares at my hand holding open her door. “Do you mind?” she says through clenched teeth. Her eyes fall to the tattoo on my arm and my adrenaline kicks up a notch when she reads it, hoping it’ll spark some recognition on her part. If she can’t remember my face, I’m almost positive she’ll remember the nickname I gave her and Les.

Not even the slightest jar of emotion flashes in her eyes.

She attempts to pull the door shut again but I refuse to release it until I get what I need from her.

“Your name. Please.”

When I say please this time, her expression eases slightly and she looks back up at me. It isn’t until she looks at me this way, without all the anger, that I realize why I’m so flustered. It’s because I care more for this girl than any other girl in the world who isn’t Les. I loved Hope like a sister when we were kids and seeing her again has brought back all those same feelings. It’s causing my hands to shake and my heart to pound and my chest to ache because all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and hold her and thank God we finally found each other.

But all those feelings come to a screeching halt when the wrong answer comes out of her mouth. “Sky,” she says quietly.

“Sky,” I say aloud, trying to make sense of it. Because she’s not Sky. She’s Hope. She can’t not be my Hope.

Sky.

Sky, Sky, Sky.

She’s not saying she’s Hope, but the name Sky is still eerily familiar. What’s so significant about that name?

Then it hits me.

Sky.

This is the girl Grayson was referring to Saturday night.

“Are you sure?” I ask her, hoping for a miracle that she’s as dense as Shayna and just gave me the wrong name. If she really isn’t Hope, then I completely understand her reaction to my seemingly erratic behavior.

She sighs and pulls her ID from her back pocket. “Pretty sure I know my own name,” she says, flashing her driver’s license in front of me.

I take it from her.

Linden Sky Davis.

A wave of disappointment crashes around me, swallowing me up. Drowning me. I feel like I’m losing her all over again.

“Sorry,” I say, backing away from her car. “My mistake.”

She watches me as I back up even farther so she can shut her door. In a way, she looks disappointed. I don’t even want to think about what kind of expression she’s seeing on my face right now. I’m sure it’s a mixture of anger, disappointment, embarrassment . . . but most of all, fear. I watch as she drives away and I feel like I just let Hope go all over again.

I know she’s not Hope. She proved she wasn’t Hope.

So why is my gut instinct telling me to stop her?

“Shit,” I groan, threading my hand through my hair. I’m seriously messed up. I can’t get over Hope. I can’t get over Les. It’s getting so bad it’s to the point that I’m chasing random girls down in the damn grocery store parking lot?

I turn away and slam my fist down on the hood of the car next to me, pissed at myself for thinking I finally had it all together. I don’t have it together. Not in the least.

* * *

I’m not even completely out of my car before I have Facebook pulled up on my phone. I enter Sky’s name and no results come up. I swing open the front door and head straight up the stairs to get my laptop.

I can’t let this rest. If I don’t convince myself that she isn’t Hope, I’ll drive myself crazy. I open my laptop and enter her information again but come up empty. I search every site I can think of for over half an hour, but her name doesn’t return any results. I try searching by her birthday, but come up empty again.

I type in Hope’s information and immediately have a screen full of news articles and returns. But I don’t need to look at them. I’ve spent the last several years reading every article and every lead that’s reported about Hope’s disappearance. I know them by heart. I slam the computer shut.

I need to run.

Chapter Eight

She has no distinct features that I can remember. No birthmarks. The fact that I saw a girl with brown hair and brown eyes and felt she was the same brown-haired, brown-eyed girl from thirteen years ago is quite possibly borderline obsessive.

Am I obsessed? Do I somehow feel as though I won’t be able to move past Les’s death if I don’t rectify at least one of the things I’ve fucked up in my life?

I’m being ridiculous. I’ve got to let it go. I’ve got to let go of the fact that I’ll never have Les back and I’ll never find Hope.

I have these same thoughts for the entire two miles of my run. The weight in my chest lightens little by little with each step I take. I remind myself with each step that Sky is Sky and Hope is Hope and Les is dead and I’m the only one left and I’ve got to get my shit together.

The run begins to help ease some of the tension built up from the incident at the grocery store. I’ve convinced myself that Sky isn’t Hope, but for some reason even though I’m almost positive she’s not Hope, I still find myself thinking about Sky. I can’t get the thought of her out of my head and I wonder if that’s Grayson’s fault. If I hadn’t heard him talking about her at the party the other night, I probably would have moved on from the grocery store incident fairly quickly and I wouldn’t be thinking about her at all.

But I can’t stop this growing urge to protect her. I know how Grayson is and somehow, just seeing this girl for even a few minutes, I know she doesn’t deserve what he’s likely going to put her through. There isn’t a single girl in this world who deserves the type of guy Grayson is.

Sky said she had a boyfriend at the store and the possibility that she might consider Grayson her boyfriend