Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him so tight all the good in him would start to seep into her, too. But touch alone couldn’t close all the gaps between their two lives.
“You know, I got a scar up a little higher, if you want to rub that one, too,” LJ drawled.
A smile tugged at her lips and she sat up. “You’re terrible, you know that?”
“I know it.” He grinned, leaning back with his elbows propped on the porch edge. “Mama’s been trying my whole life to return me to the stork, but he wouldn’t take me back without a receipt.”
“That’s not what she told me. She said you were lost for two months, and she just about went crazy trying to find you.” Andra shook her head. “How is that even possible?”
LJ hitched a slow roll of his shoulder. “No way to charge a phone, even if you didn’t lose it in the flood. If somebody wasn’t right in front of your face, there was no way of knowing if they were alive or dead. It took them three days to rescue us off the roof, because there were so many other people to get to first, and not enough Coast Guard helicopters.”
Her eyes widened as she tried to imagine the hopelessness of being stuck for that long, not knowing what would happen.
“Once they got us, I wanted to help. It was supposed to be too dangerous to go back out there, but hell, I had just been out there, and I knew folks were stuck with no medicine, no water. Most people were in pretty bad shape, but I had a strong back, even at fifteen. I got Mama to the Superdome, where there were supposed to be doctors and things, and I snuck off with some guys who had a fishing boat. A few days later, we’d hauled out everybody we could find, and we were trolling around looking for more. The cops caught us. They thought we were looking for something to steal and made us evacuate with everybody else.”
He tipped his head back, looking up at the stars.
“When I got back to the Superdome, Mama was gone. They weren’t keeping track of who died or who left—they were just sticking people on any plane that would fly. I was big, and I didn’t have any ID on me, but somebody finally figured out I was underage. They shipped me straight off to foster care.