Run To You

“I don’t have a job. Remember? I can’t just hire movers.”
    “You have a trust fund.”
    She wasn’t even surprised he knew about the trust. Irritated, but no longer surprised. “That isn’t my money.”
    “What do you mean? Of course it’s your money.”
    She shook her head. “It’s my mother’s money.”
    “Your father set it up for you when you were born.”
    The money had never been hers. She didn’t even know exactly how much was in it these days, and it was best not to even think about it. “My mother is the trustee.”
    His brows lowered beneath the silver rim of his sunglasses. “When does it stipulate your age of maturity?”
    “Twenty-five or marriage.” Which was why at the age of eighteen her stepfather drove her to Vegas and tried to force her to marry his nephew. Carlos and her mother had been divorced for several years, but he’d never given up on the idea of controlling all that money. He just hadn’t counted on Stella’s refusal to go along with his plan.
    “You’re twenty-eight,” he pointed out needlessly.
    She shook her head and pushed away the memory of those few days. Of the drive there and thinking she was going on a fun vacation, only to be locked up in a hotel room with a boy her age who didn’t speak English. He’d been even more afraid than she’d been, and he watched her escape out a bathroom window while Carlos slept. She remembered calling her mother and her mother’s hurtful response. It had seemed to Stella that Marisol had been more angry than concerned. More angry over the potential loss of the money than concerned for Stella’s welfare. “It’s my mother’s money,” she repeated. “She supports herself and Abuela and my other grandparents in Mexico.”
    “What about you?”
    “She took care of me until I was eighteen.” Stella might not have had the latest or best of everything, but other people had less. “Then I started taking care of myself.”
    “Your father put that money in trust for you. You should have gained control of it at twenty-five.”
    “It’s in a joint trust account, now.”
    “What?” His brows drawn in confusion, he glanced at her, then back at the road. “How did that happen?”
    Stella shrugged. “Guilt.” On Stella’s twenty-fifth birthday, the day the trust seamlessly settled on Stella and her mother’s job as trustee ended, Marisol came to Stella with a folder of documents and a boatload of guilt. How would Marisol and the grandparents live, if not for the money? Did Stella want them all to live in the street? Was she so selfish she’d watch them starve?
    She finished her caramel macchiato and put the cup in the holder. “My father never gave a shit about me, and I don’t want to talk about his money.” It was a useless conversation. Useless to think about all the things she could do with that money or that her father had set up the trust because he cared. “Are the Gallo brothers going to come after me when I go home? Even if I move?”
    He dipped his head and looked at a rest stop sign on the side of the road. “Do you want to run into them when you’re out and about?”
    “Miami is a big city. Maybe they’ll forget about me.”
    He turned on his blinker and merged to the right. “You smashed Lefty Lou’s bum hand. Probably broke it. I doubt he’ll forget about that.”
    “You knocked Ricky out and put that flashbang under the Gallos’ car!” Her scalp got a little tingly.
    “Exactly.”
    “They’re probably looking for you, too.”
    “Probably.” He pulled into the rest stop.
    “What am I going to do, now?”
    “Well, I don’t know about you, but I have got to piss like a racehorse.”
    “That’s disgusting.” Her nose crinkled.
    “Sorry.” He shoved the vehicle into park and turned the key. “I have to use the facility and I suggest you do the same.” He took off his sunglasses and tossed them on the dash. “The next stop isn’t for another seventy-two miles.”
    Her life was a scary mess and he was no help except to offer bathroom break info. Without a word, she grabbed her backpack and followed him across the parking lot, past a row of palm trees, to the brick building. Because she wasn’t all that certain he wouldn’t leave her stranded, she quickly did her business and waited for him outside on a bench next to a big map of Florida behind Plexiglas. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out her cell and stared down at her blue toenail polish and rubber flip-flops as