Finding You

Chapter 26

This chapter is dedicated to @HM161816!

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This chapter is incredibly long so kindly point out any mistakes or spelling errors so that I can fix them please! 

And now, Chapter 26 :)

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James' POV

Pathetic.

This is what you would call purely pathetic that I've been walking around a mall for God knows how long looking for a fucking present for a 21-year-old girl. What do you even get for somebody turning 21?

"I still can't believe Maverick is back, though. He must be fucking desperate if it took him a whole 5 months to show up again," Jace says while we walk through H&M, stopping at the Women's Accessories corner.

"I genuinely believed he'd overdosed and drowned in a pool of his own body fluids at some shit motel he found somewhere in Jersey," Smith says, which earns him a shocked look from one of the women walking past him. Jace murmurs a 'Nice one' to him.

"Yeah well, I was kinda counting on it," I sigh as I reply to Smith, picking up a necklace with some sort of... feather?—I don't fucking know—on it.

Smith and Jace have known me since I was a fetus, basically. Okay—13, if we're going to be precise. But I mean, I still felt like a fetus at that point.

Anyway, because of this, they obviously know a lot of the drama that ensued when Maverick became a crackfucker. Sometimes, I would bunk at one of their houses for the day purely because I didn't want to have to face him. I won't lie to you, Maverick used to scare the crap out of me. In fact, he was probably the reason why I started working out and running the way that I do today. It was the need to protect my family.

"How long do you think he's going to stick around for this time?" Jace asks.

"I don't know. I can't stay home anymore. I'm missing out on too much work and I need to be attending all of my classes if I want to graduate next year. I'm also pretty sure Nixon will have a fit if I call in sick one more time this month." I sigh before continuing, "My mom is at work for a lot of the day, except for night shifts and Sophie has dance and work, which means that he's mostly not bothering anybody."

"And I'm sure that if he was, Sophie or your mom would've said something to you about it," Smith adds. Maybe not my mom, but definitely Sophie.

"Yeah... I just want him out, honestly. We're all good without him. I just wish my mom would stop coming to his defence when I bring it up," I shake my head. "Whatever. Let's carry on looking, I just wanna get this over with."

We end up leaving H&M with—shocker, nothing again—and walking into Urban Outfitters.

"I don't get why we can't just get her a gift card for her birthday, to be honest. Why are you putting so much effort into this?" Smith asks beside me when we leave another store and carry on walking through the mall.

"Because it's not just any birthday; it's her 21st. And I got you a fucking drone for your 21st if you need a reminder, so you don't have the right to speak about gifts," I remark, to which Smith raises his hands in surrender.

"What does Ally like? Can we start there? Because we've been walking around this mall like headless chickens for longer than an hour with nothing but Domino's for lunch," Jace sighs.