CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Hannah hadn't realised until that day, how much she had come to enjoy the occasional interactions she had with Rayne. He was so different from the world she had built up for the past seven-ish years that it was like a breath of fresh air amongst a polluted cityscape.

After he'd ensured his sisters were fed and doing their homework, he'd grabbed hold of his laptop and settled it down on the small dining area, taking a seat beside her.

"What now?"

She laughed, unaware of the way something inside him twisted when he heard the sound. "I have no bloody idea," she mumbled, looking around the small kitchen. Her smile widened as she took in the children's drawings adorning the fridge, held up by tacky magnets alongside a few photographs. Although his house was small and everything was rather faded, there was no doubt that it was full of love.

"Now, we find your dad. What do you know about him?"

Hannah shrugged, the easy smile slipping off her face as she remembered the story her aunt and uncle had told. There was a part of her that almost wished Chris had been some deadbeat loser, a one-night stand or something like that. At least it wouldn't have hurt so much. Knowing that he had the ability to love Jasmine with all his heart but not enough to raise a child was more damaging.

"His name is Chris. Chris Davis. That's all I know."

Rayne's eyebrows rose, spinning around in the breakfast bar stool until he looked her straight in the eye. "That's so... white," he finally commented, his voice breaking through the cluster of thoughts running wild in Hannah's mind.

She snorted in reply, lips tugging up reluctantly. "You're white," she reminded him, with a roll of her eyes. Her copper gaze locked onto his, taking in the multitude of shades of peppermint and jade, swirling around.

Rayne nodded, more to himself than her. It seemed that every second he spent with Hannah Adem, he knew her less and less. He didn't know why exactly he was so fascinated with her, so eager to unwrap all the mysteries surrounding her. Or perhaps he did know, how could he not when his stomach twisted into a ball of nerves every time she smiled at him. But he didn't want to admit it, still trying to convince himself that she was just a random girl.

But she wasn't, that was the bloody problem. She was the most beautiful, most rich, most popular, most open-minded girl he'd ever had the opportunity to come across.

She also was the most complicated. How one person could be so honest and so secretive at the exact same time was beyond him but somehow, just somehow, Hannah managed to be the two. She looked at him like she was looking at someone she considered an equal but then a film seemed to go over her expression, as though she remembered who she was, who he was. Just some quiet scholarship kid in her English class.

He shook his thoughts off, pushing away the negativity and focused on the task at hand. Hannah had enlisted his help to track her unknown father down – surely if she trusted him with a secret that large he wasn't just a nobody to her. Right?

"I'm sorry, I just wasn't expecting it at all. You don't look half white."

Hannah giggled, tugging at her school tie until the navy wrapped around her fingers. "What do white people look like?"

Rayne's lips were pursed, trying not to laugh at the stupidity of their conversation. "I dunno, I guess white people look... white."

They burst into peals of laughter at his words, both slightly surprised at how easy their conversation flowed even when talking about such a serious topic as race and identity.

"I'm about ten shades lighter than Cam. I know it seems a little weird, maybe because I've never known that I'm half white but I guess that's what I am. All I know is that he's English, his name is Chris Davis and he studied IT in university."

Rayne nodded again, hair flicking over his eyes as he did so. Trying not to wince at his pathetically slow laptop, he double clicked on the Google Chrome icon and waited for it to open. "Okay, now you find him." He pushed the laptop towards her but Hannah only looked confused, her nose scrunched up.

"Well, how am I supposed to do that? How do you track someone down?" Hannah mumbled, scowling as she looked around the kitchen. Her arms were crossed and she couldn't help feeling annoyed at herself. She had spent so much time mentally preparing herself to find her father that she hadn't thought how on earth she would do so.

"Facebook. Duh."

She raised her eyebrows at Rayne's words. "You serious?" she asked, almost spluttering at how simple the answer was. But it made perfect sense, their entire world was based around the internet. Almost everything was online and more importantly, almost everyone was online. She could stalk all the Chris Davis' on Facebook and sift through the results. Whilst she didn't know what he looked like, she hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to narrow it down.

Rayne nodded as she explained her thought process to him, opening a new tab on his laptop and gesturing at her to log in. It had been a long time since she had checked her Facebook account, staying away from the gossip that used to surround her social media. She winced at the nineteen friend requests and forty seven notifications, ignoring the majority of them. She hadn't bothered logging in since the Ashlyn and Gabriel fiasco which was no doubt the reason for all the notifications and messages that had built up.

She quickly changed her profile picture into one Cam had taken with her at Tyler's birthday party, the previous one a selfie with her former best friend. Ashlyn's face had no right to be on her profile any longer! With the sudden urge to clean out her entire Facebook account, Hannah pulled the laptop closer to her, momentarily forgetting Rayne was sitting beside her.

He watched her with a soft smile as she mumbled profanities at the many pictures she had with Gabriel and Ashlyn, deleting every single one and changing her relationship status. She'd much rather be a single pringle than have his name anywhere near hers anymore.

With a second thought, she also deleted the two of them as friends as well as a few other people that she saw no need in knowing.

There was a part of her that didn't really want to because of the attention it would cause across Pemrose – after all, the school was full of vultures waiting for any slight hint of information before pouncing – but not wanting to have anything to do with them for another second.

"Why not block them?" Rayne asked, grinning when she jumped at his sudden comment, having forgotten he was there. She only shrugged in reply, not quite sure of the answer herself but assuming a delete was more than enough for now.

Instead, she looked over at him with an honest smile. Rayne couldn't help the way his stomach clenched at the way her eyes lit up when she did so, as though sunlight was falling out of her. Her fingers tapped at the keyboard as she typed his name in, the boy in question chuckling when he realised what she was doing.

"Hey, we have seventeen mutual friends!"

She added him quickly, grinning when his phone buzzed from the new notification at the same time and searched a few more people she had recently befriended. It was pretty easy to find Alex, Lacey and Tyler by stalking her cousin's account and once Rayne accepted her, she added Carter too.

"Done!"

Rayne laughed, the sound rising in the bedroom like smoke. Pushing back his hair, he couldn't help but tease her. "I'm pretty sure you logged in stalk your dad, not me."

Hannah rolled her eyes, although she had to bite back a smile and instead focused on the task at hand. Unfortunately for her, Chris Davis was a far too common name for it to be that easy – something she soon found out when she tried searching for it.

Her eyes were beginning to glaze over as she scrolled down, all the profiles merging into each other. There were just far too many. A sudden strike of inspiration hitting her, she quickly messaged Cameron, hoping he wouldn't take too long to reply.

To: Cameron Adem – From: Hannah Adem

yo yo cammie, quick question. what uni did ur mum study at?xxxx

She knew that Aunt Sara had been friends with Jasmine at university, eventually meeting Jay and quickly becoming part of the family. If Sara knew Chris whilst she was studying, they were likely to have been on the same campus.

To: Hannah Adem – From: Cameron Adem

At Kings, why??? Love you (even if u are doing something really stupid right now which I know u probably are. my crazy cousin and her crazy plans!)

She rolled her eyes at the end of his reply but held her phone up towards Rayne, beaming brightly. It took a while for him to understand what he was looking at but when he did, he looked at her with something close to pride. She had managed to narrow down the results considerably.

He typed in 'Kings College London' into the education section to filter out the unnecessary results. They both scanned the profiles that came up, opening all the potential ones in a new tab and scrolling past the ones it definitely wasn't. They went through a few, peering at the thumbnail of the profile picture and trying to decide before closing them all.

"Too bad we can't filter by age," Rayne murmured, more to himself than the girl sitting beside him, so close that he could feel the warmth from her skin against his own.

Hannah pushed her hair back, fingers getting tangled in the midnight waves as she frowned. "I don't know how old he is, anyway," she finally managed to say. "The same age as my mother, I guess, although I don't think I know her age either."

Rayne turned his head to look at her in surprise, eyes widening when he realised how close they were. His face was only a handful of centimetres away from her own, he noticed with a swallow. "That day..." he mumbled, hesitation spilling out as though he was afraid to offend her or worse, hurt her. "Ashlyn said your mother was famous."

Hannah nodded sharply, opening a new tab and going straight to Google. Whilst she had never hinted at her mother's true behaviour to anyone at all, somehow it didn't ache so much knowing that Rayne knew a little. He wouldn't tell anyone, she trusted him. And that was what amazed her; Hannah couldn't remember the last time she had truly trusted someone, other than her cousin. She never had.

"She's a fashion designer. Very famous, very rich, very much loved... around the world anyway. To me, well, she's barely existent." 

Hannah had opened her mother's Wikipedia page, wincing at the sight of Jasmine Adem smiling on the right side. It was rare to see her mother smile but somehow, she always did beneath camera lights. From the corner of her eye she could see Rayne sitting incredibly still, absorbing all the information about her not-quite-family that she had dropped over the couple of months that they had known each other.

She ignored all the words – knowing how very likely it was that they were all lies, praising her mother to the high heavens – and instead checked for the birth-date and age. "She just turned thirty seven last month."

Rayne wanted to ask, the questions burning against the tip of his tongue. But he had spent enough time around Hannah Adem recently to know when she didn't want to talk about something and the last thing he wanted to do was to accidentally hurt her by badgering her to talk about it. Instead, he kept quiet, mulling her words in his head.

He pulled the laptop slightly towards him and went back to Facebook, gaze scanning all the results that had come up. "How about this one?" he asked, pointing at one of the many profiles. Due to all the privacy settings, their search was proving harder than they initially thought. 

"Hmm, seems a little too old," Hannah replied, grateful he had shifted the conversation away from her mother. "If you were a thirty seven year old guy, what would your profile picture be?"

Rayne shrugged, his lip turning up in the corner. "Who knows, something lame probably. If it's a selfie it'll be one taken from a bottom angle because apparently, old people don't care if it looks like they have thirty chins in their pictures. Or at least, that's what all my relatives do."

Hannah giggled, still pressing the down arrow key on Rayne's keyboard and going the results. "Or maybe a picture of a kid. He might have kids by now, right?"

Rayne nodded – quite a few of the profiles had pictures of babies or young children as the cover photo. They clicked on a few, analysing the few things they were able to see, trying to figure out if the man in question could have any resemblance to Hannah.

"What about this one?"

Hannah's gaze ran over the photo of the two children in the profile picture, the little boy probably around five and girl around ten. Both had a head of dark brown waves and honey coloured eyes as they beamed at the camera. Hannah paused and for the first time that day, considered the possibility that she could actually find her father. Whilst neither of the children looked particularly like her, there was something about them that seemed familiar, a tinge of déjà vu running through her.

"I think... I think this one might be it," she whispered, the words barely falling from her lips. Rayne tried to look around the profile but this Chris had privacy settings and there wasn't very much to look at. "Click on the about section," Hannah suggested.

"He's one of the managers of a company called Dean and Davis."

Hannah sat up straighter, tugging at her school tie as she mulled it over. "Dean and Davis," she repeated, lips pursed. "Let's Google that. He did something to do with IT in university, it might be him."

Rayne searched the company, locating its website immediately and scanned over the 'About' page. "It's a pretty big network engineering company based in central London owned by Jamal Deen and Chris Davis."

With shaky hands, Hannah lifted her phone up and took a photograph of the address of the company with her phone. Rayne looked at her with concern flitting through his eyes, both of them aware that this was most likely him. They knew his name and age, knew he was English and had attended Kings College London for something to do with IT and computing. And out of all the profiles they had scoured, this was the only one that seemed to match all of those criterion.

"I think we've found him," Hannah finally said, her heartbeat pounding so loud she felt as though the boy beside her could hear it. "I think we've found my dad."