I stalk into Rick’s cramped apartment, grab my mother by the wrist and yank her up all before she even recognizes that it’s me.
“Cadey, what a—what a wonderful surprise…”
“We’re leaving,” I growl. “Where’s her stuff?”
“She didn’t have much.”
“I borrowed his girlfriend’s clothes.” Mom smirks. “She’s a little on the thick side so the clothes don’t fit right, but we have to do what we have to do.”
Rick’s eyes harden.
“Shut up, mom,” I snap.
She slurs, “Watch your tone, young lady. I’m still your mother.”
“My mother? Aren’t you ashamed to call yourself that?”
Mom tilts her head, eyes innocent as can be.
Inside my chest, I’m screaming bloody murder. “We’re leaving, Rick. Whatever clothes mom used, burn it. Tell your girlfriend I’ll pay for new ones.”
“Cadey, slow down,” mom whines.
A shadow fills the door while I’m pulling mom to the exit.
It’s Hunter.
His soulful brown eyes fall on me and my breath hitches in my throat.
“Cadence?”
I don’t have time for an awkward reunion right now. Stepping past him, I drag mom behind me. She bats her eyelashes at Hunter when she passes him by, and slides a veiny finger down his forearm.
“Ooh. Muscles,” she whispers.
I give her a big yank and drag her down the stairs.
“Cadence, wait!” Rick’s footsteps thunder behind me. “Let me help you.”
“Yes, Ricky-baby.” Mom pats his cheek. “You should help your mommy.”
Rick’s jaw works. He looks like he’s being tortured.
How did he put up with mom for this long? Why would he put up with her at all?
I jerk mom’s arm hard. My eyes on Rick, I grind out, “We’re leaving. Don’t follow me.”
Rick remains standing on the stairs, looking at us and not coming any closer. Why would anyone want to come close to this mess? If I had a choice, I’d run away too. Run so far that no one could catch me.
But I’m chained here.
There’s no running from a darkness this thick.
“Cadence, you’re hurting me.” Mom yelps in pain when I tighten my grip in response.
I pull her with me to the bus stop. She’s drunk off her face, which makes it a lot easier to maneuver her around. Unfortunately, her flopping arms means she slaps me in the face every time the bus takes a steep curve.
By the time I walk off the bus, night has fallen, my cheeks are stinging and I’m so pissed off that it feels like my skin is on fire.
When I finally wrestle mom to the apartment and stuff her through the door, Vi is sitting in the living room with her phone, a ring light and all her makeup tools.
She sees mom and immediately shuts her camera off. “What happened? Where did you find her?”
“At Rick’s.”
Vi’s face goes pale. “All this time?”
“No, it seemed like a recent thing.”
“Where was she staying before that then?” Vi asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Ugh.” Mom kicks off her shoes and wiggles her toes. She digs her fingers into her thinning hair. “Everyone hates me. Everyone!”
Vi stares at mom with anguish in her eyes. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen mom on a bender. It’s frightening when the person who’s supposed to be taking care of you can’t even take care of herself.
“Vi,” I touch her arm gently, “go to your room. I’ll handle this.”
My sister doesn’t argue. She nods and hurries away, leaving all her makeup things behind.
I stare at my mother’s thin face. A seemingly innocent statement Rick said to me after his birthday party rises to memory.
‘You need to be careful.’
‘Why?’
‘Just… be careful.’
At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But in hindsight, my brother was warning me about mom. That means mom was leeching off him before she even thought of stealing from us.
Disgusted, I glare at her. “Why would you ask Rick for anything after the way you abandoned him? Don’t you have a heart? Shouldn’t you be ashamed to even look at him?”
Mom scratches her wrist. She’ll need a fix soon.
My heart balloons with pain and I feel like I’m going to explode. I need a breath. I need a moment to just… not hurt.
But I force myself to keep being the strong one.
I step into Vi’s room. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” My sister’s long brown hair swings over her shoulder. “It’s just weird, you know? I’d gotten used to life without her. Now, it feels like things are back to normal and the life we were living before was the dream.”
“Vi…”
“What?” Her sweet, innocent eyes fall on me. I want to protect her so much it hurts, but I’m so tired.
‘I won’t let you struggle alone.’ Dutch’s words sooth me. What would happen if I abandoned my senses and let myself fall into him? Would I find that protection in Dutch? Would it hurt less than it does right now?
I want to.
So badly.
I want him to rescue me.
I’m trembling, but I don’t even realize it until my sister walks into me and slides her arms around my waist. I feel the tears pressing against my eyes, but I don’t let them drop.
“It’s okay,” Vi says, smoothing a hand down my back.
“I’m the one who should be telling you that.”
Vi eases back and gives me a smile that’s wise beyond her years. “We can remind each other.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat.
Suddenly, I hear a crash from outside.
Vi and I hurry out and find mom rummaging through the cupboard, looking for food.
“Do you have any chips?” mom demands.
I’m not surprised by her sudden energy boost. Mom can crash into a drunken slumber one minute and then wake up, fully present and annoyingly smug, the next.
“My head is killing me,” she complains. “Rick buys the cheap stuff. I need to teach him where to get the goods.”
I frown. “Sit down, mom. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“I don’t want a sandwich.”
“Then you won’t eat,” I snap.
She frowns at me and sinks into a chair around the table. “Testy.”
Vi joins me. “Need some help?”
I shake my head.
“Viola, baby, can you get your mommy some water?”
Vi gives me a look as if asking for my permission first.
I jut my chin at the fridge.
While Vi pours, I slap two pieces of bread on a plate and slather it in condiments.
“I heard you had a busy day yesterday, mom,” I say tightly.
“Mff.” She makes a coarse grunt before gulping down all the water.
“What did you think about Dutch when you met him? He’s a little intense, right?”
Mom chokes and a flood of water spews from her mouth.
Vi shrieks and jumps back to avoid getting doused.
Unbothered, I slap meat on the bread, shove the sandwich together and drop the plate in front of mom. “Why did you send Dutch to Sinner’s Den?”
She glances away.
“Did you know I’d be there?”
The dots connect.
Mom lying about having evidence on Jarod Cross.
Jarod telling me to get evidence on Dutch.
Me coincidentally spying on the brothers ‘with drugs’.
I lower my voice urgently, “Mom, are you working with Jarod Cross?”
Her eyes dart back and forth.
Vi brings mom a napkin. “Cadey, why would mom know a celebrity like Jarod Cross. That’s like a homeless guy having Oprah’s phone number.”
“Answer me, mom.”
Mom ignores me and points a strained smile at Vi. “How was your weekend, sweetie?”
“Fine,” Vi mumbles. “We hung out with Dutch and then I had to do a group project.”
I cringe at Vi’s mention of Dutch.
Mom pounces on it right away. Her body stiffens. “Cadence, you were with that boy all weekend?”
“No,” I lie.
“Yes,” Vi says.
We both glance at each other.
Mom stiffens. “You were with him alone?”
I say nothing.
Mom pins her dark eyes on my little sister. She looks sharper than she ever has before.
Viola breaks easily. “Cadey stayed out with Dutch all night an didn’t come back until morning.”
“Viola!” I hiss.
“Sorry. She scares me.”
Mom shoots up so fast, the chair behind her topples. It crashes to the floor, making both me and Vi jump.
“Come with me,” mom barks.
“I’m not going anywhere—”
“Now!” Mom hisses.
My anger rushes to the surface and I stay right where I am.
“No, mom. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to rush in here after disappearing again and act like my mother when you’ve been anything but a mother to me. I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until you tell me exactly what kind of deal you have with Jarod—”
“Did you use a condom?”
I freeze.
“How many times did he discharge? Were you using protection every time? Was it around or before your period?”
My eyes widen.
Vi’s are about to pop out of her head.
My chest heaves, but I’m trapped. Mom is going to keep talking about this in front of Vi and I don’t want her to hear such crude discussions.
At least, not when I’m the subject.
Muscles so tense I feel like I’m a walking tin can, I stalk past mom and open the door. She doesn’t immediately follow me. Instead, she goes into my room.
“Get out of there!” I hurry after her.
But I don’t have to drag her out. She meets me in the hallway and tosses my purse at me.
“Why do you have this?”
“You’re gonna need that.” Her expression is hard.
Thoroughly pissed off, I trail mom to the door.
“Where are you going?” Viola’s voice trembles.
“Vi, lock up behind me. We’ll be right back,” I say. I try to muster up a smile, but I can’t pull it off.
Vi gives me a worried look, but I don’t have time to comfort her. Mom is already halfway down the stairs.
I follow my mother outside. “Where are we going?”
She doesn’t answer. Her body cuts through the night, dipping in and out of the shadows and the pockets of light offered by the lampposts.
We jog through the streets for what feels like hours.
Finally, I get enough and wrench mom around by the shoulder. “Tell me where we’re going.” She opens her mouth, but I stop her with a raised finger. “And if you think I’m going to buy you drugs right now, you’re insane.”
Mom gestures to the store up ahead. It’s the same pharmacy where Dutch bought me flip-flops and patched up my bleeding heel.
The man behind the counter is the same guy from that night too.
He points at me. “Flip-Flops.”
I frown.
“Where’s the Tattoo Guy?” He wiggles his eyebrows.
“How long have you been here, boy?” Mom grunts. “Don’t you know not to ask questions in this neighborhood?”
The clerk’s smile disappears and he gives mom a sullen nod.
I stumble when mom yanks me down an aisle. Past the tampons. Past the pads. Past the pregnancy tests.
“Grab them.” She reaches for a thin box and then another.
The price tag makes me gag.
I stop her, my hand on her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“We can’t take any chances.” Her voice is low, urgent. She sounds like she’s about to rehash her alien abduction. “Grab those over there. They’re more experimental, but it might be effective. We may already be too late. It’s hard to be sure.”
“Mom, I already asked you. What is—”
“Plan B.” She spears me with her glazed eyes. I’m stunned when I see genuine fear in them. “You can’t get pregnant, Cadey.”
I blush, feeling exposed. Me? Pregnant? The thought is foreign. I never once dreamed of having a family someday, and I sure as hell don’t dream of having one now.
“Who said I’m pregnant?” I snap.
Mom berates me. “Sex has consequences, girl. It’s a principle. You jump off a roof, gravity doesn’t give a damn about you or what you want for your future. It’s going to pull you down. You sleep with Jarod Cross’s son… it’ll pull you down the same way.” Her eyes cut into me. “You should have never gotten involved with him.”
On that we both agree.
Dutch is temptation wrapped in ink and I kept finding myself under his spell. It’s like he has a hold on me that I can’t break.
“And you should have done this earlier,” mom scolds me. Her hands are trembling as she turns a box over and compares it to the other. “When was the last time you two—?”
“Mom.”
“When?”
I blush harder. “Today.”
Her bottom lip goes stiff.
“But it wasn’t…” My cheeks burn so hard it hurts. “It wasn’t our first time. That was a while ago.”
Mom grits her teeth. “You better hope you didn’t take too long to take your meds.”
“It’s not like I didn’t try,” I mumble. After Dutch took my virginity, I went to ask for medication just in case. The pharmacists said I couldn’t buy the pills if I was under eighteen.
I didn’t freak out about it. Back then, I thought me and Dutch would be a one-and-done thing. I didn’t know he would be this insatiable. I didn’t know… it could happen anywhere, at any time.
And it seems like Dutch wants me all the time.
“Stop.” I push the pills back on the shelf because the only thing worse than buying this by myself is buying it with my mother. “I’ll handle it.”
“Oh, you’ll handle it?” Mom taunts.
“I’ll come back. I swear.” I lower my voice. “But right now, I don’t have enough money to get all this.”
“So you’re going to throw away your future because you don’t have a couple hundred?”
“Dutch and I will talk about—”
She lets loose a cackle so loud, that a couple in the row behind us peer around the corner.
“Dutch isn’t going to take care of this for you, Cadey. He wants this problem.”
My eyebrows knot.
“How could you let him use you?” Mom hesitates, her hands over the pregnancy test. She swipes it into her arms. “How could you be so unbelievably stupid? At the very least, you should have made sure you were on the pill.”
I lower my head. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about this, especially not Breeze who would rake me over the coals for getting this deep into the boy who tortured me.
“If Dutch gets what he wants, it’s over for you,” mom hisses. “Over!”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes dart back and forth as if someone is watching her. “Hurry and pay for this. You’re taking one right now.”
“No,” I grab her arm, sensing that there’s something she isn’t telling me. “Spit it out. You know something.”
“No, I don’t.”
She’s shaking like a hurricane now. A mixture of withdrawal and nerves.
“I’m not taking a single pill until you tell me.”
Discomfort etches into her weathered face when she says, “Look, I’m not supposed to know this and you aren’t either.”
I lean closer, my heart pounding and my palms sweaty.
Mom’s throat bobs and she whispers, “I overheard a conversation I wasn’t supposed to. Something about the Cross family, an inheritance and two conditions the heir has to meet.”
As she talks, invisible thorns wind around my body and dig into my flesh.
“What were they?” I choke out.
Mom flinches.
“What were the conditions!” I shriek.
“Whoever gets the money has to be married…”
‘What are those?’
‘Handcuffs.’
‘Marry me, Cadey.’
‘You don’t have to struggle alone.’
I stumble back, my throat closing up.
“… And,” mom adds, “they need to have a son.”
My knees weaken and I’m crashing into the ground. My hands flail for purchase, but I can’t save myself. My mad descent is followed by boxes and boxes of pregnancy tests and morning-after pills thundering to the ground.
