by Mj Fields
“What makes you think you’re gonna be able to escape this hell hole?”
“Two words, one name, Maisie Josephs.” He said it with enough confidence that it was almost believable, almost.
When my mother started her shit with him and pushed him as he was coming down the stairs, he came back from the ER with a cast on his arm, and even though he could’ve done what the previous foster kids under their ‘care’ did, turn them in, he didn’t. They’d have done what they always did– lied. Then expect me to back their story. He’d have been sent on his way. But he didn’t. He came back.
I didn’t say shit until the next day at school. I yelled at him and asked him why. He told me because he’d never leave a friend behind.
Then the cunt did it again, pushed him down the stairs, a few months later, he gashed his head open, and social services stepped in. This time, I was bigger, stronger, and I knew I had to protect him. I told them the fucking truth. I spilled every fucking thing they’d done. Well, almost everything. But it was enough.
Enter Maisie Josephs.
The woman had cocoa skin and a golden heart.
Bastien, or Bass as I called him, was still in the hospital with a concussion when she and a lawyer showed up with a promise to help us both get out, as long as we did something for her.
Two days later, we were living in the Hamptons, two months after that we were emancipated, and we had new last names, Josephs.
The last name change was Bass’s idea. Maisie and her husband, who had passed away years ago, never had children of their own. Bass thought it was only right we gave her that, and I agreed. Three months later, we graduated high school.
During the emancipation process, Maisie hired a private investigator and Bass found out his father, who he’d never met, was a billionaire fashion icon. I’d never seen him angrier. Anger changed to bitter, and bitter changed to him blowing off a full ride to college, hell bent on vengeance for letting him suffer as he had since his mother’s death when he was five, and then his grandmother’s death at age eight.
I went on my own mission, one to prove what Maisie was always saying, “The past doesn’t define you.” It sure didn't, and I was gonna prove that I was better. So, I enlisted, and I swore an oath to her, the US Army, and myself, to make sure I lived honorably. And I did.
Bastien and I are two totally different types, but the decision to be brothers bound us stronger than any fucking bloodline would’ve. And although he is happiest doing nothing, reading books, staring at the water, listening to music without lyrics, basically, fuck not all day, I need to be physically busy.
Where I had spent eight years serving my country, he had spent time banging some French chick, Ines, who put his pretty face everywhere, from the runway, and over social media, to places that made me sick to my damn stomach to consider. When he woke up to her bullshit, he went to college. He has his MBA, money saved that he’d earned from being a fashion model, and a house next to Maisie’s on the beach. He had no plans past tomorrow.
Last we talked, he found out our Maisie was sick, and not the kind of sick that’s cured with a pill. The shit kicker, she was hiding it from us. He admitted he needed my help, and that never happened, so I knew it was time. And after my last deployment, I felt bringing every one of my men home in once piece might be all the penance I needed to maybe, just fucking maybe, forgive myself for all the lies as a kid and start to believe I deserved what Maisie and Bass said I did.
As I get closer to the Hamptons, I decide to travel a bit farther. I decide it might be a good idea to tour around New York City and take a ride past de la Porte, just to see what it was Bastian’s biological father was truly made of.
This also gives me more time to clear the noise in my head.
It’s early when I arrive in the city. Cabs, town cars, delivery trucks and pedestrians fill the streets, but I maneuver through them with ease. Thanks to Roxie.
Coming up 75th Street towards 5th, I swerve around a cab that pulled over to pick up the suit waiting for him, when a woman is just right fucking there, three maybe four feet in front of me.
Only thing I can do to avoid hitting her is dump the fucking bike.
The Big Guy is either looking out for me, or Roxie, my bet’s on Roxie, when I end up tipping her to her side without letting her touch pavement.
I look up and see wild blonde waves on a young woman with a slight build, piercing blue eyes, and black makeup smudged by the tears falling down her porcelain skin. Her lips are bow-shaped, but with the tears falling, and the sun hitting her face just right, I could have sworn she had a scar in the fucking same place as Grace’s.
The fucking wind is almost knocked out of me and even though my heart jackhammers an unsteady beat inside my chest, I can’t breathe.
She looks at me apologetically and I force a nod to tell her it’s okay.
I fell in love at fifteen years old. Don’t ask me to explain how I knew, I just did. She’d come to our house when her former foster parents had their first kid. She’d been there since age ten.
I had no idea how anyone, let alone two families, could have let her go, but they did. Grace Pallone.
She was sixteen and looked about twelve. She was afraid of her own shadow, which made me keenly aware that my parents would see it as weakness and exploit it as soon as she walked in the door with her dingy white canvas sneakers, two black garbage bags and a backpack that looked to be as old as her.
I was always a big dude. Six foot three, and lanky as fuck until I started playing ball, which happened to be the year before Grace moved in with us.
She stuck to me like glue from the moment she walked in. Like she sensed I would keep her safe, and I knew immediately I would do everything I could to do just that.
The first night I heard her muffled sniffs, and the occasional sob through the wall. I waited until I knew the parents would be in bed to go to her room. When I walked in, she looked up and I said, “I’m right here.” I pointed to the floor and didn’t wait for permission. I dropped my pillow, and I slept on the floor in her room. She didn’t seem shook by it, and she didn’t ask why. Not sure I could have answered if she had. What she did was thank me.
We rode the bus together, sat at lunch together, and I even convinced her to try out for the girl’s ball team, which she didn’t make, but I remember her saying she was glad that she didn’t, because then she’d have to miss my games.
She did her homework on the bleachers and walked home with me after practice.
Week one, I slept on her floor. Week two, she told me I could sleep on her bed, but on top of the covers. She smelled like vanilla. I liked it. Week three, she threw the covers back and I was under them. That’s when the kissing began. She tasted like spring water, I loved it.
I laid on my stomach to hide my hard on, washed the bedding when I came on the sheets. She told me not to be embarrassed, and then told me there were ways not to make a mess. I nearly made one right then and there, that was week four.
Grace’s hair smelled like vanilla, her tongue tasted like spring water, and between her legs she tasted just like… an addiction.
We hid it well, never got busted by the parents. Held hands on the bus, found places at school to hide away, and weekends… swear to God, I began to live for them. Only time in my life I didn’t hate my folks for getting piss drunk, him all day, then she’d join after working the mines. Hell, I wanted them to. The sooner the better.
The horn blowing behind me brings me back to the here and now, and I watch as the mystery girl runs to my right, down 5th Avenue.
I straighten Roxie as the light turns green. Punching the throttle, about to turn right, I see the sign, Left Turns Only. Fucking one-way street.
I zip around the block, hoping to see her again. Needing to make sure she is alright, even though I am ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure she isn’t Grace, I need her to be okay. Heart still jackhammering when I round the corner hoping to catch a glimpse of her, and of course she isn’t there.
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Fucking idiot, I curse myself. Total fucking idiot. I sigh as I head out of the city, without even checking out Bass’s father’s building.
I remember the day we came home from school, and her caseworker’s car was in the driveway as we walked up the hill.
I stopped immediately, and she asked, “What’s wrong, Ollie?”
“Let’s just run away, let’s just–”
Her smile stopped me and irritated me at the same time.
“I love you, Grace, I know you love me, we can just–”
“You love me?” Tears filled her eyes.
She hadn’t cried since that first night. “I didn’t mean–”
Her arms wrapped around my waist. “Ollie, I love you, too.”
“Then we have to go now, Grace. We have to–”
“She’s here to take me to the doctor.”
“You sick? Jesus, I didn’t even notice.” I put my hand on her forehead to feel if she was warm. I’d seen movie moms do it, never my own
“I’m gonna get protected. Get that shot thing.” She blushed.
She must have seen the confusion in my face.
Her blush moved from her cheeks to her neck, and grew darker.
“Birth control,” she whispered. “No more condoms, Ollie.”
We played Russian roulette, pulling out and hoping we didn’t do it too late more times than I could remember. Then a scare. She was late and all I could think was how the hell could I raise a kid? Then I started stealing them from the school nurse’s supply. Had been for months, hadn’t gotten caught yet. Hated taking something without asking, but I suppose that’s what they were there for. Still never felt right.
“I wanna stay here, and if we get caught–”
“You think they’ll send you away for me stealing rubbers?” I can’t help but smirk.
She shrugs, blush deepening. “If they sent you away, I’d be stuck here without you.”
“You’d miss me,” I grin, and she rolls her eyes.
“I’d have to do my chores, and yours. And you know I hate those dogs.”
I stop a grin and give her the look, the one I know she melts like butter for. “Mmm hmm, you’d miss me.”
Before she can come back with some sass, I pull her into the woods and kiss her hard.
A horn blows, and I’m suddenly aware I’m riding the line between two lanes.
In the past, I’d done that too many times. In my military career, jumping out of a plane into dangerous territory, sometimes in the middle of a battle zone. Death and destruction whichever way you looked. You had to ride the line between your safety and saving others.
Riding the line
In the one relationship I’ve had, it was hiding it from my parents, crossing my fingers they didn’t know they could use her against me, or me against her. As well as taking a chance that she may end up pregnant when we didn’t have protection.
Riding the line.
Every time I’ve done that, it’s ended terribly.
“Don’t look back,” Maisie’s voice sounds in my head. “Only forward.”
I’m so sorry, Grace, so fucking sorry.
Just like every other deployment in the past, before heading back to my new… normal, to Maisie’s, I head into Brooklyn to get some fresh ink, my souvenir.
Unlike those of the past, it won’t be a piece covering a pretense.
Chapter Twelve
Oliver (December)
“Can’t believe you talked me into this shit,” I grumble as Bass pulls into the parking lot of an oceanside restaurant, Stone’s Throw, that he wants to look at as a possible investment, and wants me to manage.
He laughs in the carefree way he does. “It’s a cool place, close to Maisie, and will give you a chance to work on your people skills.”
“My people skills are fine,” I snarl at him.
It’s a lie, so are my skills in public. We took Maisie to dinner; the waiter dropped a tray and I nearly tackled her to the ground. Bass for the save, grabbed my arm and jacked me back, he’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass.
His eyebrow creeps up, as if it’s calling bullshit, and it is.
Deserving, but I won’t admit it.
“Nice place, though.” Bass kills the engine to his Audi, and leans toward the windshield for a better look.
From the paved parking lot, lightly dusted with sand, you can see ocean; just beyond the two-story dark gray shingled siding restaurant with lower and upper deck seating, I can just barely see it from here.
The entry has double, white French doors, with three steps leading to them, but I see no ramp. Immediately it pisses me off. How the fuck are disabled folks supposed to make it to the door? I spot a sign hidden between the bushes with an arrow pointing left that reads, Handicap Entrance.
I think of all the men and woman I served with who had lost limbs and mobility, men and woman who were heroes, having to enter through the side.
Bass’s voice brings me back from a place I travel to far too often when left with my thoughts.
“Maisie’s catching onto the fact that we’re hanging around way too much. She’s sick, man, hasn’t said shit about it to us, and we’ve given her more than ample opportunity to tell us. Short of asking her ourselves–”
I interrupt, “Which we aren’t going to.”
“I know. But Jesus, Oliver, she was going to boil potatoes on the stove in a plastic bowl.”
“She has, pretty much, around the clock help, and we fill in where there’s a break. We spend as much time with her as we can without her getting annoyed. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
“And you’ll take the job here so she stops fussing over you thinking you’re going to leave again.”
“I’ll consider taking the job here because it pays more than I made in the military. And unlike you, my face isn’t pretty enough to walk a runway and make a shit ton of money.” I don’t add, and I’ll make sure there’s a fucking ramp, in the front.
“You could rock the runway, big guy,” he winks.
“Go fuck yourself,” I grumble opening the door and getting out of his ride. “You need a fucking bike.”
“Got a few in the garage,” he says as he gets out.
“With motors, jackass,” I sigh. “Hate to see you peddling your ass off trying to keep up when I finally ask you to go riding one day.”
He throws his head back on a laugh.
The owner was ex-military, Navy, and he wasn’t hiring me to be a hostess, or to be a server. He was hiring me so he and his wife could travel, and he’d have someone to look after his place. It wouldn’t be busy for a while and I could take my time settling in. He thanked Bass for telling him about me this past summer while here with Maisie for lunch.
Said he’d be honored to have me and then he said, “Welcome home, soldier.”
Felt fucking good, too. So, I took the job I didn’t want.
March
I woke up to Bass looming over me.
First time I was in all the men I had to councils’ shoes. Fucked up to have someone standing over you, stranger or familiar face.
“Best way to get your ass killed is hanging over a sleeping soldier.”
“Jean died.”
“Fuck, man,” I curse as I sit up. Not knowing whether to say I apologize for your loss, or good riddance to a man who had everything in the world, including a kid, and didn’t give a damn about him. So, I hit him with real. “No idea what to say, Bass, but I’m here for whatever.”
“Need to get out of town for a few days,” he says looking through me.
“In a few days, that’s good. Next couple, hang with Maisie and I, she’ll worry if you leave now.”
His agitation is clear, and his words, deserving. “Nothing I do could make her worry as much as you have these past eight years so I’m fucking out.”
“I deserve that, but–”
“I need a smoke.” He walks out of the room.
After throwing on sweats and a tank t
op, I set out to find him.
Down the massive stairway, I walk into the great room.
“Ollie.”
I jump out of my skin at Maisie’s voice. What the fuck is she doing up?
I walk over to the wall of windows overlooking the ocean of her mansion where she’s sitting in a rocker. I bend down to kiss her head. “Morning.”
“He’s smoking.” She indicates to Bass pacing on the deck.
“Thought he quit,” I sigh, squatting to her level and putting my hand over hers in comfort, the way she has me the past few months.
“He did.”
After he lights the second cigarette off the first, she sighs.
“You need to do me a favor, Ollie.”
“Anything, Maisie.”
“Take a couple days off. Take him to the city, hit some clubs, and get the boy gettin’.” She pauses.
I wait for her to finish her sentence. When she doesn’t, I prompt her, “Get him what?”
“You know what. Don’t make me say it.”
Still confused, I look at her.
“You boys haven’t been out in months. I’m sure you could use a little gettin’ too.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop from smiling.
“I don’t want to discuss it again, just take Bass and get to gettin’.”
“Maisie–”
“Jean-Paul’s lawyer phoned, he’s going to be in New York tonight, he’d like to see Bass. I’d like you to go with him.
I nod, “Done.”
“He used some… harsh language with the man.”
“I bet he did,” I sigh.
“Not the man’s fault Jean-Paul was the way he was, Ollie, and I don’t blame Bass for his reaction, but he should at least hear him out.
We sit in a coffee shop across from a skyscraper with the de la Porte logo on it and all I can think is how the fuck did I miss it. Fourteen stories of gray and black brick and glass, with a logo known around the world on it.
I think of the girl, the Grace lookalike, who was crying as she ran in front of me. I know damn well she wasn’t Grace, it wasn’t possible. Knowing that, it pisses me off that this girl was clearly hurting, and no one fucking noticed. In cities like this all over America, everyone is too busy trying to get to work, to make a dollar, to become famous; too fucking concerned about their next break, to even see someone who needed someone, who was… breaking.