by Harley Stone
“Is that an eastern prickly pear?” I asked, crossing the room. I hadn’t seen one since I’d left home.
His grin only widened. “Yep. I remembered they were your favorite. All the other girls liked roses and such, but you liked cacti. I was hoping it’d bloom for you, but it didn’t cooperate.”
The cactus was my favorite flower because it knew how to protect itself. It was beautiful, but only bloomed for a day, not giving a damn that people expected more. “Thank you. This is all really sweet, but I’m only going to be here a few days. You didn’t need to go through all this trouble.”
“Nonsense. You’re saving my rear here. I had to get bedding anyway, and figured it was time for my first houseplant. You and your brown thumb have less of a chance of killing off a cactus. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place before I have to head out.”
Everything he said made sense, putting me a little more at ease.
The guest bathroom was clean and a little on the small side. The kitchen was modern with granite countertops, oak cabinets, and tile flooring. He’d stocked up the fridge and showed me where the pots and pans were. The master bedroom was large, but sparsely decorated. He paused in front of another door and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “This room will probably be your favorite.” He swung open the door to reveal a gorgeous master bathroom with a giant, jetted bathtub, separate shower, and dual sinks.
“Feel free to use anything you want in here. The jets on the tub are great, and, if you’re interested, I keep bubble bath here.” He opened a cabinet, then closed it to open another. “Towels are in this one.” Leading me out of the bathroom, he added, “Make yourself at home. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to call me.” He glanced at his phone. “Shoot. I gotta get going, or I’ll miss my flight.” He grabbed a suitcase from his bed, and I followed him out into the living room. “Do you have any questions before I leave?”
“Food and kitty litter for little miss thing, here?” I said, holding Daisy higher to remind him why I was staying at his house in the first place.
He smacked himself on the forehead. “Oh yeah. Of course. How could I forget Daisy?” He led me down a hallway to the laundry room and showed me everything I needed. Once again, I followed him into the living room where he paused and looked me over again. “I still can’t believe you’re here, in my house. Thanks again for helping me out, Amelia.”
I returned his smile, happy to be doing some good after all I’d screwed up. “My pleasure.”
Toby gave me a hug goodbye, and then rolled his suitcase out the door. I locked up behind him and watched through the window as he drove off, looking forward to my time alone with Daisy.
19
Hound
MILA DIDN’T EVEN say goodbye. I only knew she was gone because Havoc had seen her leave and came to the office to report the news to Morse. Judging by the storm cloud that rolled over Morse’s expression, she hadn’t told him goodbye either. Havoc left, and Morse angrily typed away at his keyboard. A while later, he stood and marched over to the impromptu desk he’d created for Mila. He yanked a cord out of their shared power supply and shoved the laptop she’d been using onto a shelf to store. Then he gave her chair a hard shove until it rolled away, hitting the wall with a satisfying smack.
I understood exactly how he felt.
All week, the office had felt empty without her, but today it felt downright hollow. So did I. Trying my best to ignore the feeling, I focused on my job. Hours crept by. It felt like a year had passed before the clock finally struck quitting time. There was still a dark storm cloud hovering over Morse, so I bid him a quick goodnight and got the hell out of there.
I should have stopped by the kitchen to see who was cooking and if they needed any help, but I didn’t feel much like being around anyone. Hobbling up the stairs, I ignored my own door and went straight to Mila’s. It was unlocked, so I let myself in.
All of her stuff was gone.
The closet door was open, the bed was made, her key was on top of the dresser, everything was exactly how it had been before she arrived. The only evidence that she’d ever occupied the space came in the form of her soft floral scent still lingering in the air. Breathing it in, I staggered to the bed and sat down.
I’d only known Mila for a few weeks, yet I knew without a doubt that the shit between us wasn’t supposed to end this way. I’d always believed that people came into my life for a reason. Mila’s presence had made me realize my life was missing something. Her absence felt a lot like the sun had been plucked out of the goddamn sky. I felt it in my fucking soul.
After our last fight, I’d Googled courtesans to find out what the hell she was talking about. Women born into poverty who used their body to raise their social status and feed themselves… I could see why she’d referred to herself as such. I’d also pieced together enough details about her past to understand why she’d started down that path. Broke and alone, she’d done what she had to do to survive.
Now, she was dealing with the fallout.
We weren’t much different. I’d done the same, self-medicating to keep from throwing in the towel and taking my own life. The fallout for my actions included jail time and rehab. Mila had morphed into a chameleon, and was on the run from some religious nut-job murderer. We seemed to share a lack of faith in ourselves and a penchant for hurting those closest to us. The only real difference between us was that she hadn’t found a support system yet.
No, she’d found us, she just hadn’t accepted our help.
Tugging my phone out of my pocket, I considered sending her a message, but thought better of it. I was still dealing with my own demons, and had no business trying to help Mila. Maybe a nice, stable guy like Toby would have better luck. Maybe he could encourage her to finally trust someone and come to terms with her past.
The thought only worsened the ache inside of me.
Feeling all sorts of shit I couldn’t figure out, I ambled out of her room and into my own. Dinner would be ready soon, but I didn’t have much of an appetite.
I was losing someone important to me and it hurt. Way worse than I thought it would.
A couple of months ago, I would have found something to take the edge off. My back injury wasn’t the only pain numbed by morphine. I’d often used it to erase the sting of all of my shortcomings, limitations, and loneliness. But I couldn’t do that anymore. I had too many people counting on me to stay clean.
And strangely enough, I didn’t even want to self-medicate.
Glancing at the beer glasses on top of my dresser, I called my sister.
“Cars!” Annie said, answering.
Just hearing her voice made me smile. “Hey kiddo, how are you?”
“Great! I was so nervous, but I nailed my first interview. The manager at the coffee shop said he’d be calling me in for a second one with his boss soon. How great is that?”
Glad to hear her so happy, I felt a smile tug at my lips. “Sounds like you got it in the bag.”
“I know, right? And I’m gonna be the best barista in Vegas. I’ma be slingin’ coffees and slayin’ tips.”
Her excitement was contagious, tugging a chuckle from my chest. “I bet you will.”
“How’s Seattle? Is it raining there?”
Having had this conversation several times before, I laughed at her ridiculousness. “It’s July. It doesn’t rain year-round.”
“Yeah, just from September to June. I don’t know how you live in a city with no sun.”
She was on one today. “At least my skin doesn’t sizzle every time I step outside,” I replied.
“Point,” she conceded. “So… what’s up? How are you?”
I wouldn’t lie to her. Closing my eyes, I massaged my temples. “It’s been a rough day, but I’ll live.”
“You still clean?”
“Yeah. I’m… coping.” Realizing the truth of my words, I felt a small burst of pride. I felt like shit, but I was handling it. And that was progress.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asked.
There was no way in hell I was talking about my girl problems to my fifteen-year-old sister. “Nope. I want you to distract me. Tell me all about your first interview.”
“Ohmigod, Cars, there’s so much to tell!” She sucked in a deep breath. “The manager who interviewed me looks like a cross between Homer Simpson and Jason Statham.”
I tried to picture that mashup, but couldn’t. “How is that even possible?”
“Trust me, it’s real. Hopefully he’s in on the second interview so I can low key snap a pic and send it to you.”
“Don’t get caught,” I cautioned.
“What do you think I am, new? I do this all the time.”
“You take pictures of people without their consent on the regular? You sure that’s not illegal?”
She giggled. “Relax, I’m a minor. Besides, those ‘people of Walmart’ pictures aren’t going to take themselves. If folks don’t want to be turned into a meme, they shouldn’t wear unicorn pajamas while shopping.”
She did have a point. Laughing, I listened as she gave me her version of the interview. We were on the phone for over an hour before she finally wound down.
“You good now, Cars?” she asked.
“Yeah. Thanks, kid. I needed this.”
“Good.” The pride in her voice made me happy. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do after graduation.”
“Oh?” I’d asked her to think about her future in the past, but this was the first time she’d brought it up.
“Yeah, I’m thinking I might want to go to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor.”
“Wow. That sounds like a tough job.” My gaze darted back to the glasses on my dresser, as I remembered how my little sister shoved me toward cleaning up my life. “But I bet you’d be really great at it, Annie.”
“Thanks, Cars. Hey, I better get going. Mom’s been yelling at me to come eat for a while. I think my dinner’s cold.”
“Thanks for sacrificing your warm meal for me,” I replied.
We said our goodbyes and I got undressed and crawled into bed. I felt better, but my appetite was still MIA. With nothing else to do, I closed my eyes and replayed every conversation I’d had with Mila. Then I altered them, imagining myself saying all the things I wish I would have said until I finally drifted off to sleep.
I expected Thursday to be better—to feel less lonely than Wednesday had—but if anything, Mila’s absence weighed on me even more. Morse seemed as affected as I was, and we both kept our heads down and worked silently. The day seemed to last forever, which didn’t make sense. It didn’t matter when I got off work, because I had no plans and nothing to look forward to after work.
And that thought was depressing as hell.
About ten minutes before quitting time, Morse leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “You heard from her?” he asked.
Knowing exactly who he was talking about, I shook my head. “No. You?”
“No. I tried to call, but it went to voicemail. She probably has me on ignore.”
“Want me to try?” I asked. Checking on Mila for her cousin sounded like the perfect excuse to make contact, and I wanted to hear her goddamn voice and know she was okay.
He shrugged, trying to play it off like he didn’t care one way or the other. “Sure. Why not?”
I tugged my phone out and pulled up her contact information, hitting dial. The call went to voicemail. Disappointed, I hung up and shook my head. “No luck. Sorry, Morse.”
“She belongs here, doesn’t she?” he asked.
I nodded. “Hasn’t been the same since she left.”
“I thought it would be better for us all if she left, but I’m worried about her. I said some shit I shouldn’t have.”
I snorted. “You and me both, brother. I definitely could have handled the situation better.”
“I was concerned about you, too, but you’re handling it well. I’m proud of you, brother. I should have given you more credit.”
His praise probably shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did, but precious few people had said those words to me. Choked up, I cleared my throat. “Thanks, man.”
“You know, it’s not her fault,” he said. “She has issues, but she’s been through some serious shit. Stuff I couldn’t protect her from.” Morse stared at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “I know you and your sister are close. Did anybody ever hurt her?”
“What do you mean?”
He scratched his head. “Fuck. This is harder to talk about than I expected.” His gaze met mine again. “You know, they say one in every three girls is sexually abused before the age of eighteen.”
No, I didn’t know that. The statistic was staggering, making me wonder if anyone had ever hurt Annie. Surely, she would have told me if they did. Focusing back on what Morse had started to say, I asked, “Mila was sexually abused as a child?”
He nodded. “I think so. There were rumors about the reverend and the girls. It was like some fucked up rite of passage for them once they hit their teen years. But then he… some of them he liked more than others.”
“What the fuck, man?” I asked. If Morse had known Mila was getting sexually abused and didn’t speak up, he and I were going to have a problem. “Didn’t you tell someone? Her parents?”
“You don’t get it, brother. Everyone knew. Well, we suspected. Nobody really talked about it, but there were hints. Disappearances. Behavior issues. Tears.” His eyes grew haunted. “Meals changed. The only person she stayed close to was Tobias. He was fluff.”
“Fluff?” I asked.
“Yeah. He never talked about anything real. Everything was happy and wonderful. He was like one of those princes in a fairytale. She could pretend with him.”
“I can be whomever I need to be.”
“Holy fuck,” I swore under my breath. Her admission made sense now. That’s how she coped. It was her drug, her addiction. I got it now. She wasn’t trying to deceive me; she was just trying to survive. Rocked by the epiphany, I stared at Morse, waiting for him to continue.
“We used to be so damn close, and then after her thirteenth birthday, she withdrew. I tried to talk to her about it a few times, but she wouldn’t say shit. You gotta understand, the reverend is basically a goddamn king. He does whatever he wants, no laws or rules can touch him, and nobody ever questions him. When I was a kid, there was this nice guy named Mr. Shewsberry. He started talking, making accusations about some shit the reverend had done and saying it wasn’t biblical. The guy disappeared, Hound. Nobody knows what happened to him, but let me tell ya, his rebellion was squashed faster than I can plant a virus in an unprotected system. It’s a whole different world out there. I was just a dumb kid who suspected something was up with my cousin but had no proof. I didn’t even put two and two together and figure out what really must have been going on until after I left. Our parents had to know, though. There’s no way they couldn’t have.”
My mom could be a manipulative, lying hag, but at least she protected Annie. I hoped. “Sounds like a fucked-up place.”
“You don’t know the half of it. After all of that, this Billy the Bastard loser saves her like he’s some sort of messiah, and then basically abandons her with nothing and nobody. She went into survival mode, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know how to have a relationship, friend or otherwise.”
And I made her feel like a whore.
My hindsight was twenty-twenty, and after spending all evening altering my conversations with Mila in my head, I was desperate for the chance to try again. Especially now that I was armed with real information. But he was sharing without her consent, which seemed like a shitty thing to do. “Why are you telling me this, Morse?”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. I got the impression this shit was about as easy for him to tell me as it was for me to hear. “Because my cousin doesn’t let people in. She never has. But she let you get cl
ose to her. She told you shit.”
“She didn’t tell me she’d been raped as a child!” And I wished he hadn’t either. I didn’t want to think about Mila getting sexually abused as an adult, much less a kid. The thought of it kept messing with my head and making me want to punch something.
He skewered me with a look, tripping up my spinning thoughts. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. You love her, don’t you?”
I couldn’t even think about that shit. “It’s only been a few weeks.”
“So? Is there some mythical love timeline I don’t know about? Do you have to put in a certain number of days to know how you feel about someone?”
I chuckled, shaking my head at his ridiculous question.
“Would you fight for her?” he asked.
“In a heartbeat.” The answer flew right out of my mouth, surprising even me. Still, I knew it was true. Hearing all this shit about Mila only made me want to help her more. Not that I could, but I sure as hell wanted to. “But what if she’s better off where she is?”
“Pretending to be something she’s not?” Morse scoffed. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. She has feelings for you, too, you know? Whatever happened between the two of you… it really upset her. You could actually help her, brother.”
I shook my head, wondering what he thought I could do for her. I’d done more damage than good. “I’m in no position to help anyone. Jesus, sometimes I’m barely hangin’ on myself.” But that wasn’t quite true. Last night I’d reached for help rather than a fix. That wasn’t weakness, it was progress. “I thought I’d want to use last night, but I didn’t. Her being gone is tearing me up inside, but I refuse to go down that road again.”
“And that, right there, is why.” Morse shot to his feet and circled his desk, leaning against it to face me. “You know the struggle. You don’t pretend to have it all figured out. You would encourage her to seek help, you’d be patient, you wouldn’t judge her, you wouldn’t give up on her because you know what it’s like. That’s what she needs right now.”