“You don’t think it’s too fast?” I ask, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Well, do you?” she says.
“No. No freaking way.”
She beams. “Then you’ve got your answer, sister.”
Sister.
I’ve never had a sibling before.
Later, Mason and I sit in his rooftop garden, the scents of the plants dominating the air around us as the setting sun casts hazy rays through the heavy-leafed trees. I lean back in his enveloping arms, savoring the feeling of security, my man so close that it seems as if nothing in the world could ever bother me again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks breathily, his voice still carrying that carnal possessive note it always does after we make love.
I told him earlier that it’s the anniversary of my parents’ death tomorrow.
“Yes,” I whisper.
I feel tension run through him, and I know he knows I lied, or at least just shielded the truth.
“No,” I say a second later.
Truth, always.
As a street kid, that’s going to take some getting used to.
But it’s worth it.
For him.
For us.
“I never knew them, so I guess it’s silly that I even care. They were junkies and everybody I ever met was keen to remind me of that fact. My parents were dirty junkies who had a little legend about them because they died of an overdose two days apart. I don’t know, some people think my mother committed suicide because she loved my dad so much and couldn’t go on without him. Others think junkies are incapable of love. I was already in social services, just ten days old.”
He reaches up and wipes tears from my cheeks with hands that still carry the smell of our passion, which somehow comforts me, like were animals smothering each other with our scents, proclaiming to the world that this is it, we’ve found our one.
I grab his hand and kiss his fingers, one by one.
“You can still care about that,” he whispers. “Natalie never really knew our Mom and Dad. She was too young to remember much, I mean. And yet she still talks about them all the time. It’s natural, to want to belong.”
“I do feel like I belong,” I whisper. “I feel like I belong to you.”
“That’s because you do,” he whispers with fierce passion flaring fire-like in his voice. “And I belong to you. Because I—”
You what? Why have you stopped?
Then I hear my cellphone ringing, realizing it’s interrupting the moment.
I think about ignoring it, but then I glance over at the table and see it’s Gertrude. She rarely calls me after hours unless we’ve planned to do something and immediately I feel a horrible pounding in my chest.
“Something’s wrong,” I whisper, hands shaking as I pick up the phone.
“You don’t know that,” Mason mutters, but uncertainty quivers beneath his words.
I answer the phone.
Silence for a few moments.
And then his voice, a voice I will never forget, the voice that screamed after me and into the street, panting in terror.
“I’ll get you, whore. I’ll never stop searching for you. You’re mine. Nobody disrespects Hardhat and gets away with it.”
“So here we are,” he says. “You’re a slippery one, I’ll give you that. And can you believe, my sweet Melody, that your old surrogate grandma didn’t put a password on her phone? That’s not very security conscious, is it?”
“Where is she?” I whisper.
“She’s here waiting for you,” he says, and I can hear that he’s grinning proudly.
“How do I know that?” I say, somehow not breaking down in tears.
Everything feels like it’s spinning a million miles per second.
But I have to keep it together.
I have to hold on.
“Fine, have your way. Here, Grandma, it’s for you.”
Some rustling, a pause, and then Gertrude’s voice comes whispering across the line.
“Don’t do what he wants, dearie,” she wheezes. “Live … live your life.”
“Where the hell is she?” I yell, when the phone rustles again. “You bastard. You evil bastard. This has nothing to do with her.”
“I agree,” he says. “This is between us. So be a good little whore and come and get her, and she’ll go free. I’ll text you the address. It goes without saying that if you don’t come alone, I’ll put a bullet in old grannie’s head. Don’t fuck with me, Melody. I’ve got nothing to lose here. I’m tired of being called Scarface behind my back. Tik-tok, Melody, you haven’t got long.”
The line goes dead.
And my world plummets.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mason
“He said I had to come alone,” Melody says, glancing at the building where this fucking monster Hardhat is keeping an innocent older lady who’s the only motherly figure Melody has ever had.
I stare at the building, squeezing the steering wheel as the gulls whine in the air around us, the sun almost completely set now, turning the rocking waves the color of muddy melting ice.
“It’s not enough that he’s done this to you,” I snarl. “But of course he has to do it here. I guess he thinks it makes him clever. I guess he thinks it makes him big and powerful and will give him some goddamn credibility on the streets as if there’s such a thing as that on the fucking streets.”
“Here? The docks?” Melody whispers, eyes glued to the small office outhouse-type building at the far end.
I’ve parked down the way, just behind some shipping containers, and we can just about make out the worn, rundown looking building.
“It’s Spark’s first office,” I say. “The only real estate I could afford back then when everybody thought I was just another kid with another stupid dream. He thinks we’re powerless, Melody. Well, fuck that. I’m going in there and I’m getting that innocent lady out. I’ll return her to you. You just need to stay here.”
“What?” she gasps. “No, Mason. I can’t stay here. And I can’t let you go in there. I shouldn’t have even let you come this far. If he sees you—”
“He’s going to kill you,” I snarl, the words producing a Big Bang of fight-or-flight hell inside of me.
And everything,
