Divided (Unguarded #2)

by Ivy Stone

  “Come on, let’s sit down for a minute. Maybe you can talk it out with someone. Get out whatever the bullshit in that head of yours is telling you to jump off a bridge.”

  She sighs and slumps back around, gripping the railing in front of us with both hands. Sadness falls upon us when she hits back with reality. “Nobody wants to listen.”

  Isn’t that the fucking truth?

  I glance down to her small delicate hands, and shift mine beside hers. I want to comfort her, help her. I’ve felt helplessness. I’ve lived it and loathed it. I didn’t have anyone to help me when I needed it. I’m not about to let this girl feel alone, just like I did. If I can comfort her for a few minutes, an hour, just one night, it’ll be more than anyone’s given her. I sure as fuck won’t say the right thing, but I’ll try. I want to let her believe for a moment she’s wrong. Somebody does want to listen. Someone will always care, even if it’s a load of bullshit. I want to get her down, away from this bridge.

  She glances at our hands, just a whisper away from one another before beaming up at me, confusion in her lost blue eyes. I cough past the awkwardness growing between us. Give me guns and bad guys any given day. This part of the job—the comforting victims—is not my thing.

  “Let me listen.” I look straight into her eyes so she knows I’m serious.

  She tilts her head to the side. Her brows furrow in as she whispers, “Why?” The cold December air blows white clouds out of her mouth.

  I want to tell her it’s because I see something in her I’ve always seen in myself, and I’ll feel like absolute shit if I walk away without trying to help. But I don’t tell her that. I give her something else instead.

  Hope.

  “Because you’re so used to your own opinions of yourself, on your life, on everything. That you don’t realize just how amazing you might be to a stranger.”

  Her bottom lip trembles as she stares at me, eyes wide with surprise and I prepare for the waterworks to begin again, but they don’t come. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Her lips part. “That was really sweet considering you’re kind of a jerk.”

  My head tilts back and a deep throated laugh erupts—albeit not a time for it. I haven’t pissed the girl off. She just stares at me, studying my face.

  She angles her head to the side and peers up at me with big round eyes as deep blue as the ocean. “What’s your name?”

  I hesitate. My response lodging at the back of my throat. Somehow she’s asking me so much more than my name with just a look.

  “Roamyn,” I reply.

  She juts out her hand and adorns me with a small smile, one I won’t forget anytime soon. It’s soft and sweet, kind of like her. And the last thing I expected to see.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Roamyn. I’m Ali.”

  Quietness engulfs us as we sit and watch where the river meets the sky. We’d spent hours talking, nothing specific enough for the inner cop in me to go on a rampage, but enough for me to feel her pain and want to wish it all away. The quiet is a welcome pause, not an awkward one or uncomfortably so. We just sit, saying nothing, but at the same time, it feels just as therapeutic as talking everything out. I glance over at Ali and back and realize this time with her—a complete stranger—is the most time I’ve spent actually talking to a female for longer than I can remember. No expectations. No strings attached. I could talk to this girl all night and never see her again. It’s the best kind of therapy, and oddly enough, I’ve found myself enjoying her company.

  The night darkens as clouds steal the light of the stars. Looking at Ali, the moon shines down on her, casting a white streak across her face, baring the vulnerability written all over her face. She’s calmer but still stiff, and I wonder if she feels the same way I do about being here, up on this bridge. There’s a lot to be said about sitting alone watching the world pass by.

  Her voice shimmers through the air, breaking the silence. “Do you ever wonder how it’s possible to feel so alone in a city so full of people?”

  I answer without thought. “All the time.”

  “I’m so lost,” she croaks out, her voice breaking. Before I realize what I’m doing, my hand rests on her shoulder. She turns her head toward me and her eyes flicker an unreadable expression to where my hand sits. Confusion? Shock? Maybe a little of both. I curse under my breath and yank my hand away. Shifting in my seat, I give her an awkward smile.

  Fuck. Shouldn’t have touched her.

  I rub the shadow on my jaw and hope I haven’t fucked everything up. “You’re not lost. You just haven’t found yourself yet.”

  Her eyes gloss over and tears begin to build. “I don’t want to find myself. I don’t want to remember.”

  Her words sink in, beneath my skin until they’re squeezing my heart with an unforgettable ache. I can’t tear my gaze away from her. I can’t manage a comforting word to leave my mouth. Instead, I fall deep into the eyes before me, begging for the story behind them. I recognize the torture in her voice, the agony in her eyes. They are familiar, like the ones staring back at me in the mirror every day. Maybe not to the same extent as hers but shit, what I wouldn’t do to never see that look again.

  A lump clogs my throat and I struggle to swallow past it as memories and old wounds surface with the mention of hers. My best friend’s advice, from a drunken night when I blurted out everything from my past, comes into my head. Mason always knows what to say, and right now nothing else fits more perfectly than the shit he spun me that night.

  “So don’t. Walk a new path and forget about the past. Find a new you. Don’t search for the old you because you’re not her anymore. You’re not the girl you were a year ago. Hell, you’re not the girl you were yesterday, Ali.”

  She sighs, and glimpses up at the sky as if it holds all the answers. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Nothing worth having ever is.”

  “That’s the thing… I’m not worth it.” Her words come out soft and full of pain.

  Sorrow wracks through me for this girl, because that’s all she is, she couldn’t be older than sixteen, maybe seventeen. But this time, I don’t care that what I’m about to do is probably wrong for a million different reasons.

  I move my hand to the side and cover hers with mine. We don’t acknowledge it. She doesn’t stop it.

  “Everyone means something to someone,” I murmur.

  “Yeah, and that’s not always a good thing…” she trails off, and anger rises inside. My eyes harden at her after listening to everything she’s said, my curiosity about her peaks further. My cop instincts are yelling abuse in my head. An abusive family member? A boyfriend maybe? My mind swims with possible answers to the cryptic information she’s sharing and none of them are good. I shift my other hand and reach into my pocket, feeling for my cell. I should call this in right now. I should take her to the precinct, the hospital, at least get her checked out. But I let go of the phone and leave it where it is because taking her in from head to toe, I recognize the one thing she hasn’t mentioned—she’s a drug addict. She’s back to shaking, looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, and if the track marks on her arms are anything to go by, in about an hour she’ll be on her knees begging and ready to do anything for a fix.

  She’s a junkie.

  If I mention now I’m a cop, she’ll run or jump. Either one is not an option I’m willing to risk. I’ll call it in. But I can’t right now.

  I lift my chin at the track marks marring her skinny arms. Maybe if I pry, dig just a little, I can find out more. Then take action. “Why do you do it?”

  Her gaze flicks to where I’m looking and she covers her arm with the hand that was underneath mine. “It helps me forget. Takes me to a place where I’m safe. No one can hurt me there. I can hide away…” she pauses. “I do it because up until now I thought if I could just find a way to forget, I’d be okay. I’d make it out and I could run away and never come back here.”

  “So what changed?”

  She stares down a
t her feet, letting out a long sigh. “I can’t take it anymore…” her voice cracks, “…they broke me.”

  Her words held a pain no girl should feel. I’d seen the worst with my job and dealt with the horrible. But this, now. Her. She shared pieces of herself with me. Fuck. If that wasn’t me as a kid. The situations might have been different, but the feelings were the same. Those were carved so deep into my skin I’d never be rid of them.

  She was wrong about one thing, though. They didn’t break her, whoever they were. She walks away with her shoulders back and her head a little higher. There’s no smile lingering, no massive breakthrough. The first thing she’ll probably do is get a fix. But she’s still walking away, instead of drowning her worries into the Hudson River. With every step she walks in the other direction, I don’t breathe. It’s not until she’s out of sight and my lungs are begging for air, I exhale an exhausted breath.

  I stand still, watching where she stood a moment ago, where she said three words with more sincerity than I’d felt from anyone in a long time.

  Thank you, Roamyn.

  Her small silhouette is all but a shadow in front of me, a fragment of my mind playing on my emotions. Her figure blows with the wind, sweeping her up into pieces in the sky. She’s floating through the air, slipping away, and becoming a memory rather than reality when her voice echoes in my ears. Her earlier words ricochet around me.

  “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, to not be sinking. It’s all I’ve ever felt and every day I fall further. When all I really want to do is fly.”

  Hope swells in my chest, overriding the worry, subverting the dread for a moment.

  I stare out into the night and mutter words I know she won’t hear, “Fly high, Ali. Fly high.”

  I pull up the hood of my jacket, grab my phone out my pocket to call in the incident and walk the other way back to my home in Brooklyn. With every step, regret etches its way into my mind.

  That’s the thing about regret. That fucker doesn’t show up until the wrong decision has been made, and there’s no option but to live with the consequences of those actions.

  The key screeches in the old lock as it clicks over, opening up the door to my house, or rather Marino headquarters. I freeze at the sound. My heart races as I wait for heavy footsteps belonging to a pissed off Lucio, but relief settles over me when nothing but the dull sounds of the television in the living room to my left, fall upon my ears. Exhaling the breath I was holding, I shut the door behind me and tip toe past.

  The outline of Valentina Marino’s head poking above the top of the couch fills my dead heart with warmth. The woman who took me in without question or any hesitation nearly a year ago. I’d begun to hate her. She knew what her husband and brother had done to me on the night my sister left. Or rather, the night Lindsey begged me to leave with her without telling me everything she should have. Because, bless her beautiful soul, she didn’t want to tarnish the rose-colored glasses I wore when it came to this fucked up family. I was blind, stupid, and so very naïve. All Lindsey ever tried to do was protect me and when I pushed her away that day, I left her with no choice but to watch me find out for myself the kind of evil that lives within these walls. Valentina knew what happened to me and I thought she didn’t care. More so, after Lucio was ordered to take me again. To use me for his pleasure. To prove his place among the Mafia hierarchy. But after I started coming home with broken bones and bloodied skin, Valentina would care for me and do everything she could to take the pain away. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be.

  She couldn’t give me the one thing I wanted more than anything—to wipe my memory and forget. Forget the searing pain of Lucio’s violent hand and the tortured eyes he gave me with every thrust because he hated it too. With every new bruise came a spark of anger.

  One day I snapped, blaming her for everything. She stood in front of me in the bathroom while I held my battered body up against the wall in the shower under the spray, trying to wash away the marks on my body imprinted there by her son. She just stood there, silently taking my verbal beat down. She never spoke. She didn’t have to. I said treacherous things we both knew were the truth, and her actions afterward spoke louder than anything she could have voiced. She walked forward, washcloth in hand and wrapped her arms around my shaking body. She held me while I cried in pain. She soothed me while I wept for what my life had become. And when the tears slowed and she stood me back up, she stared at me blankly. Nothing crossed her face. No empathy. Absolutely nothing.

  She’s dead inside too.

  Just like I’m becoming.

  Years in this house, among her place in this family, had broken her down. Blood bounded her to them and forced her this fate. I didn’t want that for me. I didn’t want to look in Valentina’s cold dead eyes and see myself in thirty years. Which is why after the Christmas from hell with my sister and Oliver, I tried to end it. This family had broken me. The agony had become a violent struggle, permanent and bruising. My soul had been crushed, along with it my dreams. They were lost, just like I am. I hadn’t told Lindsey what they’d done to me after she left. But every time I’d seen her since she’d felt it. She hurt seeing me coming down from a high. We never spoke of it and I always tried to hide it. But she knew when I was high and when I was sober, which isn’t all that often. So when I showed up at her loft for Christmas, high as a fucking kite, it was all it took for her faith in me to vanish and for her to give me an ultimatum.

  Get high, you get out.

  Or get clean, and you come back.

  The worst part of it all was I couldn’t blame her for being so cold. She suffered an entire childhood with our junkie mother. Our dad had died in the line of duty and it sent Mom off the rails. Nothing mattered to her anymore until Jeremy Stiles came along. He brought a little life back into her and was like a father to us, until his intentions became clear and he tried to steal every cent we had, which really wasn’t all that much. Lindsey endured so much more than me—at least, I was too young to remember most of it. She wasn’t, and it had scarred her for life. It jaded her perception on everything and everyone. So I left her loft. My Christmas dinner untouched. Oliver standing strong by Lindsey’s side as sadness flashed across her face. I left probably the only two people who loved me because I couldn’t bear it anymore. I couldn’t take Lindsey looking at me the way she used to look at our mother. I couldn’t take Oliver’s disappointment because of what I’d done to the only person who loved us more than we loved ourselves.

  I spent the next three days trying to get clean, but it was a lost cause. All it did was push me toward the Brooklyn Bridge so I could end it all before I fell into a torturous demise at the hand of a Marino. Leaving this world on my own terms would be a far nicer way to go. But then that didn’t work either because I screwed it up too, just like everything else.

  He wasn’t supposed to show up on the bridge. He wasn’t supposed to fill me with a slither of hope, for more, for different. But he did. He never danced around my feelings, and yet for the first time in a long time, he made me feel something other than broken. He listened, cared, showed me compassion. It was scary as it was confusing because it forced me to realize how out of touch with the world I’d truly become. I didn’t recognize his kindness for what it was. A stranger helping someone who was in need—that of a friend. Instead, I saw a man who was willing to help me, but would want something in return. They always did. Nearly a year my body has been used in unimaginable ways. For ogling, for pleasure, for pain. The first few months I wept more than I didn’t. I would cry for help, for God, for someone to save me. Then next four I prayed for death. Every filthy touch I’d wish for Lucio to hit me too hard and kill me. He never did, at least not physically. But in every other way I’d become numb. Now, I just don’t care. But Roamyn did tonight. Turns out he never wanted anything. I should have been relieved. Grateful. But I’m a gluten for punishment. A magnet to danger. I know the world has good men, but they’re also a rarity. My teenage heart is
bruised because I wanted to learn if my hero really was one as good as he seemed.

  The stairs give a soft creak beneath my feet as I tip toe up them. Pushing open my bedroom door, it quickly shuts again. Tears of relief begin rolling down my cheeks as I pray a silent thank you to whoever the hell is listening. Tonight, I don’t have to deal with Lucio. It’s a small reprieve, but a blessing not to be taken for granted. Sadness creeps over me, welcoming new tears. Viciously, I wipe them away for shedding pain at the memory of a boy who’s no longer here.

  The hurt is different, a pain none the less, but the saddest feeling to think how someone all but a year ago, could bring light on a dull day but now, brings a darkness to my life every time he steals a moment that doesn’t belong to him. I push away the hurt and march over to my dresser against the wall of the expansive room I share with my best friend. I yank open the top drawer. My eyes fall on the heroin and needle which I snatch out the bag of smack with shaky hands. It’s not my usual, Lucio knows it, but he’d given it to me yesterday anyway. I don’t have time for the needle. The sweats are coming on, gathering profusely on my forehead. My head’s thumping hard. Just a few free hours without thinking or feeling. It’s all I need. I grab my purse and use a card to line up the heroin. Rolling up a dollar bill, I bend forward and snort every granule of heaven in the line. I wipe the edge of my nose and lean my head in my hands on the old wooden dresser. Within minutes my head spins, everything becoming a blur. Except for when I look up, my reflection mocks me in the mirror as clear as day.

  You’re a drug addict.

  A whore.

  A disappointment to your family.

  My family. God, what a joke. I had Lindsey. And with Lindsey came Oliver. I adore them both. I wish I had the courage to go to Lindsey and tell her everything. I wish I had the strength she has to fight every battle without losing another piece of myself. But I don’t. I’m not like her. Telling her wouldn’t just tip the scales. Wouldn’t only ruin the balance she and Giuseppe have. It would ruin me for her to see how far I’ve fallen. She’s already lost faith in me. I can’t have her lose all hope.