Chapter 11

Aro

It takes me two hours to walk to my old house. I should probably swing by my former foster mom’s and get a change of clothes, but I need to check on Matty and Bianca. Plus, I don’t have the rent money I owe her.

Only my stepdad’s car sits in the driveway as the place comes into view, which makes sense. My mom would probably be at work by now, and if he’s in jail like Hawke said, then he’s not here even if his car is.

I walk up to the house, gazing at his ’79 Dodge Dart as I pass. I should steal it. It’s worth a good chunk of change.

But Hawke’s words ring in my ear. It would just cause more trouble, blah, blah, blah.

Of course, he’s right. There’s no way Hugo will take it as a payment on what I owe. Not a car stolen from someone we know.

The only thing I can do is run away with it and hope I don’t get caught. I could do it. I should. I know how to get by. Food, fuel, shelter… I could be in Chicago tonight. Seattle by Wednesday. Canada by morning. I could start over. Even if I got caught, it’s so tempting just for the hope of seeing a different view for once.

I could go.

I veer around the house and slip through the back door, something strong wafting through my nostrils before I even close it.

Vinegar. I inhale, also noticing a hint of baking soda and dish soap. Goosebumps spread up my arms as I recognize the scent. Bianca cleaned.

We could never waste money on store-bought kitchen and bathroom cleaners, so we always made our own. The bulb over the stove lights the kitchen just enough to see, but the house is quiet, and I immediately relax my shoulders at the shine on the counters and squeak of the clean floor under my shoes. Too many times I’ve come home or woken up to chaos. The stench of cigarettes and weed. Puke on the stairs. Strangers crashing on our couch after a party. Holes in the walls from a fight.

When I smell vinegar, I know everything’s okay.

I dig in my pocket and pull out the few small bills I’d found buried in my back pocket, counting them.

I scoff and roll my eyes at myself, throwing the money on the counter. That won’t help buy what they need, but I’ll figure it out. I always do.

I open the fridge to see where they stand on the necessities, but as soon as I pull the door open, individually packaged Jell-O cups and cheese sticks spill onto the floor.

I dive down, narrowing my eyes as I try to pick up the mess, but I see all the food on the shelves and hesitate. What the hell?

The packed fridge overflows with milk, juice boxes, lunch meat, snacks… I drop the stuff in my hands and pull open the drawers, seeing it filled with fresh produce. I stuff the contents that spilled out back onto the shelves and rise, pulling open the freezer. Treats and meat and pre-packaged pasta and stir-fry meals…

I straighten, realization hitting. My mom rarely stocks the fridge, but sometimes she’ll get a big spender at the club, and she can afford to buy some fun stuff. I pull open cabinets, seeing cereal and Pop-Tarts and canned soup.

But she would never buy this much. And never the high-end brands. Whoever did this isn’t in this family. We don’t shop this way.

Bianca enters the kitchen and stops when she sees me. She has a trash bag full of garbage she’s probably carting outside.

“Where did all this food come from?” I ask her, but I think I already know the answer.

She smiles, setting down the bag. “Instacart. Someone had it delivered this morning.”

Someone, my ass. I slam the freezer door and pull off my hood and hat, running my hand through my hair. He let me panic when he told me he had my stepdad arrested, and he’d already sent a month’s worth of food. He didn’t want any pushback, so he didn’t tell me that I had one less thing to worry about.

And I would’ve pushed back. I don’t need him showing them a life they’ll never have and getting their hopes up.

Filling up a glass of water, I drink until it’s empty.

“Aro, what were you thinking?” Bianca asks behind me.

I stay quiet, not because I’m avoiding her, but I’m not sure which stupid thing that I did she’s referring to.

Probably the gunshot.

Instead, I change the subject. “Are you okay?” I turn around. “And Matty?”

She nods, a wistful smile crossing her lips. “We’re fine. I don’t know who sent the food, but it helps. He’s in heaven.” She laughs, turns, and I follow her, both of us peering around the corner and watching his feet bouncing over the side of the couch as he hugs a bag of pretzels and Flynn Rider sings on the TV. “Been watching Disney all day and snacking,” she tells me. “I should cut him off—”

“No,” I say quickly, loving this view the most. Him, belly full, and lost in the fun he’s having. “Let him eat what he wants.”

She nods and we slip back into the kitchen.

“They’ve been looking for you,” she says. “You really shouldn’t be here.”

“I just wanted to make sure you all were safe. Where’s Mom?”

“Working.” She opens the back door, tossing the trash into the can right outside. “Asshole got arrested for some outstanding warrant, so they picked him up from the hospital. She’s trying to scrounge money together to bail him out.”

“Of course, she is.” But I fight to hold back a smile. They don’t seem to know the warrant is fake. Hawke’s trick is working, and no one is onto him. Yet.

I dial her on my phone and then hang up. “That’s my new number,” I tell her. “Don’t give it to anyone.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I almost laugh, not sure how to answer that. She’s a little clueless sometimes, but she’s kind.

“I won’t be if you get pregnant,” I snap, shooting her a teasing look but not really. “You’re taking your pills?”

She looks away, embarrassed.

“Bianca?”

“Yes!” she whispers a yell. “Damn!”

Telling her not to have sex with her boyfriend is useless. He’s all she really has.

“Take care of Matty,” I tell her, spinning around.

“I will.”

I open the back door, taking a step out, but suddenly, someone is there. I rear back. Hugo’s eyebrows shoot up, surprised, but then a smile curls his lips like his job just got a lot easier.

Shit!

I shove him in the chest, he topples backward, and I run, leading him away from the house.

Yanking up my hood, I tuck my phone inside my clothes and dig in my heels, powering as fast as I can.

Climbing over the chain-link fence, I jump down into the next backyard, and instead of turning right toward the street, I race left, toward the dirt road, behind the houses.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Hugo yells. “Why do you run from me?”

Bullshit.

I halt in the alleyway, looking left and then right. Axel stands in front of his red Mustang, and I spin around, rushing the other way.

I shouldn’t have come. I could’ve called. What good am I, if I can’t help them?

I take a right, down a small pathway between houses, and leap over the fence, scrambling into the wooded area that borders Weston.

Footfalls pound behind me, and I look back, seeing Hugo on my tail. I whimper, unable to stop the noise from bubbling up my throat.

He lands on my back, taking me down into the tall grass, and I jerk my elbow back into him. He falls off, and I scurry to my feet, but he grabs me and comes up, wrapping his arms around me.

“Shhh…” He sounds like he’s handling a child. “No one is going to hurt you.”

Tears spring to my eyes, and my legs nearly give out. He squeezes me, the wound on my arm aching.

“Killing you doesn’t make him money,” he says. “Thank God, right?”

I growl, thrashing in his hold. “Hugo, no.”

“Shhh.”

He brushes my ear with his mouth, and I shake, my gaze slowly rising upward. I see Orion in my head, pinpointing in the sky where the top left corner star of the constellation might appear when it becomes visible every winter.

Betelgeuse. One of the brightest stars in the constellation. I picture it looking back at me. Do you see me?

“Just let her go, man,” Nicholas shouts.

He never had the stomach for this.

But Hugo just tsks. “We all serve our purpose.” And then in my ear, “This is the only way. You know that.”

Then he grips my jaw, twists my face around, and covers my mouth with his. I cry out.

“Hugo!” Nicholas growls.

See me.

I bite down, tasting his blood, and he screams. So do I. I drop like dead weight, feeling his hold loosen, and I run. As fast as I can. Past the tree line and into the darkness of the woods. I run and run, slipping into a pool of mud, but before I can get out, they’re nearly on me. I dip down, my body nearly covered in the sludge, and I go still, trying to make like a stone.

“Bianca is growing up nice and pretty,” Hugo yells.

I shake.

“I’ll get my money back on your ass or hers.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, my stomach roiling.

“I don’t want to do that,” he says, looking around the trees and into the distance, past me. “But he will if he has to.”

Hugo is a piece of shit, but I don’t fear him, not like Reeves. Hugo would coerce me, but he’d never force me. And he knows Bianca is all Matty has right now.

He doesn’t want that.

“The clock is ticking,” he calls out. “Come to your senses.”

A moment later, footsteps retreat, and they leave.

I crawl out of the little pool, mud spilling from my clothes as the rain kicks up again. I tip my head back, but I don’t look. I just let the water wash away the dirt.

If you don’t grow, you die.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be this anymore.

I stay there a while, making sure they’re gone as I try to let the despair and worry work their way through me—out of me—so I can get my head clear. So, I can figure out what I need to do.

After a while, I walk slowly, staying on side streets and between houses, checking my phone and seeing it’s dead. Probably from the water.

I walk and walk forever, down a dark country road that slowly starts to brighten with streetlights as the sun sets, and I don’t know where I’m going, just away.

At least it seems he doesn’t know about the camera at Green Street.

Thoughts race through my head—solutions that won’t work and people who can help me but won’t. Is this what my mother thought once upon a time? Where the pressure got too hard and the options too little, and she just decided that was it? All she’d ever be.

So, she pays the bills she can, lets her kids raise each other, and carves out a moderate amusement for herself here and there until she dies.

Did she want more? Ever?

They wear you down. All the shit, all the time, and all the disappointment until you just stop fighting. You let it happen to you. You let everything happen to you, and you just act grateful it’s not going to kill you today, so you can enjoy a few more beers. You don’t fight it, because if it’s not one thing, it’s another, so what’s the point?

What’s the point? What are we here for?

I take a step, climbing a fire escape, when I realize I’m back at the hideout. I’m in Shelburne Falls. It’s dark, and I’m soaked from rain that still pours.

I look around me, seeing I’ve ascended three stories of the building, making my way for the roof, and I’m suddenly so tired. I stop, my legs shaking.

My muscles harden like they’re filled with knots, and I grip the railing before stumbling backward. I slide down the edge of the landing and drop to my ass on the steel grate of the third floor. I’m done. I got nothing left.

My muddy hair hangs down my chest, and despite the August air, I shiver in my soaked clothes.

Grow or die. I don’t want to die. If I went back to Hugo, it would kill me. I can’t do what he wants me to do.

I hear him before I see him, his steps coming down the stairwell. He stops at my side, and I see he’s wearing running shoes. He was probably exercising when he saw me on the cameras.

I’m about to tell him I’ll take a hike. I’m just resting.

But he takes a seat next to me, and for some reason, I feel tears burn my eyes.

“Are you injured?” Hawke asks in a soft voice.

I shake my head.

Rain spills between the grating, and I don’t know why he stays there, getting just as soaked as me.

I don’t try to talk, though. Whatever comes out of my mouth seems to make everything worse. Yesterday I didn’t really care. Today I do.

“My parents took me all these places growing up,” he says. “They had a hard time of it when they were kids. They didn’t get to see the world. Learn what they were capable of.” He bends one knee up and drapes his arm over it. The vein in his hand bulges, disappearing underneath his watch. “And when they got pregnant with me long before they were really ready, they decided to not let it stop them. They were getting out there. Together. They strapped me on their backs and went.”

I try to picture him as a child, but I can’t.

“Camping, hiking, hunting,” he goes on, “broke down bus rides through the Andes, and we even had to hitchhike once. My mom was really scared.” He laughs a little and then continues. “They taught me to ration food and forage for supplies. How to do a lot with very little.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, he’s quieter. “But it never really occurred to me until today…” I see him look over at me out of the corner of my eye. “I did all of that with the knowledge that I was never in any real danger.”

My chin trembles, and I clench my teeth to stop it.

“I was never going to starve,” he says, “because I was never going to be alone in the world. I have a huge family. All of whom are ready at a moment’s notice to be there for me.”

Unlike me, he means. But despite the warmth I feel that at least he’s aware of how lucky he is—how he might not be the guy he is if he’d been born into my world—I fight to stay hard.

“I don’t need your pity,” I tell him.

But he’s quick to respond. “I don’t feel sorry for you, Aro.” He falls quiet, and I almost can’t hear him when he says, “I think you’re amazing.”

My heart skips a beat, and I freeze.

Amazing? Did he smoke something? Not enough oxygen getting into the hideout, maybe?

“You can do a lot for an eighteen-year-old,” he muses, and I hear the smile in his voice. He’s still looking at me. “What can you do at nineteen, I wonder? At twenty-five and at thirty?”

A lump lodges in my throat, and I turn my eyes out to the alley, blinking away the water on my face.

“Let’s do this.” His voice is gentle. “I don’t want that piece of shit to win, okay?”

I want to. I want to do this with him. To finally win.

Never give up the fight.

Hawke stands up and holds out his hand for me. I don’t hesitate. Taking it, I let him pull me up, my body no longer weak, just tired.

And hungry.

I face him, and he faces me, and it occurs to me how small I feel suddenly. Like my giant ego has deflated a little, and I’m just now realizing how tall he is.

I don’t look at him. “Thank you for the food,” I say. “I’ll pay you back.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I know he’s not asking for his money back. He wouldn’t.

But he knows I can’t owe him.

He simply replies, “I know you will.”

And it’s done. We talked and didn’t fight, and it’s strange how I’m suddenly glad I don’t have to leave him.

“Here,” he says and reaches over, pulling my jacket off my shoulders. “Let me wring it out. We’ll wash it.”

It takes a moment, but I agree. Nodding, I let him pull my coat off, and I slip my hoodie over my head, the hat coming with it.

I drop everything to the landing and kick off my boots, not wanting to track mud into the building. Finally, I look up at him to see him staring down at me.

I stand there a moment. My drenched hair hangs in my face, mud coating my black pants and arms, turning my white tank top a grungy brown. Drops of rain hit my feet and spill down his chest that I didn’t realize was bare until now.

Something warms, low in my belly, and for just a second, I’m a teenage girl. Something throbs, and I suck in a little breath, looking away.

“Astronomy,” I say.

I look up, and he cocks his head, looking puzzled.

“I like…astronomy,” I tell him something about me. “I used to dream I’d be an astronomer when I was twenty-five or thirty.”

Since he asked.

His smile is small but beautiful, and I dive down to gather up my nasty clothes before he touches them.