“You’ve been up all night?” Nate asked, his voice soft.

I glanced up at him, a breath leaving me when I saw the dark circles surrounding his eyes and the mess of hair sticking up, no doubt from him tugging at it. He looked as bad as I felt and I was positive he hadn’t slept a wink either. “I guess I must have,” I whispered.

He seemed to hesitate a beat, before putting one foot in front of the other and heading toward me. I slowly picked up the pieces of my broken heart, otherwise known as my “mother’s” life and shoved them back in the envelope, making room for our meals.

We sat in silence as we stared down at the table, our forks poking and prodding but never lifting the food to our mouths. My silent tears unmasked by my almost silent cries filled the air, broken only by Nate’s sighs. Then he sat up, his forearms on the table as he leaned forward. “You should eat something.”

My head cocked as I took in his words, his appearance, and the genuine sincerity in both of them. I nodded as I held the fork tighter, pushing back a sob and I ate my food, little by little until my plate was empty, all while he watched me, his eyes never leaving mine. And when I was done, we both sat back, letting the silence drown out our heartache. It wasn’t until Nate reached over, his fingers on the edge of my plate that I finally spoke. “I asked Tiny to find her because I wanted the truth. I knew that if I’d asked you, you would try to shelter me. To protect me from the hurt. I thought it was what I wanted.”

He froze, his gaze lifting and locking with mine. “And now? What do you want now, Bailey?”

I covered my trembling lips with the back of my hand. “And now I want you. I want you to protect me, Nate.”

*

I sat on the bathroom counter like I’d done so many times before, only now it felt different. There was a nervous, unresolved tension between us as Nate stood between my legs—not close enough that he was touching me, but close enough that I could feel the heat from his body.

He seemed focused (almost too focused) on preparing my insulin. There was no skin on skin contact when he lifted my shirt, and he froze when my bare stomach was revealed. His eyes drifted shut as he licked his lips and squatted in front of me, his breath warm against my leg. I held my breath, my muscle tense with anticipation. My hands reached out, as if on their own, until my fingers met the soft tips of his hair. He looked up at me, and I hesitated, just for a moment, before lacing my fingers through his hair and pulling him toward me. And just like that, the tension left me, but so did the tears, and so did the words I’d spent the entire night denying. “My mother was a whore.”

Nate

Bailey’s mother was a whore.

Not in the insulting way.

In the literal way.

The mother Bailey had known, had grown up with, wasn’t her mother. Not by birth, anyway. Her birth mother had been a prostitute, a hooker, a whore. It didn’t matter how you spun it, or which word you chose to use; the truth was the truth and what’s worse—she’d been a cheap whore, working on the streets for very little so that she could maintain her crack habit.

Bailey’s mother was a crack whore.

Unfortunately, the man she’d known as her father was, in fact, her father. A businessman who worked in finance, but also had a craving for hookers and cocaine.

When Bailey had been born, she was sent to the children’s hospital, her tiny newborn body shaking uncontrollably as she suffered from withdrawals.

Bailey was a crack baby.

From what Tiny had found out, the arrival of Bailey flicked a switch in her father, and when he held her for the first time, he decided to set a different path for his life, and so he spent day after day, night after night, doing what he could for his and the crack whore’s crack baby, now known as his daughter: Bailey Ann Wright—the baby girl who spent months in the hospital under the care of doctors and nurses as they treated her like they did other addicts.

It’s strange—how love can form from the most fucked up of circumstances.

A crack baby + a weak businessman + a nurse who’d taken a liking to Bailey would one day become Bailey’s family.

Until one day, the businessman could no longer hold off on his need, his want, his addiction, and after a few years of living clean, started using again. The drugs came first. Then the whores. Then the crack whores.

And then one fall day, the nurse looked at the girl she’d lovingly called her daughter, and decided she’d had enough of being a mother to a girl who wasn’t hers, had enough of being a wife to a man who couldn’t keep his promise, and so she left… all while Bailey sat under a tree, a tree just like hotdogs and hickory, which would later become the holder of the greatest, and worst memories of her life.

“There’s no fuckin’ end in sight, Boss,” Tiny said, pulling me from my thoughts. “We killed his brother, isn’t that enough?”

I looked away from my phone, from the vision of Bailey provided by the basement security cameras she didn’t know existed. She was curled in a ball on the bed, and when I zoomed in close enough, I could see her thumb in her mouth, her tears on her cheeks, and I wanted nothing more than to order Tiny to turn around and go back home. I wanted to feel her fingers through my hair, feel her skin against my fingertips, her lips against mine.

“Boss?”

With a sigh, I put my phone away and faced him. He glanced at me quickly, his hands on the steering wheel. “You know what I’m going to say, Tiny.”

He sighed. “That it’s not enough, right?”

I nodded.

“Look, I don’t want to be the bad guy here, or even the voice of reason, especially after the night you’ve had with Bailey and everything, but…”

I slumped down in my seat, my head pounding as I rolled it against the headrest and closed my eyes.

Tiny continued, “I mean, you were young, Nate. Just a kid. And I understand that you feel like you need to get some form of redemption for your mother’s death, but are you even sure it was Dante Franco with your mother—”

“That’s enough, Tiny.”

“All I’m saying is that you deserve more than this life, with or without Bailey. This can’t be forever, Nate. At some point, this shit has to end.”

I sighed, frustrated. “Will you just fuckin’ drive?”

His mouth clamped shut, and it stayed that way while I directed him to our next destination. Once we pulled up outside Dr. Polizi’s practice, he turned to me, his expression worried.

“What’s going on, Nate?”

I ignored him and opened my door, and when I heard him do the same, I faced him, my words an order: “Stay in the car.”

“Nate—”

“At what point did you stop taking orders from me, Tiny?” I was tired, beyond exhausted, and I knew it wasn’t fair, but lately, everything had been setting me off. Everything. And while I tried to keep it contained around Bailey, I couldn’t do the same with him. It was too much.

*

Polizi’s practice was the same generic doctor’s office you’d see anywhere; white walls, dated art, even more dated reading material.

I’d barely sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting room when Polizi walked in, his smile as generic as his office when he called my name. Once in his exam room, he turned to me, the smile no longer there. “Your CT scan results came back. It’s getting worse, Nate.”