Exfoliating
Fiona
Three hours later, I pull myself up off the heated tile floor and turn off the steaming water. The loofah and pumice stone lay in the corner, taunting me to continue scrubbing their filthy hands off. To scrub and scrub until all the memories disappear.
But I’ve been in here long enough that explaining this episode to my therapist is going to be hard enough.
Toweling off would be a very bad idea right now. Instead, I reach for my softest robe, but even that chafes after what I did to myself.
Why did I let this guy get under my skin? Maddox and the rest of the Adders will protect the kids. Nothing and no one should affect me this much.
It does.
It still does.
It probably will forever, but I can’t let that threaten all the progress I’ve made.
I walk over to the couch in the living room, make an appointment for tomorrow, and turn on a cheesy romcom to forget the world for a while.
This room settles my soul more than any silly romance could.
It’s probably all the walls of books and toys of Daria’s.
Though she would call them action figures, they’re toys meant to be displayed, not played with.
She’s filled our entire apartment with them.
From manga to graphic novels all the way to hardcore sci-fi, if she isn’t writing, she’s reading, or buying books.
The Street’s library can’t keep up with her, and this apartment is starting to lose the battle.
We’re either going to need to ask Maddox for a larger one, or she’s going to have to make some hard decisions soon.
It’s a good thing Maddox is a softie. Maybe I can ask for a warehouse loft.
That might have enough space for the book dragon Daria has become.
Until then, she’s going to have to store some under her bed.
Who am I kidding? That’s probably already filled.
***
The apartment door opens a while later, and Daria steps in with a big smile on her face, which slowly fades as she sees me huddling in the corner of the couch. “Why aren’t you at work?” Daria signs to me.
There’s no good answer to that question, so I shrug.
Her eyes move to my outfit as realization dawns. “You didn’t shower because something spilled on you.”
Don’t I wish that was what happened. I shake my head.
“How long?” Her hands move sharply instead of fluidly, like they usually do. “Are you bleeding?”
“No, I stopped before that.” Barely.
She drops her bag and runs over to the couch next to me, careful not to touch any part of my body. “I’m calling your therapist. You can’t let whatever happened derail the progress you’ve made.”
“I have an appointment tomorrow.” Though I should have talked to her today before I hurt myself. This will heal without any scars, but the scars inside…those can’t be wiped away with a pumice stone or loofah.
“Do you want to talk about it? I can message Knight and tell him not to bring lunch. That something came up.” She reaches for the phone she always keeps on her in case she’s with someone who can’t understand ASL.
“No. No.” She shouldn’t ruin her day, too. “I’m going to have to talk to Maddox in a little while.” I’m actually a little surprised that I haven’t heard from Maddox yet. Maybe Jacko heard enough of the conversation that he won’t need to talk to me.
Yeah, right. Maddox has an obsession with knowing every single detail so he can plan his next step. Instead of going into covert ops for Ethan, Maddox should have just joined the military. He’d probably be a general by now, moving armies around like they’re chess pieces.
I’ve spent enough time worrying about myself.
“What kind of trouble did you and Knight get into?” Their friendship is something special.
They’ve been friends since he was a teenager and she was a little girl.
Was Daria ever a little girl? They stole her childhood.
And even though we escaped, I never found a way to give her back the innocent joy children have.
“We were supposed to spend the day writing in this little library he found that’s full of old books. But his office called about an artist who finally agreed to meet with him.”
“And you went with him?” Why am I not surprised? He treats her like his kid sister. They bonded over the love of words and grow closer every day.
She nods. “It was fun. The art was weird.”
The sign for weird always makes me smile. When Daria learned the sign, she would always make a silly face that got her teacher and me to laugh. “How so?”
“The guy created his art out of human bones. They’re fake. But they look so real, it’s eerie.”
A shiver runs down my spine. “Gross.”
“Yeah. Knight didn’t take any of the work on consignment, even though he said it would probably sell very well. Shock art and all that. But it felt twisted to me.”
“Because there isn’t any beauty in death.” Just pain, loss, and guilt.
“That’s exactly what Knight said.”
There’s a knock at the door.
Daria turns to me. “That’s Knight with the food. Are you sure you want him to stay? He won’t mind.”
All I want to do is curl up in a little ball and veg in front of the television. “Of course I want him to stay.”
She shakes her head as she walks to the door.
Daria always knows when I’m thinking about others rather than myself. She’s probably letting me get away with it because she’s afraid to trigger me more. She opens the door, and Knight steps in.
The smell of Chinese food fills the room. My tummy rumbles. Have I eaten anything today? Usually, I munch on something after the last rush, but I missed that today.
As good as the food smells, the man carrying it smells and looks better.
A slim-line brown leather jacket over a black turtleneck and slacks fit his tall, lean body all too well.
There’s something lurking under that sleek exterior of his, but it doesn’t stop me from knowing he’d protect Daria with his life.
“Fea came home for lunch. Isn’t that wonderful?” The smile on Daria's face doesn’t quite cover the worry she’s feeling. “You can put the food on the coffee table and sit down next to Fea. I’ll be right back.” Daria dashes off to her bedroom.
Knight sets down the food and peels off his coat.
It’s a very pretty sight with all those long, lean muscles highlighted.
I would have thought he was a runner if I didn’t know how much he hates it.
Knight’s body was built on learning to fight…
to protect himself, even though living on the streets, he would have commanded top—Stop letting that guy get in your head.
Your life isn’t that anymore.
You’re safe.
He stops moving and stares at me. “You okay?”
No.
No, I’m not. “Fine.”
He grins. “You’re a terrible liar.”
I shrug, which causes my arms to slide against the raw skin of my sides. A groan almost slips out.
Why did I do this to myself again?
Never again. How many times have I said that? “When a woman says fine, it can mean any number of things.” But it never means that she actually is fine.
Knight suddenly sits down next to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
NO! I shake my head.
“Daria’s worried about you, isn’t she? That’s why she disappeared into her room.”
Probably.
“That or she’s trying to play matchmaker.”
“WHAT?” I squeak.
“I was kidding.”
No, he wasn’t. He totally wasn’t. Why would he think that? “You weren’t, were you?”
“It’s possible.” He leans forward, opening the massive bag of food. Then stops. “A little while ago, a woman I thought I could have fallen in love with gave me some advice, and it changed my entire perspective. She told me to stop hiding from life.”
“Thought you could have fallen in love with?” What woman wouldn’t fall in love with Knight?
“Yeah.” He closes his eyes. “She was stunning, sweet, great with people, babies loved her, and completely in love with her now-husband. We were both so broken that for a while, I thought we could hide from the world together. But I was wrong. And hiding from the world felt wrong after that.”
Hiding from the world? “You can’t hide from the world. It always finds you.”
Knight turns to me. “What if there was a place where the world could never touch you? Would you want to live there for the rest of your life?”
Peace forever? Who wouldn’t jump at that? “I can’t just leave Daria.”
“Daria could visit you whenever she wanted. She’s an adult now who can take care of herself, and she’ll always have me around.”
I know that, sort of. She’ll always be my responsibility. Her mother entrusted her life to me. Then there’s—
“You’re finding excuses not to believe it’s possible for you.”
“Stop reading my mind, Knight.”
His lips twitch.
How do women not fall all over themselves near him?
“Think about it.”
Knight doesn’t mean think about how sexy he is. Could I really walk away from every stress in the world and all the people I’ve grown up with on The Street?
“Fea.”
“Fine. I’ll think about it.” Too much.
***
Could I ever be ready to walk away from The Street?
This place has been my life since I was fifteen, and the Adders let me hide here. Back then, they were nothing but punks with guns and bad attitudes. Now they’re fine-looking men with guns and bad attitudes. A grin slides up my face.
There are reminders all around of what these men do every day. The echoes of children’s laughter rings down the street as they play without a worry in the world.
I’m part of that. Every day, I help feed those kids, offer hugs to the little ones, and give advice to the older ones.
But not one of us is irreplaceable. The three old women who started this place saw to that, and we continue the tradition.
Knight is right. I could leave these cobblestone streets forever, and the world would go on; children would be fed, hugs would be offered, and advice shared.
Willow Street needs to be that way. Its purpose is to save as many of the unwanted children in the world as possible. To give the invisible lost a way to become part of the world again in a way that’s meaningful to them. That’s too big a purpose for even Maddox, our leader of sorts.
Maddox. The last thing I want to do is walk up to his office and talk about the incident. I stop in front of the door to his office building. How many hundreds of times have I gone up the elevator and into his office to talk about The Street business? Too many to count over the years.
What would it be like if this were the last time I walked in to fix a problem around here?
Knight’s making me dream impossible dreams. I pull open the impossibly heavy door that Maddox bragged at one time could stop a tank when braced properly and make my way up to his office.
The blinds will thankfully be closed when I step in, covering his slithering little pets.
They give me the creeps so badly, and he knows it.
Most people don’t need almost an entire floor for their office, but he does with all the people that seem to wander in there all the time.
Instead of greeting me like he normally does, Maddox paces the floor with a black polka-dot snake wrapped around his neck and arm as I step inside.
It’s hard to see the man in front of me and not the lanky boy who promised his gang would protect me the day we met.
The only thing that remains of that boy is a promise fulfilled and a habit of tucking his gun into his belt buckle on occasion. Try as he might, Ethan never fully broke him of that habit.
“Fea.” Maddox stops. “Sorry, I forgot you were coming.” He rushes over to a cage in the middle of the room and puts the slithering animal away and closes the cover over it, blocking it from view. “You’re a woman.”
Uh oh. Something’s wrong with Mindy. “I am.”
“You understand woman things.”
It’s really bad. Try not to smile. “Sometimes.”
“You’ve got to help me.”
It’s really hard to hold back that smile. My best friend is happy. Well, not exactly at the moment, but he found a woman who loves him as much as he loves her. “Tell me what’s wrong?”
“Mindy won’t quit one of her jobs. I’ve asked her. I’ve told her. I explained to her that I want to spend more time with her. The stubborn woman won’t quit. Millions…I’m worth millions, and my woman insists on working herself to death. What do I do?”
Maddox forgot the first effect of being poor. “You need to make her feel safe.”
He stops pacing. “What?” He starts again. “But she is safe. I will never let another person hurt her again. She should know that. What can I do? Should I wear a weapon around her? Or ask my brothers to? Maybe I should show her the security system we have going.”
Oh, he’s got it bad. “That’s not what I meant.
Though it probably wouldn’t hurt.” Especially after all that she’s been through.
“I meant she needs to feel financially safe. A person who’s been living on the edge for so long has a hard time feeling financially secure.
” It took years and years for me to feel that way.
Even now, I’m shocked at my bank account sometimes, and still keep a stash of cash around the house in case something happens and we need to run.
“How do I make her feel that way? Would dumping a million dollars into one of her accounts work?” Maddox reaches for his phone.
“I don’t know. You’re going to have to talk to her about that. And you might need to step back and let her do what she needs to do to feel financially secure for a while.”
“No way. There’s no way I’m letting her work herself to death. I’ll go all caveman and stop her from going to work.”
Where did the rational Maddox go? The unflappable man, who can solve any problem put in front of him without blinking, is losing his mind over the woman he loves.
It’s so cute. “Talk to her. Ask her before you go all caveman.” Maddox, with Mindy tossed over his shoulder, is a mental picture I won’t soon forget.
“Fine. I’ll talk to her again. Weren’t we supposed to be talking about something?”
So cute. “The visitor at the café today.”
“Ah, yes. Fill me in on the details Jacko might have missed.”