Chapter One #2
That evil, fucking, miserable bastard was right. Suing him wouldn’t get back what he planned to steal from me—my privacy, my safety, my last chance to ever make it home. If Omma was shamed by a vicious prank I wasn’t a part of, what would be her reaction to a sex tape I was a part of?
That question didn’t need answering. I already knew.
Standing there slumped over my hunk of crap, the words of another miserable bastard roared in my ear.
“You’re a twenty-eight-year-old waitress making fourteen dollars an hour. You live in a terrible neighborhood, that car you pulled up in is older than you, and you think that you can pay medical bills with sob stories.
“So I’m going to do you a favor and give you what you need more desperately than a baby. A wake-up call.”
I cringed then like I did the first time I heard it.
“You’re not ready to be anyone’s mother, Ms. Kim. Come back when you get your life together.”
Tears stung my eyes as my closing throat strangled a sob. The last fertility doctor was a disorganized, inappropriate, irresponsible jerk, but maybe it was possible... that he wasn’t a liar.
“How can I give a child a good life... when I can’t give one to myself?”
The car hood had no answers for me.
Eventually, I slid myself off and got into the car. Checking in for my shift was a no-go after a morning like that, so instead I drove straight home, letting the slow, sleepy town of Willingsworth dance outside my window.
Willingsworth.
I’d never heard of the place before I broke down in it.
After Omma threw me out, I bounced around from place to place, taking any job that would hire a kid that was expelled from high school.
When I was twenty-four, I left Chicago and found myself driving east toward home—dreaming of making something of myself in the one and only New York City.
My crappy car got as far as Willingsworth, Nowhere, USA.
I broke down in front of the diner where I made a pit stop, and the sweet couple who owned it offered to get it towed to the auto shop, promising the tow would be free of charge. The next day, when I went to the shop to pick it up, I discovered the same couple also paid the bill.
It had been so long since anyone, anywhere, had shown me any kindness, that I decided I’d stay in Willingsworth—make a real home here.
That was until I met Daniel Mills.
I should’ve known that no matter where you are, or how far you run, you’re never too far from a gaslighting, self-obsessed narcissist.
I also should’ve known nowhere is paradise.
My hometown of Lantana looked like a nice place to live too.
Mansions as far as the eye could see, and so many smiling, well-dressed people walking among them.
You’d never know that a street over from where I grew up, Nick Russell found out his neighbor drained his bank account because he was planning to use that money to run away with Russell’s wife.
So Russell crossed the lawn and shot both the neighbor and his cheating wife in the face.
Nothing like that had happened in Willingsworth, of course—no doubt because Daniel perfected his cheating game after I walked in on him—but, even so, we weren’t headed anywhere good.
After the bypass was put in and tourists stopped passing through town, all of the businesses and incomes dried up, so a new business had taken over the town. One we all knew about, but never spoke of in public.
Drugs.
I slowed before my turn, eyeing my apartment building looming in the distance.
Nicky loitered on the street corner, expertly faking at being nonchalant while he messed around with his phone—texting his bosses above whether the coast was clear.
Not that clear, I thought, sliding a look in the other direction to my diner.
The same diner that I broke down in front of—owned by the same couple who showed me even more kindness by offering me a job. For a whole year, life was pretty nice.
That was until Maybelle and Charles Mills retired and left the business to their devil spawn.
Now I got to spend my days enduring Dan’s leering while serving two undercover cops who couldn’t remember to leave their badges in the car while they spent all day posted up in the diner across the street from a known drug den.
Sighing, I turned at the green light—heading for my craphole above the drug den.
Parking, I got out of my car, fished out my bag, and climbed the stairs without looking left, right, up, down, or even straight ahead for too long.
One thing I learned the hard way about drug dealers, they’re real fucking paranoid. They don’t like people who stare.
I made it to my apartment unaccosted and shoved inside. Looking around, I sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time in an hour. I was being generous when I called this place a shithole.
The gross, puke-green wallpaper peeled off the walls, revealing the even grosser poop-brown paint underneath.
The laminate floors were cracking. There was no hot water in the kitchen.
There was something that very much did not like being disturbed living under my sink, and the black mold creeping up my bedroom walls forced me to sleep on my threadbare, falling-apart living room couch.
I tried for something resembling positivity as I changed out of my clothes and began preparing lunch. Setting my phone down on the table, I pressed record, then began my daily mantra.
“I am in control of my life. No one makes me their victim. No one has power over me that I don’t give them. Soon, I will have a job that fulfills me, a home that delights me, a family that loves me, and a love that completes me.”
I repeated that three times while I brought the glass noodles to a boil. By the final time, I almost believed it.
“First, Dr. Cormac didn’t say it was impossible.
All he said was I needed to stump up the cash, which I knew,” I cried.
“I knew IVF would be expensive, I just didn’t know how expensive.
Either way, I was always going to run into this issue, so instead of wallowing, I need to figure out how to make it work.
“There has to be a way I can come up with thirty thousand dollars. Some way... Something...”
I trailed off, letting my mind focus on chopping the vegetables so I could pretend I wasn’t stumped.
“I’ve got to think of something,” I whispered. “This is one dream I can have. I won’t let money of all things stand in my way.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“You’re early.” Setting down the knife, I padded out of the kitchen and unlocked the door.
“Lunch isn’t ready, Nicky, but I’m making your favorite,” I tossed over my shoulder as I returned to my meal.
“Japchae. And yes, I’m leaving out the mushrooms, but I’m telling you, it doesn’t taste as good without them. ”
“I don’t know,” replied a voice that definitely did not belong to a fifteen-year-old boy. “I’m kind of partial to mushroom-free japchae myself.”
I spun around, heart shooting into my throat. Our eyes connected... and I stopped.
My lungs stopped expanding. My heart stopped pumping. My mind held fast—stuck in this one moment and single realization that I was looking at me.
Long, shining, healthy hair flowing past my shoulders.
Designer cashmere dress clinging to a body thin and toned from exercise and healthy eating, and not from skipping meals to make rent.
Makeup applied with an expert hand. Orange lipstick both bold and suitable in how perfectly it drew attention to my mouth—
—until I looked at that mouth, and saw its smirk.
I snapped back, gasping as air, blood, and sense rushed into me once again—jolting me to reality.
“What the fuck are you doing here!”
Sue hissed, a slight frown cracking her perfect mouth. “Really, Sarah? We haven’t seen each other in ten years, and the first thing you say to me is what the fuck are you doing here? At least give me a hug first.”
She stepped forward and my hand flashed.
Snatching my knife off the cutting board, I brought it up between us so fast, she flung back—nearly colliding with the open door. All trace of her smirk was gone now.
“Fuck’s sake, what are you doing! Put that away!”
“This isn’t any concern of yours”—I flashed the knife—“because you’re turning around and walking out that door.”
“Dammit, Sarah!” She flung her arms down like it pissed her off that I made her throw them up. “I’m not here for this,” she snapped. “I’ve been searching for you for months. I wouldn’t have done that and come all the way here if it wasn’t important.”
“Sucks for you, because I’m not interested.
” I tossed the knife back on the cutting board without issue.
It wasn’t like I was actually going to kill the bitch in my apartment with my knife covered in my fingerprints.
Sue had already ruined my life. I wasn’t going to prison because of her on top of it. “Get out.”
“Just let me say what I came here to—”
“Get out.”
“—you’ll regret it if you throw me out before—”
“Get out!”
Frustration bled into her tone. “This is life or death—”
“GET O—!”
“Omma’s dying,” she shrieked. Sue punched the door and slammed it against the doorjamb—rattling the decayed building. “She’s dying, and she wants to see you before it’s too late! It’s the only thing she wants!”
Her screeching went in one ear and out the other. “Bullshit.” I finished chopping my vegetables and transferred them to the sauté pan. “That woman can’t die. She’ll survive on malice and self-righteousness long after the human race dies out.”
“Witty comeback as usual, Sarah, but this is serious.” I heard cautious footsteps approach the kitchen. “It’s cancer. She was diagnosed a couple years back. We thought she beat it, but then it came back hard. She doesn’t have long, and she knows it.”
I said nothing—engrossed in my cooking.
“She wants to see you before it’s too late.”
Silence.