Healed (Finally, With You #2)

Prologue

Monique

I’ve done a very bad thing.

Well, really, it depends on how you look at it and who you are in this scenario.

If you’re my mom, you’ll be happy and proud to know that tonight, when Victor was out drinking with God knows who, I packed a bag and ran out the door.

If you’re Victor, it would be a bad thing, as you’ve lost your only punching bag.

But if you’re the man…the tall one who comes knocking at night always with one single line, “you have my money?” then you’ll be angry, very, very angry.

I drag my hoodie low and tuck my curls up inside it until they're gone. The brim cuts my view to a strip of pavement and the lower half of everyone who passes — shoes, hems, hands. I can't see faces. Which means they can't quite see mine.

I blend into the crowd. To the world, I’m just a skinny kid in a dark hoodie, carrying a massive duffel bag. I wish I didn’t know who I am. Instead of being home, at a movie, a party, or doing dumb stuff like other people my age do, I’m running for my freedom…and my life.

I’m Monique Castellano. That in itself is a curse. That’s my burden to bear. I’ve carried it for eighteen years. I can’t take another second of it.

The crowd increases as I near the bus station. I see a pregnant woman to my right. She’s carrying a child in her arms and holding the hand of another. I wonder what her story is. Is she running too? Is she trying to get away from someone just like me? Or is this just her own free will?

I guess I’ll never know.

I watch as she waddles toward the ticket counter.

Susan…

She looks like a Susan to me. She hands the woman on the other side her card, retrieves two tickets, and heads toward the waiting area.

I swallow and keep moving.

Three steps in, I bump into someone. My hand goes to my hoodie, dragging it down again, and I clear my throat, adding some bass to my voice. "Sorry."

At the ticket counter, I keep my head low. "One ticket, please."

"To where?" Her lips smack as she waits.

"Uh…" Shit. I didn't think this through. Where can I go? No extended family. No friends outside of Seattle. "Um…the farthest place from here."

The smacking halts. "You running away, honey?"

As much as I want to look up and memorize her face, I can't let her remember mine. She could be the one who recalls a skinny, brown-eyed girl buying a bus ticket at midnight. She could lead them straight to me.

I shake my head. "No…I, uh, I'm going to see family."

"In the farthest place from here?"

I want to smack myself. Stupid, stupid Monique. "Y…yes."

"Ha! I don't get paid enough for this. Fine. That'll be forty-two dollars."

I dig into the back pocket of my jeans, pull out crumpled notes, and hand them over. She slides the ticket across.

Newport, Rhode Island.

Guess that's where I'm going.

My eyes scan the crowd for the distinct build. Tall, muscular, mean, dark eyes. Nobody fits.

Still safe.

The waiting area is half-empty and smells like floor cleaner and old coffee.

A woman with two children asleep across her lap sits near the far wall, one hand resting on the smaller one's back. A man in a work jacket is eating something from a paper bag. A teenager with headphones tilted back on his head stares at his phone.

I find a seat near the door, set my bag between my feet, and keep my hands on the strap.

I never did think this was something I could do. It briefly occurred to me after every drunken escapade Victor had. I remember asking my mom repeatedly why we couldn't just leave, but she would brush tears away from her purple cheeks and tell me it wasn't the right time.

The right time never came. She didn't have much of a choice. The stroke ensured she was six feet under and unable to do anything about it.

I didn't think I had a choice either. I had no money, no friends, nothing. But not even that would make it worthwhile to put myself in harm's way for Victor.

I knew where he kept his secret stash, especially on nights when he was too drunk to be discreet. It didn't surprise me that there was a significant amount hidden in the tiny box.

Dad… Victor used to be someone else. Someone respectable, someone who wore nice suits and walked into powerful rooms. All that is gone. Except for the three thousand dollars in cash that now sit in the bottom of my duffel bag, along with my mother's favorite cardigan.

It's the only thing I have left of her. Victor burned everything else.

But I kept it, held onto it, even as he struggled to rip it from my hands.

I held on. That was the one thing I needed to keep.

The only advantage of him being a drunk is that he didn't remember that.

By the next day, he had no recollection of the cardigan, and I got to keep it.

The bus comes.

I find a window seat in the middle, where I can see both the front doors and the emergency exit. I put my bag in my lap and wait.

People board in twos and threes. I see the pregnant woman waddle down the aisle. I want to get up to help her, but I'm too terrified of attracting attention.

No one must see me here today. I’m a ghost. I have to be a ghost.

I breathe.

I'm fine. I'm on a bus. No one on this bus knows my name.

We're twenty minutes out when a man boards at the first stop.

I don't register him until he's moving down the aisle, and then my whole body goes still before my mind catches up.

Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Dark jacket.

He turns his head as he passes, and I get a full look. Younger. Softer jaw.

His eyes meet mine, and my heart stops.

No. No. It’s not him.

My hands are suddenly sweaty despite the chilly night. I count my breaths the way I've learned to count them. In. Out. Wait.

I flatten my palms on my thighs and make myself keep them there until they stop pressing down.

Not him. It's not him.

I hear heavy footsteps approaching. I drag my hoodie down, squeeze my eyes shut, and brace for impact, but it doesn’t come. I risk one eye open and see nothing. It wasn’t him.

I’m safe. I’m okay. I’m free.

The highway opens up outside the window, flat and dark. I turn my face toward it and let the miles go by.

Newport reaches me in pieces — first the smell, salt and low tide coming through the poorly-sealed window seam, and then the lights of a harbor between buildings. The bus is pulling into a station much smaller than the one I left.

I'm the last one off.

The station is quiet in a way that takes a moment to calibrate — not empty, just unhurried. Idling at the curb is a taxi waiting for passengers. A delivery driver is drinking from a thermos and staring at nothing.

I stand on the pavement outside the station doors and let the cold come in.

It's late.

I have no idea how late. I don't have a phone or watch, and I'm too terrified to ask anyone. My legs ache from sitting still, and my shoulders ache from the bag.

The town is peaceful around me. Surprisingly calm. I grew up with doors and voices. Yelling is a baseline, the way some people have music. Slammed doors as punctuation. I had no control over anything. I used to feel like a puppet, like I was in my body, this body, but living someone else's life.

And now…I could make this body and this life my own.

I walk.

I don't have a direction. I just need my feet moving, feel the pavement under me as proof that I'm going somewhere, even if I don't know where that is yet.

The bag strap is cutting into my collarbone, and I shift it and keep going.

Past a closed hardware store, a restaurant with its chairs up on the tables, a pharmacy with a light on in the back.

Past a parking lot and a locked gate and a narrow street that opens up at the end of it to the smell of water.

I follow the smell.

The harbor is small and dark. It’s exactly what I needed to think about my next step.

There's a wooden pier stretching out over the water, with low lampposts along it that throw more shadow than light. A row of benches is facing the harbor. Boats rock gently at their moorings, the hulls soft against the dock. The water is black, flat, and very calm.

I stand at the pier entrance and look at it, and something behind my sternum loosens very slightly.

I almost sit down on the dock itself. Then I notice someone's already on the nearest bench.

A man. Dark clothes — a suit, or something close to it, though the jacket is folded beside him, and his tie is pulled loose. He's sitting bent forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging between them, and his face toward the water.

He's not looking at anything specific. Just pointed at the dark. I know that posture. I wore it the morning of the funeral and for a couple of months after.

Turn around, I think. Find another bench. There's a whole pier. He's here first. He wants to be alone, and you know exactly what it looks like when someone wants to be alone because you look like that most of the time.

He looks up before I can decide, and the nearest lamp catches him full in the face. I almost gasp. His eyes are strikingly gray and beautiful, yet so sad.

It’s as though I can see the rain in his eyes, but no tears are falling.

He must be holding them back, I think. Just as I held mine repeatedly.

“You can sit if you want,” his voice breaks on the last words.

I just stare at him.

He nods at the other end of the bench. “I’ll be gone soon.”

I want to leave. I had a rule. No one can see me until I’m fully settled here with a whole new life. I’m no longer Monique the sad child. I’ll be Monique, whoever I choose to be.

But there’s a pull. Call it shared pain or the heart calling out to another wounded heart.

I find myself settling down beside him, setting my bag between my feet.

We don’t speak for the first few minutes. The water makes a low sound against the dock pilings. The boats shift on their ropes.

After a while, he says, without moving, "Long night?"

His voice is low. Rougher this time. It doesn’t break like before, but I can hear all the emotion he’s holding back.

"Yes," I say. "You?"

"Yes." He looks at the water.