Chapter 2

Lena's POV

It was almost midnight and I was still on the street.

The city was winding down around me. Engines fading. Shop lights going dark one by one. The last few people hurrying past with their heads down and their collars up, nobody looking at anybody else.

Nobody looked at me either.

Just me, my boxes scraping wet pavement, the sound of rain, and the crickets. That was all there was.

I wasn't scared.

That was the strange thing. I was walking alone in the dark with everything I owned dragging behind me and I wasn't afraid of a single thing that could happen to me out here.

I was even hoping something would.

I was hoping something would come out of the dark and end it, because the pain of still being alive and still feeling all of this was worse than any alternative I could think of.

Then something cut through.

The baby.

It hit me like a hand to the chest, sharp and sudden and sobering, and I stopped walking.

"Even if for nobody else," I whispered into the dark, voice hoarse and cracked, "I'll survive for you." I pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

Stood there for a moment in the rain.

Then I started walking again.

I walked for hours.

I don't know exactly how long. Time stopped mattering somewhere around the second hour, when my feet started aching and my arms burned from dragging the boxes and the cold had soaked all the way through to my skin.

I was drenched. Exhausted. Hungry in the hollow, nauseating way that had moved past grumbling into something sharper. My hair was plastered flat against my face. My shoes had soaked through so completely I could feel the water squelching between my toes with every step.

I kept going.

Because stopping meant sitting down somewhere and thinking, and I couldn't afford to think. Not yet.

Not about the look on his face when he told me to leave. Not about the way Vanessa had held my jaw like I was something she was inspecting. Not about the laughter I could still hear even now, even out here in the rain, like it had followed me out of the house and attached itself somewhere behind my ear.

I kept my head down and kept moving.

And then I saw it.

A bus station shelter. Small, partially covered, the kind with three walls and a row of plastic seats inside.

Empty.

I almost cried from the sight of it.

"Just for tonight," I said to myself, voice thin and low.

"It'll do for tonight."

I got there, dragged my suitcases under the roof, and dropped onto the bench. The relief of sitting down hit my legs all at once. I slouched forward with my elbows on my knees and just breathed.

The rain hammered the shelter roof. Cold crept in from the open side and settled against my wet clothes. My whole body was shaking, not just from cold, but from everything that had been building since I walked through that front door and saw my boxes on the floor.

The scene kept playing.

Aiden's face when he looked at me. Flat. Decided. Done.

His mother's palm connecting with my cheek.

Vanessa crouching in front of me, holding my jaw, her blue eyes calm and certain. This is my home now.

My luggage stacked like rubbish waiting to be taken out.

I clenched my fist.

Pressed my teeth together so hard my jaw ached.

"I hate myself!" The words tore out of me loud and raw, bouncing off the shelter walls. I hit the seat with my palm. Once. Twice. "Fuck! I hate men! I hate everybody!"

My voice cracked and broke and I let it.

I lay down across the bench and I cried. Not quietly. Not with any kind of control. The ugly, full-body kind, chest heaving, throat burning, sound coming out of me that I didn't recognize as my own voice. I cried until there was nothing left. Until the sounds went small and the tears went dry and all that remained was a low, exhausted whimpering.

Then I slept.

Something woke me.

Voices. Movement. The sound of wheels on pavement.

I opened my eyes slowly.

Bright. Morning.

I sat up and immediately felt it everywhere, my neck, my back, my hips, the specific misery of a night spent on a hard bench in wet clothes. I stretched and winced and rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.

For half a second, just half, I forgot.

Then it came back.

All of it.

I dropped my hands and looked around.

The shelter was no longer empty. People were moving past in every direction, men in suits, women with bags, children in school uniforms pushing and laughing. A vendor had set up on the corner.

Someone was on the phone nearby, speaking loudly.

Buses rumbling past, engines, horns, the full noise of a city already in motion.

And every single person who walked past the shelter was looking at me.

Of course they were.

I was sitting on a public bench with two large suitcases, yesterday's clothes still on my body, eyes swollen nearly shut, hair that had dried in every direction overnight. I looked exactly like what I was, a woman with nowhere to go.

Heat flooded my face.

I grabbed my things and got out of there fast, head down, not making eye contact with anyone. I didn't stop walking until I was half a block away and the shelter was behind me.

I slowed down.

Looked down at myself.

I needed to clean up. I needed food. I needed a job.

And I needed to do all of those things with no money, no contacts, and every possession I had in two suitcases bumping along beside me.

I kept walking.

A few minutes later I spotted a public toilet on the side of a building. I pushed the door open, held my breath against the smell, and got to work.

Cold water. Paper towels. The small bottle of body wash I dug out of my bag. I washed as quickly as I could, dried off with the rough paper, changed into the cleanest clothes I had. Combed my hair with my fingers. Pinched some color back into my cheeks.

It wasn't much.

But it was better.

A knock came at the door before I finished.

"One minute, please," I called out.

I straightened up, checked myself once in the cracked mirror above the sink, presentable, just, and stepped out. The man outside barely glanced at me.

I stood on the pavement and looked down the street.

A diner, maybe half a block ahead. Small, nothing fancy, a handwritten sign in the window and a few plastic tables visible through the glass. The smell of eggs and coffee drifted out onto the street.

I rolled my suitcases toward it.

The bell above the door chimed when I walked in.

Five customers, maybe six. Low chatter, cutlery on plates, a radio somewhere playing something I didn't recognize. A woman behind the counter was wiping down a tray, dark hair pulled back, moving with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing this for years.

She looked up when she heard my shoes on the floor.

I walked straight to her.

"Good morning, ma'am." I kept my voice steady. "I'm looking for work. Any kind, waitressing, cleaning, kitchen. Whatever you need, I'll do it."

She looked at me.

At my suitcases.

At my face, which still carried the evidence of last night no matter how much cold water I'd thrown at it.

"We're not hiring," she said. And then she turned and walked away before I could say another word.

I stood at the counter for a moment.

Then I walked back out.

I sat on the low wall just outside the diner and pulled out my phone. I went through my contacts slowly, name by name. People I'd known before Aiden. Old friends, acquaintances, a cousin I hadn't spoken to in years.

I called every one of them.

Some didn't answer. Some answered and went quiet when I explained. Some were sorry, genuinely sorry, voices soft with it, but they just couldn't. One said she would call me back. She didn't.

I set my phone down on my knee.

The sun was up properly now and already hot.

People walked past without slowing. A group of schoolchildren went by in a loud, laughing cluster and none of them saw me sitting there at all.

I pressed both hands over my face.

I had tried.

I had washed myself and walked into that diner and called every name I had and I had nothing to show for it. No job, no money, no floor to sleep on tonight. And somewhere behind my ribs, a hunger that had moved from discomfort into something dizzy and sharp.

I started crying again.

I didn't even try to stop it. Just sat there on that wall with my hands in my lap and let the tears fall because there was nobody watching who cared either way.

After a while I wiped my face and stood back up.

Picked up my suitcases.

Kept walking.

I don't know how much further I got. The heat was heavy by then. My vision kept blurring at the edges.

My steps were uneven, slower than I wanted them to be. I could hear my own heartbeat.

The pavement tilted.

I reached for something to hold onto.

There was nothing there.

Noise pulled me back.

Beeping. Voices, low and overlapping. The rustle of movement close by.

I opened my eyes.

White ceiling. A curtain. A tube running into the back of my hand and a monitor beside the bed tracking my pulse.

Hospital.

I tried to sit up and a hand caught my arm — firm, steady, immediate.

I didn't know anyone was there.

I snapped sideways and pressed myself against the far rail of the bed.

Three men stood beside me.

Tall. Broad. Suits that hadn't come off any rack, the kind of tailoring where you can't see the seams.

Watches that caught the light. The kind of men who didn't need to raise their voices because the room rearranged itself around them the moment they walked in.

I had not heard them come in.

I did not know how long they had been standing there.

"Who are you?" My voice came out rough. "What am I doing here? How did I get here?"

"Hey." The one closest raised both hands slowly. His voice was warm, unhurried. "We're not going to hurt you. We brought you here. You collapsed on the street."

"Stay away from me!" I pressed further back against the rail. "I don't know you. I don't know any of you,"

The nurse appeared in the doorway, drawn by my voice. She crossed to me quickly and put a hand on my shoulder.

"It's all right, ma'am." Her voice was low and steady.

"They brought you in. They've been here since you arrived." She rubbed my shoulder once. "You're safe."

I looked past her at the three of them.

Two were watching me with something careful in their expressions. Something that looked almost like recognition. The third one, the one at the back, hands in his pockets, face like carved stone, hadn't moved or changed his expression since I opened my eyes.

He scared me more than the other two.

"I'll leave you to talk," the nurse said.

"Wait." My hand shot out. "My baby. Is my baby okay?"

She turned back and smiled. "The baby is healthy and fine, ma'am."

The breath went out of me all at once. I sank back against the pillow and pressed my hand flat against my stomach.

The nurse left.

The room went quiet.

I looked at the three men standing on the other side of my bed. They looked back at me. And there was something in the way they were watching, steady, patient, like they had been waiting for this moment for a long time, that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

The one who had tried to help me sit up moved to the edge of the bed. He sat down carefully, a respectful distance away, and looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Are you Lena Morrison?" he asked.

I stared at him.

That wasn't my married name.

It wasn't any name I had ever been given.

And yet the first part of it was mine, and something about the second part landed somewhere in my chest like a key finding a lock it wasn't supposed to fit.

"Why are you asking me that?" I said slowly.