Keeping London (The Flawed Heart Series Book 2) (9 page)

It’s somewhere to start at least.

I stash my backpack and our bedding between where the beam from the bridge meets the ground. A large section of metal is bent up away from the earth at a ninety-degree angle, creating an ideal hiding place for our belongings. It’s come in handy this week, allowing us to leave our heavy satchels behind while we worked.

It only takes a moment to put our things away, and then I’m off, walking toward town. With each step, I pray that I find Sarah. I’m hoping this is all an oversight on my end. Perhaps, she mentioned to me that she had work early this morning, and I simply don’t remember her telling me.

Maybe I was half-asleep when she mentioned it?
It has to be something like that. Nothing else makes sense.

I replay our conversations in my mind as I walk, desperately trying to remember anything that I missed. I reach the small grocery store and almost walk into the sliding glass doors when they don’t automatically open.

Crap
. The store hasn’t opened yet.

My jaw clenches, and my posture is stiff and rigid as I pace in front of the closed doors. I start walking and scan the area. It’s not much, but it’s something until I can talk to Pedro. I make my way around the store until I find myself in a side alley full of rusted blue dumpsters. I turn to head back in the other direction when I see it.

A foot.

It’s bare, lying against the paved ground, as it peeks out from the other side of the waste receptacle.

I run to it, and when I come around the large metal container full of trash, I gasp. It’s Sarah. Her eyes are closed, and she’s naked from the waist down.

“Sarah!” I call out as I fall to my knees and shake her shoulders. “Sarah!” My voice is heavy with emotion, and my vision blurs.

She grunts, and I let out a sigh of relief, a small one at least.
Why in the hell is she lying here, half-naked and unconscious?
I continue to gently move her shoulders back and forth as I say her name over and over.

Eventually, she stirs and opens her eyes. She blinks heavy, once…twice, and then she stares. Her eyes widen with fear. “Loïc?” she asks, her voice broken and gravelly.

“I’m here, Sarah.” I pull her chest up to mine and hug her against me. “What happened? Are you okay? Why did you leave? Where are your clothes?” The questions come out in rapid succession. I shake my head, expelling a large breath, before asking again, “Are you okay?”

She nods against my chest as I hold her to me.

“Where are your pants?” I ask softly.

She pulls back and looks down at her exposed skin. “Um…” She looks around. “I’m not sure. They should be…” She leans to the side to look around me. “They should be close?” Her statement sounds more like a question. “I don’t know.”

“Here.” I stand, pulling her up with me. I take off my T-shirt and hold the neck hole open wide. Bending on one knee, I position the shirt in front of her feet. “Step in.”

She does as I said, and I shimmy the T-shirt up her legs. I have to rip the fabric a little to get it up over her hips, but the shirt is old and worn and actually stretches fairly easily.

I look down at her makeshift skirt and shrug. “Well, it will have to do until we get back. Let’s get out of here.” I take note of her bare feet. “Do you want me to carry you?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’ll be careful. I’ll watch where I’m stepping.”

I nod. “All right, let’s go.”

I lead us back toward our spot beneath the bridge as quickly as I can without risking Sarah hurting herself.

Once we’re there and she’s dressed in some of her own clothes, we sit next to each other against the coarse grassy hill on the side of the bridge.

“What happened? Why did you leave?”

“I’m sorry. I meant to get back before you woke up.” Her voice is quiet.

“Please just tell me what is going on,” I plead softly.

She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “Well, I went to meet Pedro last night. I left after you fell asleep because I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“Did he ra-rape you?” I struggle to get the word out.

“No. I offered, I think.”

“You don’t remember?”

She sighs. “Not much, no. I took some stuff. I was kind of out of it.”

My heart pounds fiercely in my chest as I register her words. “What kind of stuff? Like drugs?”

She nods.

“You met him for drugs?” I ask, my voice quivering in disbelief.

She nods again.

“Why?”

“He offered, and I wanted it…to escape, you know? Just for a bit. I won’t do it again. I just needed a break from it all for one night.” Her voice is so hollow, and it causes my heart to shatter.

I wish I could kill every man who has ever hurt her.

“I’m here for you, Sarah. You can talk to me about anything. I’ll help you, and if I can’t, I’ll figure out how. You’re not alone.”

She leans her face against her knees. The palm of my hand splays across her back as she shakes violently with her sobs. I don’t know what else to say, so I remain silent as she cries, and I continue to rub her back.

After a while, her sobs abate, and she rocks to the side, allowing her body to fall into mine. I wrap my arms around her back and hold her tight.

“We’ll get through this. You know that, right? It’s going to get better. I’ll help you. I’ll do anything to make things better for you, Sarah, but I can’t help you if I lose you. You can’t leave me like that again. What if I hadn’t been the one to find you? What if the cops had found you, and they sent you back? We have to be careful.”

“I know.” She sniffles. “It was stupid. I won’t do it again.”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Good. Do you need anything?”

“Just this. Just you. Please hold me for a bit. Don’t let me go just yet,” she whispers.

“Sarah, I’ll never let you go. As long as I’m alive, I’m going to protect you. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make everything better. You just have to trust me.” Even as I say the words, I know they’re empty promises. They sound immature and naive as they come from my mouth. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want to believe them.

The reality is that, in this world, one can want to do something with the greatest desire, but the fact is that one has very little control over the actual trajectory of their path. I know because I’ve wanted many things in my life, and I’ve lost them all.

Regardless, I want my words to be true this time. Because of everything I’ve lost, I can’t lose Sarah, too.

And, as much as I want my promises to be true for Sarah’s sake, I want them to be true for mine as well. I’ve tried so hard to be brave my entire life, and I do have the courage to fight for us, for our happiness. But I know that I’ll lose it all if I fall short. If I fail Sarah, I won’t have the courage to fight anymore.

London

“True love is forever, but so is true friendship, and I can’t live without either.”

—London Wright

I light the last candle atop the triple-layered cake that I picked up from an incredible little bakery down the street. The soft glow of the flames dance across the icing, illuminating the edible sugar flowers that adorn the cake. It’s almost too pretty to eat, but with the chocolate mouse filling inside, I know it’s going to taste even more spectacular than it looks.

Placing my hands beneath the dish that holds the cake, I slowly walk it out to the living room where the birthday girl sits, surrounded by a group of our girlfriends. The room fills with the traditional “Happy Birthday” song as we serenade Paige.

“Make a wish,” I say when the song is finished.

Paige closes her eyes as she blows out the candles, and we all clap.

“Love you, Paige.” I smile down to my best friend.

“Love you, too.” She grins up at me.

As I take the cake back into the kitchen to slice it up, our sorority sister Kristyn comes out of the kitchen with a cooler of her famous Jell-O shots, yelling, “It’s party o’clock!” to which the group of girls in the living room cheer.

Paige and I don’t hang out with our old sorority sisters very often, but every time we do, it’s so much fun.

I put pieces of cake onto plates and smile to myself as the music from the living room and the laughter of our friends gets louder. There’s nothing like an all-girl celebration. The presence of guys makes girls stupid. It’s a sad fact. It never fails. If guys were here, at least one of our friends would end up crying. The list of possible emotions causing the tears is endless—jealousy, anger, hurt. The list goes on. A no-boys-allowed party is so much better.

Yet I miss Loïc so much. He leaves in less than a week, and I’m starting to panic. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.

Stop it, London!

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t allow my thoughts to be overcome by Loïc
tonight. Today is Paige’s day. Yes, I love Loïc, so missing him is real. But I love Paige, too. True love is forever, but so is true friendship, and I can’t live without either.

We dance, drink, eat, take pictures, and laugh. It’s perfect.

Shortly after eleven, I get a call.

“The limo’s here!” I yell out when I get off the phone.

We ask the driver to take pictures of our group in front of the SUV limo before we climb in. Once seated inside, we turn up the dance music, pour a round of champagne, and toast to Paige.

We instruct the driver to take us to a club in Novi, so we have about forty-five minutes in the limo until we get there.

“This party is awesome. Thank you, London.” Paige leans her head on my shoulder.

“You’re so welcome. You know I love you.”

“And I love you,” she responds, her voice slightly slurred.

I make a mental note to watch her drink intake from here on out. No one wants to get sick on their birthday. I blame Kristyn’s Jell-O shots. Those things are lethal.

As I sit here in this limo, surrounded by happiness and laughter, a huge amount of gratitude comes over me. I don’t when it was that I started taking my life for granted. Maybe I always have. But I don’t anymore. I now know how fortunate I am.

At the end of the day, I know I’ll always have a small part of me that’s materialistic and slightly shallow. Yet I realize that it isn’t things that make one happy; it’s people and the experiences shared with those people. Life is about those people one surrounds themselves with and the mutual love and respect that they share. And I’d have to say that I have a pretty amazing group of people in my corner.

Loïc

“In my life, there’s always a falling ball. I just hope I can catch it this time around.”

—Loïc Berkeley

I wake with a start, yet again. Quickly sitting up, I hold my hands to my head, waiting for the dizziness to subside.

Another fucking nightmare.

At least London didn’t have to witness this one. She went out with friends for Paige’s birthday last night. I opted just to sleep in my own bed due to the fact that I have five a.m. PT this morning. Nothing says good morning like an intense workout before the sun even comes up.

Looking to the clock on my bedside table, the display reads
4:03
. My alarm was set to go off in a few minutes anyway. I turn the alarm switch to off and make my way toward the shower, anxious to get the nightmare sweat off of my body.

The constant nightmares are getting real old. I seem to be having more of them lately, and most of the time, they involve Sarah.

Stepping into the shower, I smile at the memory of London trying to get me to figure out what the pieces of artwork represented in California. I use her prompts and questions to try to figure out the dreams. They’re similar to art in that way—using imagery to represent something else. Maybe if I could resolve the deep-seated issue that’s causing them, I could make them stop.

After showering, I get dressed in my workout clothes, and all this time, the only explanation that I can come up with is that Sarah represents loss to me. She was someone I tried to hold on to but couldn’t. I’m getting ready to leave for a war zone in a few days, and I desperately want to come home to London in a year, but I’m scared that it isn’t going to happen. I can’t pinpoint why, but every day that passes and brings me closer to leaving, that fear gets louder.