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  I get off the train about twenty-five minutes later and climb back upstairs to the street. I step out into the mid-morning sun and look around. I see few banged-up windows, paint peeling on the front doors, and a group of four women sitting and standing on the front steps of a brick apartment building, talking loudly and rapidly in Spanish. I don’t really have any idea where I’m going yet, so I just choose a direction and walk down the street. Soon enough, I come upon a dated gas station.

  The bell chimes as I walk through the door. “Hello?” I call.

  A little Indian man pops up from a back room, accessed from behind the cashier’s counter, and smiles at me. “Yeeas?”

  “Can you help me, please?” I ask. “I need today’s newspaper and the locations of the cheapest motels or hostels around here.”

  I buy a paper, a cup of instant ramen, and a bottle of Coke from him. I am directed to a motel where I get a flea-bitten room for fifty-nine ninety-nine a night, and so begins my New York life. I flip right past the news, entertainment, comics, lifestyle, and sports sections, going straight for the classifieds. I need a place to stay and I need a job at a tattoo parlor. At least the latter should be easier to find, now that I have a fairly decent portfolio.

  I pull it out to take a look at it again, hoping to make myself feel some excitement for this future, but seeing the snapshot of Cooper’s shoulder blade piece brings all the emotions crashing back down on me. For the first time since I saw Nate’s face on the poster last night—it isn’t even a full twenty-four hours ago, but it feels like a lifetime—I let the emotions wash over me. I let myself fall back on the hard, flat motel pillows and I let the tears run down my face, sobs shaking my body as I heave ragged breaths.

  I am never going to see Cooper again.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Savannah

  A few days pass and I settle into a daily routine. Things aren’t great, of course, but they’re working out pretty well. In fact, things are going much better than expected, given my usual bad luck.

  I found a place almost immediately and was able to move out of the ratty motel after only three nights. I’m rooming with three women in a small apartment in Harlem, all the way up on West 137th Street. It’s a fifth floor walk-up with no air conditioning and a cockroach problem, but at least there aren’t any bedbugs. I hope. Not a single one of the roommates speaks English, beyond the basic ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘hello,’ ‘mine,’ ‘no share,’ and ‘rent now.’ Honestly, I see that as a huge benefit. If they can’t talk to me, we can’t become friends. I don’t want friends. If there’s one thing you learn early on the streets, it’s that loving people only gives other people material to a use against you and ways to hurt you.

  The job situation worked out somewhat less well. While I was able to get a job at a low-range tattoo parlor pretty quickly just by showing my portfolio, without needing a previous employer’s recommendation, I could only get twenty hours a week. There’s no way that I can cover my costs, no matter how many places I try to cut corners and even subsisting on canned beans and rice alone, so I find a second job that I can schedule around my hours at the parlor. I’m working mainly night and early morning shifts at Greasers, a diner specializing in breakfast foods. The manager claimed the name was because the diner is Grease-themed, for the musical lovers, but I am not convinced. There’s not really anything in the decor or menu that suggests any connection with or inspiration from Grease, but the food is dripping in enough of the stuff that I would be entirely unsurprised if actual grease were the namesake.

  But a job is a job and I have about all that I can ask for.

  Since neither of my jobs are high-paying, though, I need some other source of money. I don’t have any valuables to sell, except my locket necklace from my mother, so I finally decide that I have to sell it. It nearly breaks my heart in two as I walk over to the pawnshop, but I have no other choice.

  “How much can I get for this?” I ask the pudgy bald man at the register.

  He reaches out a grubby hand and everything in me screams no as I drop the necklace into his hand. He turns it over a few times, rubbing it between his sausage-like fingers, eyes gleaming. Then something shifts in his face before he looks up. His expression is calculatedly bored.

  “A hundred bucks, tops,” he says nonchalantly.

  “Bullshit,” I say, equally calmly. “Look again and stop trying to rip me off, or I’ll take it and leave.”

  He looks a little surprised at how sure of myself I am, but I just stand there, back straight and chin set. Finally, he looks at the necklace again.

  “Three hundred?”

  “Eight hundred,” I say. “That’s solid gold.”

  “Eight hundred?” he cries. “What do you think this is, Tiffany’s?”

  “Fine,” I say, reaching out to take it back from him. “I’ll go somewhere else.”

  He pauses for a moment, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m bluffing, and I just wiggle my fingers impatiently, like I have places to be and things to do.

  “Fine,” he grumbles, “Seven hundred and that’s it.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty, or no deal,” I say.

  He makes a face like it’s physically paining him to agree, but he nods. “But we pay out on sale. You’ll get your money in anywhere from one to six months, depending on the market.”

  “But I need it now!” I take a breath to collect myself. I take another breath, then I switch tactics. “Please, sir, I need to pay my rent and I’m new to the city. I really can’t wait that long.”

  He gives me another look, then shakes his head and sighs. “Fine, I’ll tell you what—I’ll list it on the internet, too, and that should speed up the sale some. You’ll probably get it sooner this way, but no guarantees and I still can’t pay out until I’ve been paid.” He shrugs. “Money is tight everywhere. What can I say.”

  “Deal,” I say. I can tell he is offering all that he can. It still hurts when I walk out of the store, leaving the last thing tying me to anyone that I love behind. I don’t have my mom, or even the one remembrance of her that I had, and I don’t have Cooper. I don’t have my sister, my brother wouldn’t want me, and my father would disown me.

  And I don’t have Cooper.

  I’m in a city of millions, but I still feel all alone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Cooper

  As a Navy SEAL, it was crucial to the success of my mission to be able to hyper-focus on the task at hand, completely disregarding everything else going on around me. I use that training to make it through the week. When I’m in the gym, in the ring, or pounding the streets on training runs, my mind is completely turned off to anything else. It’s just me and the street, or me and the bag, or me and the weights I’m smashing.

  Exhausting my body helps me fall asleep at night, but it doesn’t change the fact that every waking moment outside of training, I can’t stop thinking about her. She blew in and out of my life like an F-5 tornado, turning my life on its head and completely wrecking the no-emotions, no-attachments, no-problems system that I had going. And I had it going well, it was really working for me. I had girls to blow off steam with work, was crushing it in the gym, had more money than I needed saved away and was continuing to pull it in at rates that would have been unimaginable to the childhood trailer park kid version of me.

  Sure, I didn’t spend much of it. Heck, I’m in this mess because I lived so frugally that I decided to go for a roommate in my simple apartment, just so the second bedroom wouldn’t stay empty. And sure, I didn’t get anything but a quick, cheap release from the desperate groupies who fought each other to get to be the one in my bed for the night. But I was making it to the top and I was fine with my life. I was showing them. I was showing everyone who thought I was white trash because my mom got herself knocked up before she could get her GED and never managed to make it out of Hooters-type jobs.

  Now, post-Savannah, I’m still killing it professionally. I lost some major sponsorships
and my seed in the tournament, having to fight from the bottom up, but I’m doing well in trainings, hyper-focusing like the ex-Navy SEAL that I am, and will be back up before Vlad has time to stop grumbling about ‘those fucking flaky girls.’

  Still, I’m not content the way I was before. Getting random sex from girls I pick up at a bar doesn’t appeal to me after what I had with Savannah. Emotionless, meaningless sex with yet another bubble-brained girlfriend-wannabe who doesn’t understand that having a loose vagina and pants so easy to get into that they might as well fasten with Velcro isn’t going to make her mean something to me.

  I’m killing it on Friday, slamming into the bag like it fucked my mother, when Vlad stops me.

  “Look, man,” Vlad stops, sighing and shaking his head. “I don’t know what you want me to do, but something has to be done. You’re just not right.”

  “I’ve been training just fine,” I snarl, grabbing the bag from him.

  “You’ve been training just fine,” he admits, stepping aside as I start swinging at the bag again. “But man, you’re not you. For weeks, you were walking around like every day was some kind of gift and nothing could go wrong, but now you’re moping and sulking and it’s impossible to get you to smile or even just wipe that grimace off of your mug. Man, this isn’t like you.”

  “There’s nothing for you to do,” I say, without looking at him. I just keep swinging.

  “Then what can YOU do.” Vlad says it as a statement, not a question. He stops the bag and I stop swinging. I may have adrenaline flowing through my blood by the bucketful, but I’m not about to swing at the one guy who I can always depend on, the one guy who always has my back.

  “Get out of here, get your mind right, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Vlad claps me on the back and gives me an easygoing smile, but there’s worry in his eyes. He’s worried I’m going to do something stupid, I can tell.

  And with the state that I’m in right now, maybe I will.

  “I’ll handle it,” I say. “I’ll see you later, man.”

  After a quick shower, I go to the place where I always went when I needed to reset my mind and blow off my steam. It’s been weeks since I’ve been to the bar, since I had Savannah and she was all the woman I needed or could even want, so I don’t know whether my usual Friday girl will be there. If she has any self-respect at all, she won’t be. But I’m not concerned, if she’s not Savannah, then a girl is just a girl and it doesn’t matter which one it is. I’ve never had trouble finding a willing lay and I know I can have whoever I want in the bar.

  As I walk through the door, though, I immediately see my Friday girl. She’s sitting by herself in the middle of the bar, all dolled up like usual. God, she looks as cheap as a dirty penny after Savannah. Her hair is a brassy, fake blond, her makeup is caked on way too thick, her clothes leave nothing to the imagination. She’s boring to look at. You can see all that you’re getting and you can get all you’re looking at without any effort.

  I half feel like turning around right then and just getting a pie from Bennie’s and heading home, but I need to do this. If I can just fuck a chick and get back into my schedule, maybe I’ll be that much closer to being over Savannah.

  “Hi,” I say, sitting down on the barstool next to her.

  She looks up from her bright green cosmo and looks beyond pleased when she sees me standing there.

  “Well, hello, there,” she purrs, leaning forward so that she’s pretty much spilling out of her dress. “I’ve missed you.”

  Her breasts look harder than Savannah’s—they aren’t as welcoming and don’t make you want to just dive into them and bury your face in their soft, supple warmth. Her smile is small and calculating, not uninhibited like Savannah. There’s no joyful freedom there, there’s no depth and friendliness. You can almost see the wheels turning behind her hard eyes—how she’s going to land a fighter, how she’s going to have a nice easy life where her only concerns are dressing up for the tabloids. She finger-walks her hand up the inside of my thigh, but I feel nothing but disgust.

  I know that objectively, she’s a babe. She has big lips, big boobs, long lashes, long legs, and a waist you can wrap your arm around. But I just don’t see it. All I see is how she fails in every way compared to Savannah. She tries so hard, where Savannah doesn’t seem to try at all, but all the effort isn’t enough. It can’t change the fact that Savannah is a one-of-a-kind girl and Friday’s girl just is no Savannah.

  “Cooper? Earth to Cooper?” The chick is looking up at me expectantly from under her thickly mascaraed eyelashes.

  “What?” I ask. “Oh, yeah. Listen, I gotta go. I got this.” I slide some money toward the bartender for her drink and the beer I didn’t even touch, and get up.

  “Wait—you don’t want company?” The chick looks confused. “But, but...” She pushes her chest out more, like that’s going to change my mind.

  “No, I gotta go.” I don’t look back as I walk out of the door and across the parking lot to my car.

  I do not go backwards. I do not downgrade. When I have made it to first place, I do not settle for second in the next round. When I have had the best, anything less isn’t worth the effort. I don’t want some okay, hottie-tottie in hooker heels and hot pants.

  I want Savannah. I want my girl.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Cooper

  I’m awakened sometime after one in the morning by a loud crash that sounds like it’s coming from the second bedroom. I’m immediately awake and on alert. I sit up quietly and silently slide the covers off. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and walk slowly and silently towards my door. I hear a thump. Someone is in the apartment. Then another thump. Thump, thump, thump, thump, and another thump. Seven guys and, by the sound of it, big ones.

  My mind is racing, completely free of the grogginess of sleep, and I’m in mission mode. Issue: the premises have been infiltrated. Cause: unknown. Judging from the direction of the noise, however, I can speculate on a probable cause. She’s petite, dark haired, sweet, and currently on the run again.

  I had already concluded that desperation, not flakiness, had driven Savannah away and thus that I would find her and help her. But this unexpected night time visit reinforces my decision all the more. How dare these fuckers come after Savannah? Seven full-grown thugs on one tiny little woman? They’re a pack of overgrown wusses to come in the middle of the night, in a big gang, to take a woman somewhere against her will. They make me fucking sick.

  “The fuck!” A man’s voice yells, and something shatters. It sounds like he threw something. “Where the fuck is the bitch?” Hearing someone refer to Savannah like that, even after she ran away from me, makes me see red. Only common sense and military self-discipline keep me from storming out there and knocking some heads around.

  I don’t need to restrain myself for long, though, because the thugs loot through the apartment quickly and end up kicking my door in just minutes later.

  I jump on one of them, kneeing him in the groin and socking him in the eye. I don’t recognize him. He’s a redhead with a jagged scar down his face and botched tattoos on his clearly juiced-up muscles. He goes down with a groan while I’m already on a second, bashing his head against the meaty head of a third. Their heads thunk against each other with a satisfying crack and the men stagger, holding their heads as they crumble. I’m hugely outnumbered but I’m fueled by rage and adrenaline. How dare these fucking worms think they have any right to so much as lay an eye on Savannah, much less break into her fucking bedroom in the middle of the night! I think of them coming in through the window and seeing Savannah lying innocently in her bed in a thin tank top, pushed up a little over her boxer shorts. I’m seeing red. I want to take every single one of these men out.

  I grab a brute with a buzzcut and a cheesy ‘I LOVE MOM’ tattoo and wrench his arm behind his back, flipping him over hard onto the floor. I chop another guy in the stomach, but the first are already recovering. Enraged or not, I’m way outnumbe
red. And even though they’re not real men—because no real man would dream of ganging up with six other men to go up against a woman, much less when they’re getting her sleeping—they are all big, muscle-bound, steroid plumped, experienced fighters. They eventually catch up to me and just as I’m body-slamming one, another four are on me. I’m kicking and punching and hurting them, I can tell, even as they’re tying me to a chair.

  As I’m blinking through the beginning of a bad black eye, rubbing some blood off of my cheek with my shoulder, I start to come back to focus. Noting the injuries the thugs are sporting, significantly worse than my own despite their manpower advantages, brings a little smile to my lips. I smile through the pain, because these little bitches aren’t going to see me hurt.

  I do a double-take when I recognize one of them. It’s the kid I fought against a while ago.

  “Nate?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Where’s Savannah?” he spits.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Cooper

  “Where the fuck is Savannah?” Nate yells, vein bulging in his neck. “Where the fuck is she? You better tell us now or you’re a dead man!”

  “I don’t know where Savannah is,” I say, calmly. “But I wouldn’t tell you if I did.” I spit at his feet. One of his brutes snarls and lunges at me, but Nate holds up a hand and he freezes. Clearly, Nate is the one calling the shots here.

  “Are you sure that’s the truth?” There’s a hard glint in Nate’s eyes, the glint of a desperate man. A desperate man will do anything.

  “I am,” I say. “I’m also sure there’s no reason you need to be busting through my girl’s window in the fucking ass-crack of the night.”