I can still feel her fingers against mine. Her touch hasn’t left me since last night. My mind wanders to what she would have said if I’d told her I wanted to stay.

The rumble from the engine turns to white noise as I think about all the ways I could take the pain away from her. I imagine lying in bed beside her and taking her how I’ve dreamed of for as long as I can remember. My grip tightens on the steering wheel and the breeze from the rolled-down window pauses as I slow to a stop at a red light.

The radio station being changed to something else grabs my attention and I have to clear my throat and adjust in my seat to play off what was going through my mind. Carter changes the station again, but he’s not going to find what he needs by picking a different song. There’s nothing in this world that’s going to help take his mind off of the pain.

“You staying with me tonight?” I ask him. His dad kicked him out of the house again. Not that the kid did a damn thing wrong. He’s sixteen and involved with the wrong crowd, namely me, but he never does anything wrong. Not since his mom got sick last year.

He flicks the radio off, choosing silence over the commercial on the last station.

“I don’t know,” he tells me solemnly and then falls back against the passenger seat, staring listlessly out the window. Chewing on his thumbnail, he avoids looking back at me.

Which is fine, because the fucker behind us yells at me to get going while honking his horn. The red light’s turned green. One look in the rearview, catching the driver’s gaze silences him. He sees who I am, and suddenly the pissed off expression on his face vanishes. I wait for a beat, then another as the assholes settles into his seat and averts his eyes, waiting for me to do whatever the fuck I want to do.

I’m careful as I step on the gas, and more careful with what I say next. “How’s your mom doing?”

Even that simple question gets him worked up. Carter shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. He tries but he’s too choked up.

Carter’s mom keeps asking for him to help instead of his dad. It ranges from changing her position in bed and helping her go to the bathroom, to just being by her side to talk. His father doesn’t like that though. He’s a drunk and a deadbeat.

With five boys and her health deteriorating, I can only guess his mother is hoping that Carter will take care of the others when she’s gone. He’s the oldest. Hell knows his father won’t.

“Let’s talk about something else,” he suggests as I turn down Peck Avenue. “Like where we’re going?”

My lips kick up in a half smile at his response. He texted me earlier, asking me to pick him up, but didn’t question where I was taking him. He asks so often now, almost every day. I guess he doesn’t care where we go so long as he has somewhere to get away. He always goes home though. For his mother. For his brothers too.

“I want to check on someone,” I tell him as I round the corner, passing over a speed bump and slowing down at the weathered stop sign that marks that we’re close to our destination.

Carter’s brow furrows. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him I want to check on someone before, but when I turn down Dixon Street and slow in front of Chloe’s house, he gives me a shit-eating grin. As if I just told him his favorite joke.

“Like old times,” he says with a rough laugh. Carter’s my only friend and that’s because I know who he is to his core. He’s six years younger than me, but he’s like family, the only family I have.

All he has are his brothers; he’s told me that so many times. But it’s always followed up with a pat on my back as he tells me I’m one of them. I have to admit, it’s nice to feel wanted, and even nicer to feel like you’re part of a family. Even if you know deep down that’s not really true.

I was eighteen and he was twelve when we met. He got caught shoplifting bread of all things. Dumb fuck couldn’t even pick something that fit under his jacket.

Grabbing him by his collar, I yanked him away from the clerk hellbent on beating the shit out of him. If you let one person get away with stealing your shit, everyone will come running with duffle bags.

So you have to send a message, loud and clear. I was in charge of keeping that shop out of harm’s way; it was one of my first jobs from Romano.

I looked the clerk in the eye and told him the kid was going to pay for what he’d done. I had a reputation and the clerk was happy enough to let me handle it, knowing he could tell his story about how I’d kicked the kid’s ass for trying to steal from his store.

Carter was a scrawny thing and still is, although he’s starting to fill out. I picked him up like he was nothing and he didn’t try to fight it.

The look of fear in his eyes wasn’t there, only a look of disappointment, even as I dragged him around back. I remember how I felt something I hadn’t in so long. Something like regret, maybe?

He wasn’t like the others, the ones looking for a fight.

Carter already had enough to fight for and to fight against, so to him I was just one more thing he had to endure. I could see the weary resignation in his eyes.

I didn’t kick his ass. Instead, I told him to go home. I made the decision to let him go because he wasn’t like the others. And also, because the idea of beating up on a lanky twelve-year-old made me sick to my stomach.

That was when I saw his anger and his fight. His passion.

“I’m not going home without it,” he told me with determination, even though his voice shook. His hands balled into fists, but he didn’t raise them.

“Get home, kid,” I told him, walking over to where I’d thrown him and towering over him.

He stared me in the eyes as he shook his head. “I’m not leaving without it.”

“For a fucking loaf of bread, you’re willing to get your ass beat?” The kid was stupid. I still tell him he’s stupid and it’s true half the time.

“I have to make sandwiches, my mom told me--” He started to say something else, but I cut him off.

“Well your mom can make it herself,” I spat back at him, with a pent-up rage he didn’t deserve. He was only a kid, and some of the kids didn’t know. My mother was a whore. A bitch. I don’t have a single nice thing to say about her. Even with her dead in the ground after spending the last minutes of her life with her favorite needle, I can’t bring myself to say one good thing about her. I never had a family aside from my grandmother, bless her soul. And I never would. It’s as simple as that. It was as deeply ingrained in me as whatever possessed Carter that night.

“She can’t!” he yelled at me. I took one step closer to him, and he stiffened. My spine was stiff, my shoulders straight and the aggression and threats evident just from my stare at him.

His bottom lip quivered as he took in a quick breath, but he didn’t give up. “I have to feed them tonight and we don’t have anything… but I can make sandwiches.” He gritted out the last words with tears in his eyes. “I just need bread.”

“And what are you going to put on the bread? You going to steal something else too?” I berated him, even though I believed him.

“There’s peanut butter already.”

“You can eat it with a spoon,” I said dismissively, turning my back to him and ready to get the hell away from him. Something about the way he looked and acted bothered me to my core. He wasn’t frightened, and he wasn’t angry. He was desperate.

“She said to make sandwiches for my brothers-”

I lost it again with the kid, thinking about my own mother and how she’d forced me to fend for myself. She never told me to make dinner, I just had to. No one else would. “And why didn’t she do it then? Huh? She can dish out orders, but-”

“She’s in the hospital. She told me on the phone to make sandwiches and I just need bread.” He stumbled over his words, but he never took his eyes from me. “I told him, the clerk,” he gestured to the shop, “we’d pay him, but I don’t have the money right now.” He visibly swallowed and continued, “My mom will pay him when she’s back. And it’s going to be real soon. She’ll be okay real soon.” He started rambling on and on and I could feel his sob story getting to me. I could feel myself getting played like I’d played everyone else as I grew up on the streets.

“So, you’re stealing bread to make sandwiches for your brothers?” I lowered my head to his. “Here’s a hint, kid. When you’re told to do something, you don’t have to follow it to a T.” I licked my lower lip, slipping my hands into my pockets and expecting him to give up and go home already. To leave the corner store alone and my reputation intact and go eat the fucking peanut butter out of the jar like a normal asshole would.

But he didn’t get what I was saying.

“Are you dumb?” I asked him as he stood up, faced me and held his ground.

“She said to make them sandwiches. I’m not leaving until I get the bread.”

I searched his eyes for the longest time before going in and grabbing the bread for him. But I followed him home, telling him I wasn’t going to give it to him until I saw that he was telling the truth. I knew he was one of the kids who lived on the edge of the city. I remembered seeing a bunch of them out that way. I make it a habit to know everyone and for them to know me.

If he was lying to me, he’d learn real quick to never do it again.

I didn’t know that he had four brothers, or that their place was a mess because they’d just moved in. I heard they were on the run from where they came from, but I didn’t know that their mother was in the hospital because of their grandfather. Apparently, he’s who they were running from and he’d found out where they ran off to. Which is how his mom wound up in the ER and why their father in jail as a result of it all, paying Carter’s grandfather back for what he’d done to his mother. Leaving five kids alone in a new place without a damn thing to eat.

I didn’t know, and I didn’t care, not until I saw how happy they were just to eat. Even something as simple as peanut butter sandwiches. I asked him how long it’d been since she went to the hospital.

It had been four days. And they were starving, but he’d promised his mom he would feed them, and he did.

Twelve years old, and he was the oldest of five. She stayed in the hospital for another three days before the doctors would let her come home. Now she’s back in the hospital, but not with bruises and broken ribs. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. She’s been fighting it all this time, but Carter’s still taking care of his brothers, and now her too.

That was the first time I met Carter, four years ago. I took him under my wing at first, but now he’s a friend. A friend who’s been through some shit and is still in it. He has a family though and a reason to fight. I’ve only ever fought to stay alive or to rule with fear. That difference is something I’m not sure he’ll ever understand.

“Is she home?” he asks me, and it brings me back to the present. To being on the other side of the city, close to my place and in front of Chloe’s.

Letting out a sigh and running a hand through my hair, I shrug like I don’t know.

“You like her,” he tells me like it’s a fucking joke. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Not entirely, but even if he suspects it, he won’t ask. He doesn’t like to look for the darkness, not when he’s surrounded by it already.

“She doesn’t need me asking her out,” I mutter under my breath and ignore Carter’s eyes pinned on me.

It takes a second and then another for him to start putting the puzzle pieces together.

“You going to tell me why we’re here?” he asks me with a brow cocked. He’s feigning lightheartedness; concern is clearly etched on his face.

I’ve told him more than once that he doesn’t pay attention enough. That life is shit, it always will be, and either you accept it for what it is and protect yourself, or you fall victim to whatever fate chooses to inflict on us. But given the weight of what I’m hiding, I don’t tell him. I don’t want it to be real.

I lie to him and say, “I just wanted to see if anyone was snooping around here.”

“Cops? Or Romano’s people?” Carter asks and the gravity of either of the two options sends a chill down my spine. I can handle the cops, Chloe can’t. But neither of us could handle Romano if he decided to go after her. He runs the territory up north and I work for him on occasion. I may be his muscle, but I’m not sure even I know the extent of the shit Romano’s involved with.

As I’m thinking about the last fucked up thing Romano had me do, Carter asks something I wish he hadn’t, because it’s too close to being true. “Is this about that thing Marcus gave you?” His voice is even, but his expression’s fallen.

Pushing back in my seat and hiding my anxiety, I tell him, “I told you not to mention that.”

He only nods and seems to shrug it off, like it doesn’t matter if Marcus is the reason we’re here. Both of us know that’s bullshit though. Even saying his name is something no one likes to do around here. Romano may run the territory up north from us, he may even make an appearance down here on occasion when he needs something, but you always see him coming and he’s only dangerous because of the men he controls.

Marcus is a different sort of threat. By the time you see him coming, you’re already dead. He doesn’t have a territory, he doesn’t have men. When he makes demands, they’re always about death. They called him the Grim Reaper when I was younger. He doesn’t want money, he doesn’t bargain. What Marcus decides is final and there’s no room to negotiate. He’s only one man, but he’s killed every man who’s crossed him and even more men simply because they were on his list.

A minute passes before Carter reaches for the radio again and lets the music ease the tension.

“It’s fine.” My words come out casually as I watch Chloe’s house. Not a thing looks out of place. It’s not fine though. This shit is exactly why I could never be with her. One day you’re on top, the next you’re in a ditch. That’s how this lifestyle is, and I’ll never bring anyone into this shit life if I can help it. That especially goes for Chloe Rose.

“When are you going to ask her out?” he asks with a wide smile. He still has happiness in his soul. Enough to bring a bit of light to every dark situation. One day it’ll go out. It always does for men like us. But I’ll do my damnedest to keep it from happening.

“I know you want her,” he chides again.

He doesn’t know the half of it. I’ve known Chloe for a long time. And I made sure she never knew how I watched over her when her mother died. She wasn’t okay. Everyone knew it. Just like they knew I wasn’t okay when my mother died.

No one gives a shit though. People die, and somehow you keep going.

Then more people die and one day it’s you.

One time I walked up to her porch and peeked in her window after she’d moved into her uncle’s. The TV was on and I thought maybe she was watching it. That she’d be okay. It had been weeks. Weeks of nothing but her crying, constantly crying and hating herself. And I despised it. I fucking loathed it. The whole street could hear her uncle yelling at her to stop crying. That he’d lost his sister too and that she needed to stop.

When I looked in, she was still crying, but her eyes were wide open, her cheeks tearstained, and she saw me.

I know she did, not that it changed anything. I knew at that moment when she didn’t do anything or say anything, that I was just as dead to her as her mother was. It hurt me like nothing else in this world had to know that just then, I meant nothing to her. I couldn’t take her pain away. I was nobody special.

I’d never been more sure of anything in my life. I was nothing that night.

But the next day, I proved her wrong. When she kissed me back, I proved her wrong.