Four days later, the police finally come to terms with the fact that they aren’t getting anything from us. “Snitches are bitches,” Nate whispered to my neck when they first arrived in his hospital room. I stick to my story that a bunch of teenagers in beanies cornered us in an alleyway, stabbed Nate, cut my finger out when I didn’t want to give them my bag and ran away with our money. We’re just two tourists from America who want to go home and lick our wounds. It’s a crazy lie no one believes, but you can’t force the truth out of people. Especially people like us.
A week later, we’re free. Me sans a finger, Nate with a new, fresh scar on his stomach. Simon hit a spot that’s already heavily covered in ink. His “tainted” side, as Nate calls it. The scar will not be visible under the steampunk clock scribbled on his stomach.
Time.
Our whole lives are ahead of us now.
I need to live mine in memory of my loving brother, who couldn’t handle hearing how much I suffered at the hands of monsters. In memory of my mother, who went crazy with grief. And with Nate in mind. For all the time he lost in prison. While being Godrey’s do-boy. But he’s not a memory. He’s my future.
We walk into the tube station hand in hand, taking the train back to our room to get our stuff and move into a hotel that can better accommodate our new, fragile situation.
The missing finger bothers me; it feels unnatural to do the simplest things, from flipping pages in a book to browsing the touch screen of my phone or even making coffee.
I pluck a free copy of the Metro from a stack of newspapers before getting into the subway, my mind begging for a distraction. We walk the length of the platform silently before I freeze. Camden’s face is smiling back at me from the first page, hugging a beautiful young woman who looks like some kind of a ginger princess. “The Wedding is On!” The headline celebrates. My knees buckle and nausea slams into me once again.
Nate’s nostrils flare and he grabs the paper, balling it in his fist and throwing it behind his shoulder without looking back.
Our train arrives, and he finds himself dragging me inside. This was a bitter reminder of my defeat. This man raped me, killed my brother and ruined my life, and he walked away free of punishment. What’s more, he bribed me with money, and I took it. Because I’m a coward. Because I’m a loser. Because I’m the very lowlife he treated me as. A part of me wants to chase after him, screw the money, and kill him. But a bigger part knows I value my second chance with Nate too much to f*ck it up again.
“Camden is still alive. We lost,” I tell Nate, resting my head against the blue seat of the subway and moving my palm across my face
“No, Baby-Cakes.” He pulls my head to his shoulder. “We survived.”
Even the hookers don’t look so down and depressed around here.
Not a surprise, considering they live in a place called Nice. It is nice. More than nice, actually. Sprawled over the French Riviera, this city offers yummy ice cream, a beach with little pebbles—the kind that heat under the warmth of the sun and massage your feet when you walk on them—and yachts. Beautiful, gorgeous yachts you can stare at for hours at the promenade. Across the street, prostitutes stand and wait to be called for by tourists.
Stinking wealth against unbearable poverty.
Flashy against degrading.
They all live here, under the same sun and stars. Strong and weak. Takers and givers. Just like in the US. Just like everywhere else.
But here, I’m not a giver. I’m not a weak one. I’m a fresh, clean face.
I like the little tram that passes through this beautiful city, the street dancers who come out every night, making a show in front of dozens of tourists, and the main street restaurants.
Nice is not nice. Nice is perfect.
There was a lot of debate about where we wanted to live after we got out of the hospital.
We received the suitcase stuffed with cash a few hours after we left the hospital—Camden sent one of his dirty workers to hand it over—and checked into the Ritz. Nate and I called room service, asking for someone to get us a map of Europe and tipped the bellboy fifty quid for his trouble. We spread the map flat over the giant bed, eating greasy pizza and slurping cold beer as we debated the question of where we should live.
In the end, we have shortlisted two places: Spain and France.
I wanted to go to Barcelona. Nate to Cannes.
We drifted off to sleep, still bickering about things like climate and healthcare. Neither of us really gave too much of a damn at this point, we were so high on being with each other, alive and well, and so low on not killing Camden, that nothing else mattered.
At around five a.m. one early morning, Nate woke me up the good old-fashioned way, by licking the length of me underneath the sheets. His huge body bulged out of the covers above me, making it look like I was suffering from the biggest morning wood in history. Sucking hard on my clit, making warm waves wash under my navel, he groaned into me.
“I bought us two tickets to Nice, France. Nice has your name on it.”
“It does?” I moaned, spreading my legs wide to grant him more access. His teeth rubbed against my *, creating delicious friction that made my nipples hard and sensitive.
“I did some reading about France while you were waking the dead with your snoring.” His voice was muffled as he spoke into my *. The fact that I was moaning loudly didn’t help, either.