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Pearl was happy to see her the second time she visited, which meant more to Evelyn than any words could describe. She looked healthier than she had in years. She said the doctors had put her on steroids and an antibiotic and she’d gained a few pounds. Evelyn was both shocked and thrilled at her progress. Her mind seemed markedly sharper, but all of her optimism faded when the old Pearl showed up.
Her eyes had skittered to the door and then back at her. She gripped her hand and whispered, “Scout, baby, you gotta get me somethin’. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t sleep. I can barely eat. My muscles shake like my bones’re gonna rattle right out of my skin. I got such pain in my belly, you’d scream if you felt it.” Pearl looked around nervously and tapped her emaciated arm. “I just need one hit and then I’ll be all right. Just one, baby.”
Anger and disappointment welled up inside of Evelyn like a storm. Her eyes prickled with tears and she instinctively searched for Lucian, but he wasn’t there. Her breath beat from her lungs fast and she couldn’t seem to pull any back in. She felt sick. “No, Momma.”
“What’ch you mean no? I don’t wanna be here, Scout! I hate it! It’s like a prison and where’re my things?”
Pearl rubbed her lips hard over her teeth and gums and quickly reached into her drawer for a piece of hard candy. You would’ve thought it was heroin itself the way she moaned over the sugar rush. She’d told her before that sugar somehow soothed the toothaches.
Evelyn took her hand and tried to soothe her panicky motions. “Listen to me, Momma. It’s just temporary. Just a little while longer. You’re getting better and soon—”
“Aren’t you listening to me, Scout? I don’t want to be here a while longer. I wanna go home! This place’s killing me slowly. I don’t fucking care anymore! Do you hear me? I don’t care! I’d rather die than feel the way I do, but I’m too fucking weak to kill myself.”
Evelyn’s tears spilled past her lashes. “Momma, it’ll get better. I promise—”
Pearl flicked her hand off hers with surprising force. “What do you know?” Her mother sneered, her face distorting with hate. “I don’t wanna get better. I want to go home! You don’t know nothin’ and it’s you who’s keepin’ me here. Get out! Get out and don’t come back. I ain’t got no daughter no more! You hear me?”
Evelyn ran out of there like the hounds of hell were chasing her. Lucian comforted her the best he could, but his protective instincts rode him hard to do something in retaliation. She could feel it thrumming in him. There was nothing he could do. Pearl was her mother and she had the power to hurt her more than anyone else ever could.
They returned to the penthouse on the first, and as soon as they did, that sense of homesickness she’d been suffering disappeared. She tried to put distance between Lucian and herself, but he wouldn’t tolerate it.
That night he had taken Evelyn’s chin firmly in his hand while he was inside of her and fiercely said, “Look at me, Evelyn. I love you and you can’t put up walls between us because love scares you. Keep all your words locked in, but silence does not make your feelings any less real. I will not let you put distance between us, so stop. Enough. I’m not Pearl and I will never abuse your love the way she has.”
He was right. She couldn’t run from what Lucian and she shared, because her love for him would reach across any distance. Silencing her emotions did nothing to weaken what she felt for him. He ran through her blood. He was her drug of choice, and she’d likely rip off her flesh before she’d be able to give him up willingly.
She nodded and cried as they made love slowly. Although they had started out anything but gentle, they each needed the tenderness after his emotional allocution. As she had fallen asleep, she vowed to do her best and no longer categorize Lucian’s love with the kind of self-serving love Pearl treated her to.
As Evelyn plugged along at her game, waiting for Lucian to return from his meeting, she thought about how much had happened in the past two months. Sometimes she missed Parker, but she tried not to think about him. She cared deeply for Parker, but he’d always laughed at her dreams of making it off of the streets and never showed much ambition to save himself. He was a dangerous person for her to care for, because he could so easily pull her back to the world she never wanted to visit again.
With all the improvements Lucian had made to St. Christopher’s, things were better for her old friends than they had ever been. Lucian informed her every time he made some sort of shipment to the shelter, like on Christmas Eve when he had a truckload of toys delivered for all the children and forced Dugan to dress as Santa and hand them out. Poor Dugan.
