“No shit.”

“We’re already treating it as much as we can with medication.”

“Surely there’s something else.”

He rubbed his beard, his gaze dropping and his voice softening. “There’s open heart surgery. We can go in, close the valve, but I don’t recommend it, Nate. You’re only twenty-three. You could live a full life—”

“But besides cutting me open?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nathaniel, I’d love nothing more than to be able to treat this for you, but it’s not on me. It’s on you. The stress, the anxiety, your work… it’s not good for you. It’s detrimental to your heart and your life. Yours is one of the most severe cases of MVP I’ve come across, and you’re not doing yourself any favors by doing what you do. You want me to give you a magical remedy? Get out of The Family. Live a normal life. Use your smarts for something better. Find love, find happiness, have children and love them the way you were loved.” He sighed as he leaned against his desk. “You keep this up, and you’ll be lucky to see your next birthday. I told your dad the same thing, Nate, and he didn’t listen to me. Now look where he is.”

38

Bailey

Months had passed since I’d found out the truth about my mother, and the lie about my life and I’d done everything I could to forget it, to act as if my mother wasn’t a crack whore and I wasn’t a crack baby and my life wasn’t doomed from the second I was born.

I thought I’d been doing a good job.

Obviously, I wasn’t.

Nate leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze locked on the floor. He was refusing to look at me. He’d been doing it since he got home, and suddenly, it all made sense.

“What do you think, Bailey?” Dr. Polizi’s question hung in the air.

I pulled the covers up to my chin and didn’t bother answering him. I didn’t need to. It didn’t matter what I thought.

Dr. Polizi sighed as he stepped away from the bed, and looked over at Nate. “She can take them in the morning with her insulin, or at lunch with her vitamins and other pills,” Polizi told him.

Nate looked up, his face void of emotion. “Thanks, Doc.”

They spoke in hushed tones as if I wasn’t in the room, and a few minutes later, I was alone. Again. I was always alone. Nate had been (as he liked to call it) working “overtime.” He was barely home, and when he was, he was on his computer, or asleep. He’d been going to the gym a lot, too, and it showed, not that I had any sexual appetite to appreciate it.

Maybe that’s why he asked the doc to get me on anti-depressants.

I scoffed to myself just as he re-entered the room. “What’s funny?” he asked while he sat on the edge of the bed. He slipped on his shoes with one hand, the other landing on my hip. He forced a smile in my direction, one that said, I’m sorry, but I have to go. The real world awaits and besides, you barely get out of bed, and you haven’t showered in three days, so I’d rather not be around you…

“Bailey?”

My eyes moved to his.

“I might be home a little late…”

I contained my eye roll. He probably wanted to have sex. I should shower. Shave. Do all my hostage/girlfriend duties. Hostage. I scoffed again.

“Bailey!”

“What? I heard you!” I snapped.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he rushed out, his hands going up in surrender. “It just seems like you keep zoning out on me.”

I wondered if the girls he was fucking during his so-called “overtime” could smell me on him. Or if they did, would they care? Girls loved the bad-boy, and they don’t get any badder than Nate fucking DeLuca.

“Bailey…”

“What?!”

“Nothing.” He shook his head, his gaze dropping. “I just love you, is all.”

Nate

I knew part of it was my fault. I’d been working a lot lately. Too much. Benny had a rat at the local precinct and, apparently, the cops had been on our tail since the rich kid OD’d. Benny told me all this, followed by an order/warning that it was on me to find a more discrete way to get supplies and do the exchange. So I ignored Polizi’s pleas, and I’d been working overtime, trying to find new ways to meet with suppliers, which, unfortunately, still included the Francos. Tiny and I spent most nights driving from one location to another, using the darkness of the night to hide our intentions, but I’d always made sure to come home, every single night, to Bailey.

It doesn’t matter that she didn’t notice, or that she no longer cared.

And the truth is, it was a selfish choice. I needed to be with her. I ached to be with her.

I spent my days trying to work out who I was, trying to find my reason, but at night… in the four walls of that basement with Bailey in my arms, her slumbered breaths on my skin and her heart beating with mine, I found peace.

I found solace.

I found purpose.

But I also found myself drowning, sinking, unable to breathe from the weight of my so-called peace, and I questioned everything I felt and tried to match it with how she felt and I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the truth between the web of lies we’d created, and worse… I couldn’t find Bailey. I guess that’s when I came to the realization. I could no longer find her, because she no longer existed.

*

Bailey was sitting at the top of the basement stairs when I got home. She stood as soon as she heard me, her hands grasping the hem of the too-big shirt she was wearing. She wiped her eyes as if she’d been crying, and lifted her chin, her shoulders square. For a moment, I thought it was anger I saw in her eyes—frustrated, built up anger that I was no doubt responsible for, but then she smiled, her breath shaky when she exhaled.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She shrugged, her voice almost a whisper when she said, “Waiting for you.”

“Oh yeah?” I stepped forward, and her hand claimed mine as soon as I was close enough.

She inhaled deeply, and looked up, her tear-coated eyes meeting mine. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home because I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about… just… about everything, Nate, and I—” She broke off on a sob, one that pierced my already breaking heart.

I released her hands and cupped her face, tilting her head back. “Bailey, it’s fine.”

She shook her head, her hands grasping my wrists. “It’s not fine, Nate. You don’t deserve the way I’ve been treating you, or the way I’ve been acting and I’m so sorry because you’ve done nothing but take care of me since the moment you found me. I’m just lost at the moment, so lost, and I have been for a while, but every night you come home to me, and you’re here… you’re here with me, and you don’t have to be and I don’t know why I’ve been acting like that isn’t enough.”

Because it’s not, I wanted to tell her. And she was wrong. She had no idea how much I had to be with her.

“Do you remember our first fight?” she asked, wiping her cheeks with her forearm. “The one where I was insecure about what you did out there and jealous of all the—”