Page 47 of Hold Him Like Gravity

I didn’t bother to get up and lock the door. What good would that do? They’d already gotten past the locks once.

I heard the thump as Evander jumped down from the counter, then felt the weight of him as he jumped up onto my lap, settling there.

That, more than anything, seemed to break the dam inside, making my eyes flood with tears.

“What am I going to do?” I asked him through sniffles, my hand landing on his back.

I mean, there was only one thing to do. What Kyle wanted. Steal the money. Keep stealing the money. Until it got too risky. Then takeallof the money and run.

To him.

Because as long as he had my brother, he had control over me and he knew it.

I could, of course, go to the police. But what if Kyle had someone watching me? What if they knew it was happening, killed Jake, then disappeared?

If I was going to make it out of this, with my brother, I needed a plan. A foolproof plan.

Maybe, if I wasn’t being watched, I could try to follow one ofthem. See where they were going, if those places had basements. Then wait until everyone was out or asleep, go in, get Jake, then run.

No, I didn’t have much money now that Kyle had taken the stacks of cash Rico had given me. But what did money matter in this kind of situation? Sleeping on park benches or in shelters while we figured it out was better than being under Kyle’s thumb.

It would take time to try to find Jake, though. Maybe even more than a week or two. That meant that I was going to need to do what they wanted from me until then.

And doing that meant betraying Rico.

That hurt more than I thought it would.

I guess maybe because it was Kyle taking yet another thing from me. Or the hope of something, since I didn’t actually have Rico, no matter how many times I may have imagined that.

“What’s gonna happen to you?” I asked Evander as I rubbed his back. “Who’s going to feed you the expensive food and give you milk?” Evander looked up at me with his big yellow eyes, likehe understood, like he was wondering the same thing. “Maybe I can take you with us,” I said, even though I knew that potentially living on the street in the middle of winter wouldn’t be fair to him. “Or I can… leave you at the shop for Rico to find. You like Rico. I don’t blame you. I like him too.”

When I finally had the address for my brother, I could just… bring Evander to the meat shop with me, sneak in the always-unlocked back door, and stick him in the office where no one but Rico ever went.

He would know then.

That I’d been the one to betray him, to steal from him. But maybe finding out that I’d left Evander in his care would make him see that I had no choice, that I didn’t want to screw him over.

Evander jumped down and made his way down the hallway, prompting me to stand, wiping tears from my eyes as I locked my door then walked around the apartment, setting things that weren’t broken to rights again.

Not only had Kyle found the money Rico had given me, but he’d taken the hundred bucks I had stashed in the freezer with my pizzas.

It wasn’t everything I had to my name. I had a paycheck going into my account the following day. And a small savings.

Enough to get us out of the city and a cheap rental.

So long as one, or both, of us could get a job quickly, we could rebuild, could heal.

I hated that my only option was to run, to keep running. While Kyle just got to go on living his life. No punishment, nothing to stop him from continuing the cycle of abuse.

What other option did I have, though?

I had to get away from him for good.

Not just a borough away.

An entire country away, if that’s what needed to happen.

Until then, I had to play my part.

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