Slide (20 page)

The ten-minute walk from the L was just long enough for us both to be freezing by the time we got to my mom’s building. Maggie lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a safe, but run-down neighborhood. She didn’t have a lot of money—hell, I paid most of her bills—but there was an Italian community center down the street, and she spent most of her time there.

We took the stairs. My mom’s front door opened and the smell of garlic and herbs invaded the whole corridor as she barreled out and somehow grabbed us both at the same time. I laughed and returned her hug. I was close to my mom. It had just been the two of us for a long time. I called her Maggie, like I had done since I was five years old and thought I was the funniest little fucker alive, and together with Ash, she was everything to me.

“
I miei ragazzi
,” she said. “You’re both freezing, come inside and warm up.”

I reached behind and disentangled myself. “Let go of me, then, woman.”

Reluctantly, she released me, but Ash let her keep hold of him and slung his arm over her shoulders. I followed them as he walked her back into her place, and I ran my eyes over the hallway, looking for anything broken. Maggie was terrible for busting her things and not asking me to fix them. Some subtle reconnaissance was usually the only way I found out.

I didn’t have to look far as I walked through her small apartment. A cold breeze from her bedroom caught my attention. I checked the window, and sure enough, it was jammed open with the catch on it completely fucked. I reached into my pocket with a sigh and pulled out the screwdriver I’d brought from home. Maggie had bad luck with windows; she only had to look at one and it broke. Luckily, I’d left a box of spare catches under the sink in the kitchen.

I made my way to the kitchen. Ash and my mom were engrossed in whatever she had bubbling away on the stove, but I caught his eye. He spotted the screwdriver in my hand and smirked, then moved to the sink to retrieve the box of catches.

Ash laughed. “Maggie, what do you do to your window latches? That’s the third one this year.”

I took the box from him, mouthing my thanks that he’d saved me the pain of bending down. Maggie playfully smacked his arm as he returned to the stove.

“It’s not me. It’s the weather.”

“It’s the same here as the rest of the city,” I called over my shoulder. “No one else goes through window latches like you do.”

I didn’t hear her retort, but I heard Ash laugh again and knew it wasn’t anything that made me look good. Damn them. I tuned them out and got to fixing the damn window. Together, they made a formidable team when they were poking fun at me.

They were still in the kitchen when I got done. Maggie was showing Ash her work from her pottery class as they sat close together at the battered old table. I lingered in the doorway and watched them a moment, feeling the way I always did when I saw them together—warm but slightly sad. My family was small, and we’d been through some tough times, but I’d always felt safe and loved, with plenty of hot food in my belly. Ash had never had that, and he probably needed it more than anyone.

My pensive solemnity didn’t last long, though. Maggie’s pottery was a heap of shit, and watching Ash trying to find something positive to say was enough to make anyone laugh.

I took pity on him in the end and wandered over to the stove. I peered into the various pans on the heat. “What are you cooking?”

The words “easily distracted” would be written on my mom’s tombstone, and she was up and bustling over to me before I could blink. Ash shot me a grateful grin and stood to put the bowl or whatever it was back on the counter. I put my arm around Maggie and leaned in to absorb her familiar smell. “Ragu?”

She nodded and pulled the lid off the biggest pot. “Yes, and we’ve got focaccia to go with it. I’ve made tiramisu for dessert. Is that okay with you two?”

It was more than okay. Maggie liked to stick to her peasant roots when she cooked, and I’d grown up on her trademark comfort food. It was just what I needed after the weekend from hell. Ash’s grin widened at the mention of dessert, and I knew he felt the same. Damn him and his sweet tooth. I dropped a kiss on my mom’s head. “It sounds great. Thanks.”

Maggie smiled and gave the pan a brief stir. “A mama’s got to take care of her boys, Pietro, now come and sit down. I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to. How was your weekend?”

She glanced at Ash, but he was suddenly busy studying the pattern on the tablecloth in front of him. Understandable. For a moment I didn’t know what to say either. I couldn’t tell my mom about the beating I’d taken from a baseball bat, or the altercation with Sean, or the amazing sex I’d had, so the majority of the weekend was out. It didn’t leave much, and the eventual answer I came up with sounded even lamer when I said it out loud: “Same old: work, TV and sleep. What did you do this weekend? Did you play poker with Mrs. Schneider again?”

Her short attention span was our saving grace, and she was soon chattering away again about everything and nothing. We spent the rest of the evening eating and laughing, and I thought we’d gotten away with it until it was time to leave.

Ash said good-bye first and headed down the stairs. I lingered a few moments to give Maggie the bear hug I knew she wanted. I was going to be busy for the next few weeks. I didn’t know when I’d get over to her place again.

Maggie returned my embrace with a strength that belied her small frame. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay? You can have my bed.”

I pulled away and gave her a stern look. “Mom, we’d sleep on the couch if we stayed. You’re not giving up your bed for anyone. But we can’t. Ash has to work tomorrow.”

It was an economical version of the truth. We’d stayed at her place before, huddled up on the couch and making out like teenagers. It was fun, but it wasn’t going happen tonight. I’d hidden my injuries for a few hours, but I couldn’t keep that up much longer.

“Okay,” Maggie said, clearly unhappy. “You’ll be back soon, won’t you? You both work too much.”

I rolled my eyes. “You sure it’s me you want to see, or just Ash?”

“Oh, stop,” Maggie scolded. “
Quel ragazzo ha bisogno dell’amore di una madre
. Why’s he so sad today?”

I repressed a sigh. It was all very well her telling me he needed a mother’s love, but how the fuck was I supposed to give him that? I leaned down and kissed her cheek a final time. “He’s fine,” I said. “Really. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Maggie shook her head. “Liar,” she said sternly. “I won’t pry, but don’t you think I’m fooled.”

She pressed a heavy bag of leftovers into my hands, and we parted ways. I descended the stairs with a smirk. She’d packed enough food for a week, but it would be gone in a few days. Left to his own devices, Ash would eat dessert for breakfast every damn day until it was all gone.

Ash dozed off on the way home. I watched over him while he slept, reflecting on the odd way the subway always put him to sleep. It was strange, because he was prone to claustrophobia if he was contained in any other situation—cars, buses, elevators. He wouldn’t go near any of them. Across from me, he looked really young with his hood pulled up and his head lolled back on the seat. I wanted to sit next to him and put my arm around him, but of course I didn’t. Cuddling on the subway was a risky game. Instead I just stared at him and tried to unravel the bizarre few days we’d just lived through.

Somehow, I’d gone from being connected to him in the most intimate way possible to feeling he was more detached from me than he’d been for a long time.

I’
D
BEEN
back on shift for two weeks, and already it felt like I hadn’t had a day off in months. The combination of missing my bed and pining for Ash sucked.

A few days ago we’d said good-bye, knowing work was going to keep us apart for the foreseeable future. That morning, Ash crawled back in bed fully clothed and went back to sleep on my belly. Luckily for him, I woke up just in time to send him to work. I loved watching him when he’d just woken up, all grouchy, disheveled, and gorgeous. It made my day. That morning, I watched him run out of the door with his heavy eyes and mussed-up hair and it was all I could do not to drag him back—drag him back and revisit every little thing we’d done the previous night.

Just the memory of it was enough as I crawled into the back of the ambulance under the pretense of restocking. I slumped back on the gurney and closed my eyes. It wasn’t too hard to picture it. That particular evening had found us both at home with nothing to do, and we’d spent it eating pizza and fooling around on the couch. A residual shiver of pleasure ran through me. Ash had worn me out until I was a mumbling wreck passed out in a heap beside him. Maybe he was right and I
was
getting old.

“You awake back there, asshole?”

I started, reality calling a halt to my shameless trip down memory lane. Irritated, I pushed my hat back from my face, scowling at Mick with the only eye I could be bothered to open. “What?”

He glared right back. “We’ve got a run, dumbass.”

Shit. I hadn’t heard a thing. My daydreams must have been more of a snooze. I checked the drug packs and equipment, gave myself a shake to wake up properly, and climbed back into the front seat.

I bent over to retie my boots as Mick hit the lights. “What have we got? Not more crazy geriatrics?”

We’d spent almost our entire shift the night before dealing with old folk with dementia. It had culminated with an old dear who’d peeled all the skin off her arm because she thought it was a damn orange. Calls like that used up a lot of my patience. I couldn’t face another night of that crap.

Mick shook his head. “Nah, it’s not that. We’re going over to North Side because they’re backed up at a warehouse fire. It’s an assault in the park.”

“PD on their way?” I said, instantly wary. The support we had in our own neighborhood was questionable enough. Relying on cops we didn’t know was even worse.

“They’d better be. We’re not getting out of this damn bus until they get there.”

Technically, I was better qualified than Mick, but he’d been doing the job longer than me, and on the street experience meant far more than a piece of paper. If he said we were staying in the bus, we were staying in the damn bus.

I sat back and watched the city fly by as perhaps, inevitably, the nature of the call took me back to the last violent incident we’d attended a few weeks before. My bruises had faded, but in that time not a trace had been found of the fugitive husband or his missing daughter. Even the news channels had forgotten them. In a few more weeks I probably would too, but as we drove across town to our job, the memory of the battered woman remained on my mind. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing another one.

We pulled up at the scene, and despite our skepticism, the police were already there. An officer met us at the park gates and led us through the small crowd of people gathered around a crumpled body on the ground. I reached the victim first and crouched down. Closer inspection revealed the body to be that of a teenaged boy. He was young, probably no more than fifteen, and he looked like he was one of the street kids who slept under the bridge in the area. I stabilized the boy’s neck before turning his head away from the concrete and starting from the top, as Mick surveyed our surroundings and spoke with the police. A wave of shock washed over me as I took in the kid’s face. He’d been smacked against the ground over and over until his features were battered beyond recognition.

Damn.

I felt sick to my stomach. Even after five years on the job, the brutality of what one human being could do to another still got to me. With a heavy heart, I checked the boy’s airway, neck, and chest, and quickly concluded he was in serious trouble. He undoubtedly had broken ribs and had probably punctured his lung. With a weak and fading pulse, he was clinging to life by a thread, and he wasn’t going to make it if we didn’t move fast.

Mick dropped to the ground on the other side of the boy. I expected him to nod and radio the call in. He didn’t. Instead, he held my gaze and shook his head. “I’ve got this, Pete,” he said quietly.

“What?”

Silently, he eased the kid’s back off the ground and the nausea already brewing in the pit of my stomach took on a new intensity. The boy was lying in a pool of blood stemming from where his trousers were shoved down to his knees. I swallowed and turned away, knowing without looking any closer that he’d been violently raped and brutalized in the worst possible way.

“Pete, I’ve got this,” Mick said again. He told me to go back to the bus and fetch some equipment he didn’t need, and I couldn’t get away fast enough.

Every paramedic had something: an Achilles heel they couldn’t see past. Kids. Burns. Suicide. Mick couldn’t deal with dead babies, those heartbreaking calls to an infant that had inexplicably died in its sleep. He couldn’t even look at them, much less put his hands on them. For me, it had always been rape. Man. Woman. Child. It didn’t matter; I’d seen them all. From the very first time I’d scooped a broken woman from a city alleyway, it had always torn me up. It hadn’t got better as the years had gone by, and my relationship with Ash had made it worse.

He was just twenty when I met him, but before that, he’d lived a whole life I knew very little about. His teenage mother died when he was a kid, and he lived in foster care and group homes before he finally ended up on the streets. I wasn’t an idiot; I knew something had happened to him. There was no other explanation for the way sex and physical contact could be so difficult for him. What I didn’t know was who, what, where, or even when.

Sometimes it hurt that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me, but when I saw the broken body of a young boy, I was… relieved that he hadn’t? Grateful? Shit, I didn’t even know, but there was no escaping the fact that when I looked at someone who’d been hurt in the worst way, I always saw something I recognized: fear, shame, and other emotions I couldn’t name. They were familiar, too familiar, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t look at the kid on the ground without seeing Ash’s face.