“Noah, don’t you—”

Too late. He ran for it, and I prepared myself for the wave of water that would surely mess up what the stylist had done to my hair. In the background, I heard the cameras click away as the wave hit me.

“Agh!” I screamed when his hands grabbed my legs, pulling me under with him. Bubbles all around us, he kissed me, and instinctively, I wrapped my arms around his neck, his arms wrapping around my waist.

We stayed under there until our lungs forced us back to the surface. As I gasped for air and wiped the water from my eyes to glare at him, I couldn’t talk because of that damn grin of his.

“There are easier ways to tell me you are okay,” I whispered.

“But are there better ways?” He lifted my chin, leaning into me again.

“Hold it,” Hanako yelled at us, and he froze, remembering that we were working and that this wasn’t our pool.

“Okay, Noah. Lift her up out of the water for me, and Amelia, can you look down at him?” Following her directions, I was able to stare into his eyes. Despite his smile and the love I knew he had for me, though, I could still see the pain in his eyes. We were just trying to live—why was it so messy?

This was the only simple moment of my life—when he was holding me.

“I love you.” They were the only three words I could think to say. It was my promise. I would love him no matter what.

Chapter Five

Noah

Chicago.

“They tell me you are wicked, and I believe them. They tell me you are crooked, and I answer: Yes. Gunmen kill and go free to kill again. Flinging magnetic curses, fierce as a dog, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness. Stormy, husky, brawling, the City of the Big Shoulders,” I whispered, blowing smoke out the crack of the window and staring up at the buildings above me as they passed by in a blur of blue and gray. No matter what, there was always a gray glow over the city.

“Who was that from?” Amelia asked.

I glanced down at her as she rested her head on my shoulder.

“Why couldn’t I have come up with that?” I questioned, and she didn’t answer. Apparently I wasn’t poetic. “Carl Sandburg. But I butchered it.”

It was one of my favorite poems because it was the only one that adequately described what it was like to be from this city. The love/hate relationship we all had, the relief we felt to leave, and the relief we felt to come back. It was always trying to kill us, and we were always fighting to live anyway. If you could survive here, you could survive anywhere. That was the lesson I had learned.

“Amelia, we’re here,” Austin said when the car came to a stop.

She didn’t move.

“Amelia.”

Sighing, she sat up, her face whipping back to me. She grabbed my face, hers only inches from me.

“I don’t understand everything. I know you’re about to do something. I don’t care what it is. Just be safe, you hear me?”

Damn, I loved her. “Loud and clear.”

Nodding, she grabbed her purse, sliding out of the car. I didn’t want to bring her at all, but she wasn’t having it, and so the best I could do was make her promise to stay in a hotel while I head back “home.”

“Daniel, you’ll be staying with her,” I said to him, and without arguing, he got out of the car as well.

 Austin and I exited on the same side of the car. He left the passenger door open and went around to the driver’s side. Luckily, since we had lied about where we were going to be on Twitter this morning, the press wasn’t here, though that would change the moment someone found out.

Plus, we had chosen an old black Honda, something that wouldn’t stick out much to drive in.

“How much did you bring?” I asked him when I sat down.

Pulling away from the hotel, he nodded at the briefcase by my feet. “Thirty large.”

“We don’t need that much—”

“They know who you are, Noah. They aren’t going to talk for less.”

Rubbing the side of my head, I tried to ignore the headache coming on.

“You good? You haven’t had an attack in three months. Is it the new meds—?”

“I’m not on the meds,” I replied.

“Goddamn it, Noah!”

“I’m fine.”

“Last time you said that, you needed rehab,” he muttered, shaking his head at me.

Sighing, I reached into the glove compartment, taking out the pill bottle.

“How did you know they were there?”

I glanced over to him, popping one in my mouth. “You’re kidding me right? Your brain only has one setting—”

“You mean keeping your ass alive and out of trouble.”

“Exactly.” I grinned, leaning against the seat. “You wouldn’t keep my pills anywhere I couldn’t reach if you weren’t around.”

“So this would be a good time for me to ask for a raise?” he mocked.

“A raise to what? Between Amelia and me, you’re probably one of the highest paid goddamn managers in the business.”

“But I’m not the highest, am I?”

I stared at him for a moment, and he looked over to me.

“What?” he asked.

I shrugged, facing forward once again. “Nothing. Just wondering how much it cost for your soul.”

“Let the bidding start at—”

“Just drive!” I ordered, trying not to laugh.

Despite his love for money, I knew Austin had his reasons.

There was line through Chicago, and you only realized it when you crossed over to the side where skyscrapers were replaced with condemned brick buildings, the windows boarded up and the walls covered in graffiti. Women, dressed in outfits that I’m sure belonged to their daughters or worse, in the garbage, stood blatantly on one corner. Teenagers huddled together on another like no one could see the packets being exchanged.

“Welcome home,” Austin said.

“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered, taking off my seat belt as we reached the bar. The sign read ‘Breakers,’ the ‘e’ and ‘s’ no longer lit. It used be the home of the Bone Breakers motorcycle club, but after a series of hard times, prison rides, and in-fights, it was just where grown men came to drink and piss away what was left of their lives. It was already 8 p.m., which meant that every man in the neighborhood over the age of twenty-five would be here.

A familiar smell of stale beer, cigarettes, sweat, and cheap perfume hung in the air when I stepped into the bar. The televisions replayed old Cubs games, though you would never know by the way were watching them. Twenty-five years—that’s how long you had to make it out, or you ended up like these sorry bastards.

“What the fuck, man?” the waitress snapped at me when I took the pitcher of beer out of her hands before she could make it to the table.

Holding it out in front of me, I let it go, allowing it to shatter all over the ground. And if it wasn’t so goddamn sad, I would have laughed at how quickly their heads turned back to me.

“I’m looking for Frank,” I said out loud.

“Good for fucking you! Ain’t no reason—”

“The next round for all you is on me,” I cut off the drunkard behind the bar, earning a round of cheers.

“I know you,” said an older man with a black bandana and a white beard that would put Santa Claus to shame. He stood up.

Jesus fucking Christ. Could you be any more of a stereotype right now?

“You’re Frank’s boy—”

“Not boy,” I cut him off. “If any one of you have any useful information about where my old man is, you’ll be rewarded for it—cash money. I’ll wait.”

I walked over to the corner table and kicked up my feet.

“Hey,” said the same waitress, the scowl on her face gone, and her breasts hanging further out of her shirt. She came up to me with a smile plastered all over her face. “Can I get you—?”

“Do you know where Frank Sloan is?” I asked.

“No—”

“Then I got nothing for you. But better luck next time,” I cut her off.

Just like magic, her face bunched up, the scowl returning in full force as she flipped me off and muttered something under her breath.