Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Evelina gasped at the many marks on his arm.
Blackened, blue, and yellowish.
Circular, oval, and all around.
Like someone had grabbed and held too tight.
Like someone had hurt him.
“My phone is inside, and so are the rest of my things,” Eve said softly.
She wouldn’t beg this person not to shoot her.
What good would it do?
“That, there,” he said, pointing at her left hand. “Your ring, give it to me.”
Instinctively, Eve held her hand behind her back. “That’s my wedding ring.”
He jerked the gun closer, making Eve back into the garbage bin.
“Give it to me, I said!” he shouted.
Evelina sucked in a ragged breath, willed away her nerves, and tugged her wedding ring off. It was the first time she had ever removed it since Theo had put it on her over a half of a decade earlier.
She held the ring out, silently.
The guy reached to take it, but she held strong to the piece.
“More than anything you could take from me, this means the most,” she said in a whisper.
He stuttered, his grip loosening on the ring.
“I ... I need to eat,” he mumbled. “I can’t go back now. I need to eat. Don’t you understand?”
Evelina’s heart broke. “I’m sorry. I have food inside, if you’ll just drop the gun. And money, too.”
He hesitated, but slowly, he lowered the gun.
It was only then that Evelina realized how young this person must be. Any career criminal, someone who had lived on the streets for years making what they could through violence, wouldn’t have lowered their weapon.
They wouldn’t have been so trusting.
This person needed help.
“Can I take it?” Eve asked, holding her hand out. “The gun, I mean.”
She didn’t expect him to hand it over, but he did. She looked it over, noting it was too light in the hand.
The guy kept his face down. “It’s not real, miss.”
Eve let out a relieved sigh. With the way fake guns were made, sometimes it was hard to tell. When young boys were getting shot on the side of the road because they held a fake BB gun that looked like the real thing, a person couldn’t be too careful.
Without a word, she reached out and pushed the guy’s hood back.
He had tears streaming down his very young face.
A boy—no older than fourteen, maybe fifteen.
Bruises littered his neck and cheek. His eye was blackened, and his bottom lip was split.
Evelina’s hands trembled when she tilted his face up to make him look her in the eye.
“My name is Eve,” she said, offering him a smile. “What’s yours?”
“Tyler.”
“How old are you, Tyler?”
“Almost sixteen.”
Jesus.
He was too small for that, she thought. Too skinny, even if he was tall for his age.
“Who hurt you?” she asked.
Tyler flinched away from her hands again. “Nobody.”
“Someone,” she pressed gently.
He didn’t respond.
Evelina didn’t push for more.
She nodded at the exit door. “Come with me, we’ll go in, you can warm up and eat, and we’ll talk a bit.”
Tyler shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t. But thank you. I’m sorry for—”
“You’re coming inside,” Eve interrupted strongly, “and that’s the end of it.”
*
Theo’s smile faded away when Eve stepped aside, and the tall, but quiet teenager walked in ahead of her. Her husband’s gaze asked a million and one questions while also taken in the beaten, silent boy who waited quietly with his head down.
“I found someone out back,” Eve said.
Theo’s gaze dropped to the plastic BB gun in her hand. “Is that so?”
She handed the toy weapon over to him, and grabbed the left over Chinese boxes on the desk. Waving at Tyler, she made him sit in a corner chair, and gave him the food boxes.
“Thank you,” Tyler mumbled.
“Eat,” Eve said.
She sat down in her chair, feeling the tension radiating off her husband from just a couple feet away as he looked over the gun.
“Eve,” Theo started to say.
“Look at his face, Theo.”
Theo did.
“And his arms,” she added.
Theo’s jaw ticked.
“He needs someone to help him, Theo.”
“Eve ...”
“You needed someone to help you, too,” she said softly. “He just needs help. Look at him.”
Theo sighed, discarded the toy weapon into the trash bin, and said, “What’s your name, young man?”
“Tyler,” the boy mumbled around the food in his mouth.
“You’re from Chicago?”
“The Heights.”
Theo winced. “What about your mom and dad?”
“Just my dad. Mom left years ago.”
Tyler was a wealth of information when his hands and mouth were filled with food.
“He’s almost sixteen,” Eve said. “Right, Tyler?”
“Yes,” the boy said, nodding.
Theo’s gaze dropped to the bruises littering the boy’s arms. “I bet he doesn’t tell you that he’s sorry after he’s done, does he?”
Tyler’s hands froze as they lifted toward his mouth. Very quietly, he said, “No.”
“You know it’s not your fault, right?” Theo asked.
Eve pressed her lips tightly together, hearing the thickness in her husband’s tone.
“Feels like it,” Tyler muttered, his head still down.
“Well, it’s not,” Theo replied. “You’re just a kid. I suppose you don’t have a place to sleep if you’re running around in alleyways at night trying to steal from women like my wife here, huh?”