Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
And, so, looking around and seeing that no one is near at this hour, I open my nursing bra. I’ve only just stopped nursing the kids; yes, a little late but I don’t care if anyone judges me. My milk hasn’t quite dried up yet, though.
So when I pull Milo to me and hold my still-full breast to his mouth—
Chapter 29
MILO
She’s my angel. But are we still on earth, or in heaven? I can’t tell if I’ve gotten my wish and died. Because I can’t imagine a kinder welcome into heaven than once again being given Hope’s teat to suckle.
Her warm milk spurts onto my tongue.
Life-giving milk.
She welcomes me, cradling me as gently as she ever did the babes to her chest, holding my head against her and feeding her nipple into my mouth.
I suckle.
It’s the first action I’ve taken in days apart from stumbling to Hope Park. A fine place to die, was all I could think at the time when I saw the sign.
For two years I fought to stay alive. Hard years, full of impossible days.
That night when those men held me at knife-point, I immediately gave over my wallet. They kicked me and gave me a beating anyway. It left me confused for several days, and I’d been soaked by the storm.
I couldn’t get a job because of the state of my clothes. I didn’t have a home to go back to anymore. Or any money. I was nothing. No one.
So I found what scraps I could and hid in dark places. The closest things to closets I could find. Mama had prepared me well for a life like this. Waiting. Fading. Being no one while all the someones ran by and had lives scurrying all around me.
I could be quiet.
I could be a good boy. Finally. I’d show Mama.
I could be invisible.
Well, to everyone except the cops, who’d see me occasionally and throw me out of whatever little haunt I’d found. I only found myself in lockup a few nights, generally tossed out in the morning with the rest of the drunk-tank regulars.
I don’t know how long I’d been going with this little routine before I felt the life seeping out of me. One rainy season passed and then summer and then another cold, rainy season that I barely survived. And then this last summer.
But the rain was coming again. My bones could feel it.
And I wasn’t sure I could make it through another one. As soon as the leaves started to fall, my spirits drooped.
And sometime as the sun came up several days ago, I thought, this is it. No more. No more waiting at the back of restaurants to go through their trash for food scraps.
No more hoping the water fountains in the parks were turned back on so I could get a drink.
I was ready to return to the earth and let whatever reincarnated version I hoped came next do a better job of paying for the karmic sins which had brought me so low.
But—
But now Hope tenderly shifts my skin-and-bones-body so that her other sweet nipple pops in my mouth.
“Take your fill,” she whispers gently. “The kids don’t use it anymore. It’s all yours.”
All for me?
My unsteady hand comes up to grasp the breast she offers me, but I pause before touching it. My hands are filthy, and her skin, such cream. I’ll defile her. Probably my mouth on her skin is—
But the rich milk that spurts onto my tongue, to the back of my throat, I can’t give it up. So I drop my hand but continue to suck.
And my stomach, so long empty, is coated in her warm nourishment.
From her body given freely into mine.
My tear ducts, which I long thought broken, begin to flow.
Like a little baby, I weep, and suckle.
As Hope gives me back my life.
Chapter 30
JANUS
I can’t believe it when Hope calls me and tells me after all this time—years—she’s found Milo in a park. Homeless. My own brother.
I’m at the salon with Leander and I yank him aside. “She found him. She found Milo.”
Leander’s eyes shoot wide open and he yanks off the salon smock around his neck but I put up a hand.
“You can’t. There’s a premiere tonight. You stay here. I’ll go.”
He opens his mouth and I see him about to say it. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say, no, you stay and do the premiere. I’ll go.
But I glare at him. “Don’t you dare.” He owes me this, but I leave that part unspoken.
It’s a sign of how he’s grown the last few years that he nods, though his shoulders deflate a little for a moment. “Of course.”
I grasp his shoulder hard. “Thanks, brother. I’ll text you and keep you updated.”
“You fucking better. Give him a hug from me.”
“Will do.”