CHERISH Read Online Free Page B

words blend together, making it impossible to make out what they're saying.
    The screaming man comes into full view when he spins on his heel and turns the corner, bringing him behind the building. He’s as tall as Beck, wearing a visibly filthy denim jacket. Tendrils of matted brown hair hang to his shoulders. His jaw is covered with a graying brown, unkempt beard. His eyes are narrow, his hands gripping the sides of his head as he tips it back letting out a long train of obscenities into the mist coming down.
    Beckett speeds our steps, taking us off in the opposite direction, away from the man. His soldier’s eyes stay locked onto the potential threat, but he's not interested in confrontation if he can avoid it.
    The hairs on my arms stand tall. Our feet crunch on the asphalt. My legs muscles tighten, wanting to move faster.
    Beckett leans his head down until his breath is warm on my cheek. “Ssssshhhh. It’s cool. We’re fine, babe. No one is going to hurt you today; you’re on my watch.”
    His hand drifts down from my shoulders to the small of my back, guiding me between the last row of cars before we reach the walkway to the front of the building.
    The man has stopped talking, stopped screaming. Nothing comes out of his mouth except for a few grunts. He’s stomping his feet and swinging his arms violently back and forth, but we're almost away from him; we just need to take two more steps.
    We take two steps and round the sidewalk to the front of the building.
    My feet turn to lead.
    My eyes feel like they are on fire and my stomach is coming up fast.
    It’s her, the woman.
    The screaming woman.
    My hand plasters over my mouth, but it can't stop the high pitched sounds of horror that are coming out of me.
    “Fuck.” Beckett sees her at the same moment.
    I don’t need to tell him who she is. There is no mistaking us for blood. And that thought horrifies me.
    A mass of doll-like, ivory hair is in chaos on top of her head as she screams into her hands, crouching down, her back against the bricks. She holds a quivering cigarette in the fingers of her right hand, smoke rising in a zig-zag of white as she rocks back and forth.
    “There is no fucking way we are doing this here,” Beckett says to himself as he starts to spin us away from the building and back into the grid of parked cars. But it’s too late.
    “Baby! Is that you?” The woman’s voice cuts through the air and into my heart like a rusty knife. Her hands jerk out from her body in a gesture of resignation and self-centered drama.
    “Beck.” I look up to see his jaw muscles flex and his nostrils open with a snort of air. Suddenly, it all crashes into me and I realize that I can't handle any of this. Beckett is going to have to take it all because I can't. I just say his name again, “Beck.”
    The filthy man spins around. “Holy shit!” He meets my eyes just as my mom struggles to her feet. She’s wearing dirty fleece plaid pajama bottoms and layers of t-shirts. She’s barely a hundred pounds, even with the thick clothes, and I see the indents under her cheekbones, the raccoon darkness around her eyes.
    “Holy shit, is that her?” The man yells toward my mother, his head jerking back and forth between us, probably unable to believe what he's seeing. The whole thing is surreal.
    Beckett picks up the pace, practically dragging me through the rows of cars toward the glass doors about thirty feet away. I want to look away but I can't.
    My mother.
    Is here.
    Right here.
    The ground is spinning and I’ve forgotten how to inhale.
    The woman that would rather leave me with strangers than miss a date is here.
    The woman that locked Jordan and me in the closet and told us to keep quiet, so whomever her man of the week was wouldn’t know she had kids, is here.
    The woman that sat in court, with me only ten feet away, telling the world she didn’t want her own son and daughter.
    Is here.
    And I can’t stop looking at her. She’s coming toward us as