Chapter Eight

Brooklyn

I hold my hand over my mouth as I try to quietly rush up the steps, making my way up to the floor above Jackson’s as tears stream down my cheeks. I’m holding back a sob, terrified that I’m going to give myself away but right now I can’t do this.
*Why?* I can’t help but wonder as I step onto the top of the landing and lean my back against the wall, sliding down until my butt hits the floor. My head hits my knees, my arms wrapping around them as I try my best to hold it together.
Images of another time, *another life* assault me just as the sound of a door below me slams and a single word echoes down the corridor.
“Fuck!” Jackson shouts, the sound of flesh hitting a hard surface makes its way up to me and the tears just come harder, faster as I start to lose the thin grip on the control that has been slowly slipping since he looked at me as if he actually fucking cared.
He got exactly what he fucking paid for. He’d traded whatever he brought for Teddy for a night with me, and that’s exactly what I fucking gave him.
*No strings my ass.*
What right does he have in questioning me about why I was there or what my involvement is with Teddy?
All I am to these men is a hole to fill as it is, I’m not a person with wants, needs, *feelings*. 
How could I be?
A sob escapes me as I think about how concerned he’d sounded when he’d said, “Can I ask you a question?”
I’d automatically tensed, his tone of voice alerting me that I may not like what was to come, but I didn’t stop him. Maybe because for once I *wanted* someone to care. 
But when he’d said, “Why were you there?” sounding so fucking worried about *me!* I just, I didn’t know how to react and I couldn’t handle it. 
Pulling away from him, *shit*, a fuck has *never* made me feel so much before. So wanted. So desired. So cared for. He put my needs first, making sure that I came-I’ve never gotten off by a man before—and I’ve been doing this for a long fucking time—but *four* times in one go-round? That’s never happened. I’m lucky if I get off at all. But it was more than that, I can’t explain it, it was just *so much more* than just fucking Jackson. Not that he’d ever believe me. Not after the things that I’d said to him.
“What does he have on you?” He’d asked concern and frustration evident in his tone, his eyes pleading with me to just trust him to help me but when has a man ever helped *me* before? Men help themselves to me, but they don’t help me.
So, instead of taking the life vest he was offering, I lashed out at him. 
“Nothing!” I snapped, standing up from the bed. I hastily began looking for the clothes that he’d lent me, desperate to get out of there before I said something that I couldn’t take back. “He doesn’t have anything on me.”
“He’s not a good man…” He’d said and it was all I could do to not release a snort of laughter and shout, * “I know exactly what kind of man he is! It would give you nightmares if you knew the truth.”
Instead, while barely holding it together, my entire body shaking as the walls of a past better left forgotten start to cave in on me, I just said, “You think I don’t know that?”
Finding the shirt and then the pants lying right next to it, I hastily put them both on just as he sat up in the bed, the sheets pooling distractingly low on his lap, and asked, “So then what is it?” 
After pulling the shirt over my head, I look over at him, and stated as nonchalantly as I could possibly manage, “I fuck.” That seemed to shut him up for a moment as he just sat there, open-mouthed, staring at me. After a moment, I continued to explain, “I don’t have any money but there are things that I need, like food and a warm place to stay. So, I do what I have to do.”
“You-“ he started once he’d seemed to recover, but I cut him off because I needed to get out of there, the walls were closing in fast and I couldn’t lose it here.
“I fuck Teddy, and other men, for a place to stay for the night,” I’d told him, and *God*, even I can hear how cold and detached the words sounded coming out of my mouth, but it’s not something I do because I *want* to, I do it because I *have* to. 
“Are you saying—does that mean…” 
“Did I just fuck you as payment for letting me stay here?” I’d asked, cutting him off. By this point I’d been beginning to feel like a weight was sitting on my chest and my vision was becoming spotty, I desperately needed to end this and get the fuck out of there right the fuck then!
“Some of us can’t afford anything else and have to use what we know and what we *have* in order to get through just to see another day. I told you, I don’t know how to do *caring*.” I’d said, trying to cut him where it would hurt. Stopping in front of him, I’d cupped my hand around his cheek, caressing it with my thumb as I took him in, wanting to remember this one good night that I’d had and the way this man had made me feel. Then said, “But don’t worry, *Baby*, we can just call this one a freebie.”
Then, I’d gotten up, but had to stop for a second at the door as everything had gone black, *fucking walls, give me just one more minute,* I’d begged, with my head resting against the cool wood, I’d murmured, “I’ll get your clothes back to you,” and then rushed out the door and up the steps as fast as my failing vision would allow me.
Unable to keep it at bay any longer, I lose control, the dam breaking as tears flood my face and ugly, loud, gut wrenching sobs break free, my entire body shaking in the wake of their violence, the sound of my hiccupping wails echoing down the corridor, as my breaths heave, my chest becoming increasingly tighter with each spasm.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that I need to try to be quiet because Jackson could hear me, but he had no fucking clue about the can of worms that he opened when he asked that question earlier, and now that it’s been opened, it’s not like I can just put the lid back on it all neat and tidy like it hadn’t been opened in the first place.
*God, I’m fucked up.*
I haven’t had a setback this bad in about a year.
*I need help.* 
*I need Chastity.*
*Fuck! I don’t know her number and I don’t know where she lives.*
*Damnit!*
A hand on my back startles me, and I immediately curl further into myself, trying to make myself smaller. “I’m not going to hurt you,” the person says, a woman, her voice concerned. “Is there something I can do to help you?” she asks, and for some reason, I think she sounds familiar.
Shifting as minimally as possible, I peek at her from over my arm, shock hits me hard when I recognize the face staring back at me, and launch myself at her, “Chastity!”
“Brooke?” she gasps as my arms circle around her waist and I find comfort in her familiarity, finally managing to start calming down, the weight is still there, the walls haven’t receded, but Chastity can help me through it.
“What happened?” She asks after a few moments of silence, as she pulls back to look me over, her face filled with concern.
“I—I was with a guy a-and I s-started spiral-ling…” Tears burn the back of my eyes as the memory pops into my head of how betrayed, how hurt he looked when I said those harsh words to him, trying to hurt him.
“Oh, sweetie, you don’t have to worry about that kind of life here. Why do you think I moved to this building specifically?” she asks, looking at me as if I should know the answer.
“Wait, you live here?” I ask, suddenly realizing that I didn’t call her, I was just thinking about her, and then poof, there she was.
“You didn’t know I lived here?” she asks, her brow scrunching in confusion. 
“No,” I mutter and shake my head as I glance down the steps toward the floor below, suddenly wondering what Jackson is doing.
“Oh…how weird,” she mutters, shrugging her shoulder. “Well, you can stay with me if you want, for as long as you need. I’ve got plenty of room and you will never believe who else lives in this building.”
“Who?” I ask but I have a feeling that I know exactly whose name she’s fixing to say.
“Jackson Jones and did you know that he’s a cop now? He even does undercover work and stuff.”
“What did you just say?” I ask, my voice no louder than a whisper when I turn my attention back to Chastity. 
“Jackson, he’s a cop.”
“No…” I say with a shake of my head. “The other part.”
“That he does undercover work?”
Putting my head down, I put my hands on either side of my head as I close my eyes and think back on earlier when I first opened the door and found him standing before me in Teddy’s doorway, Jackson’s eyes blazing as he’d taken me in from head to toe.
Then he’d propositioned me.
Teddy had called him *Monroe*.
He’d been carrying drugs on him.
*Was being with me tonight nothing more to him than just another part of his* job? 
“No…” I whisper as a sob bursts past my lips and tears begin to trail down my cheeks once more.
For reasons that I don’t even have in me to try to look further into, the thought of that being the case causes me to break down all over again, and being the friend that she is, even though she doesn’t know what has set me back off again, Chastity is there to help try to put the pieces that are still left of me back together.
But when a little voice from pipes up from behind is asking, “Mommy, why is the lady crying?” Chastity eyes widen as she looks from who I assume is her daughter, to me and then back to the girl who is like a mini version of the woman standing in front of me.
And with my jaw on the floor, I look at Chastity with a whole slew of questions of my own all of the sudden.