“No! I-I understood the w-warning just fine. I d-didn’t say anything to him. I swear!” I rushed out, my voice shaking in fear. Austin’s expression remained hard and unfeeling.

Turning to face an alternate path home, my feet began hitting asphalt. Praying Carillo didn’t follow me, I set to a sprint all the way to my sorority house, running straight up to my room and slamming my door shut.

Chapter Six

Austin

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

What the f**k was I doing, jumping out on her like a stalker after seeing her leave the dean’s office? I saw her face; she was terrified.

SHIT!

What must she think of me?

I rolled onto the country road leading to the trailer park, the gravel crunching beneath Rome’s truck tires. He’d let me use his truck to pay an impromptu visit home.

Four miles until I reached the end of the road.

Four miles until I reached my childhood home.

And four miles until I saw just how far my mamma was really gone.

As I passed the ancient and rusted trailer park sign—Westside Heights—swinging back and forth from where it had become unhinged on one side, I shook my head.

Fuckin’ paradise.

Two miles in and it wasn’t long before I began seeing the familiar faces of the crew milling about the place. And they all looked up, of course. You only came down here on this path for two reasons: A, you lived here, or B, you wanted to score a fix. These guys knew I was the former.

Flicks of the chin greeted me as I crawled my truck to trailer twenty-three. Slamming the truck in park and sprinting up the stairs, I rapped twice on the metal door and let myself inside.

“Mamma?” I called, taking in the mess of the place: dirty dishes, stale food, empty syringes, and… what was the hell was that smell?

Levi’d always had this place fixed up real nice—clean, sanitary at least—but looking around, it was clear he was spending most of his time with the crew, neglecting his chores. The place was a shithole. My jaw clenched in annoyance.

“Mamma?” I called again and heard a small sound come from her bedroom. My legs were shaking as I approached her old decrepit door. Every time I came by, she always looked worse.

The sound of smashing glass made me panic, and I pushed through the door, only to see my mamma leaning down, her torso hanging from the bed, a shattered drinking glass on the floor where it must have slipped from her hand. She was moaning in pain, and it was clear she couldn’t lift herself back up.

Shooting forward, I gripped my mother’s tiny frame by her arms and lifted her gently to the bed, almost gagging at her smell. As I set her straight, I flinched at the pain etched on her face. Her teeth were gritted and her nostrils flared as she took short, sharp breaths at the discomfort.

Sitting on the bed beside her, I ran my hand over her forehead, pushing the sweaty strands of brown hair from her face. “Calma, Mamma, Calma,” I spoke in Italian, her mother tongue, soothing her to calm. Large, sunken brown eyes stared up at me, and her lip twitched. I knew that was Mamma giving me a thankful smile.

“Stai bene, Mamma?” I asked, hoping she felt a little better.

Her eyelids closed, and I knew that was her attempt at a nod. She was either exhausted or in too much pain to try to speak.

I cast a look around the room and noticed her dirty clothes strewn all over the wooden floor and gray medical bottles lined up on her dresser. My gut clenched when I realized what the bottles were and where the God-awful smell was coming from. They were bottles of piss.

Closing my eyes, I fought against losing my shit at the state she was in. Another thing to rip on Axel for.

A touch, as light as a feather, ghosted across the back of my hand, and then I looked down. Mamma had laid her hand upon mine, her eyes wet with tears.

Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss on her head and whispered, “Ti voglio bene, Mamma.”

“Anche… a te… mio caro,” she whispered back, telling me she loved me too. I smiled at her proudly as she fought through the pain to respond.

Standing, I rubbed my hands together. “Right, Mamma, I’m getting you a glass of water. Then it’s time to get this place cleaned up, then it’s your turn, okay?”

“Such… a good… boy,” she managed to croak out.

I wasn’t. We both knew that, but at that moment, I’d never felt more blessed that I’d made her happy enough to say such words to me.

An hour later, I placed the last of the freshly washed dishes away into the cabinet and moved to the bathroom to run the shower. I’d checked on Mamma every five minutes, and her eyes were expressively sad as she watched me scrub and clean every corner of our old trailer. The woman was a damn saint. She deserved more than all this shit.

“Okay, Mamma, let’s get you in the shower,” I instructed, trying to ignore the flash of mortification on her beautiful face. She hated not being able to do this for herself. Before this f**kin’ disease struck her down, Chiara Carillo held down three jobs and loved me and my brothers enough for two parents once our deadbeat dad left us for some whore across state. Mamma never let us go hungry, always ensured we stayed on the right path, and kept us outta trouble when all the other kids in the park began joining the Heighters.

Then seven years ago, everything changed. The cause: ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. A form of Motor Neuron Disease. The goddamn disease that gradually weakened her muscles. The incurable disease that chipped away her freedom day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.