Page 30 of Hidden Ties

Despite wanting to curse Lucca for forcing his hand to help her, his feelings of stronghatetoward her were slowly turning into strongdislike.

Unable to help himself, he brushed some of the silky hair off her face with his fingertips to reveal more of her sunlit kisses.

Fine.Milddislike.

“Good night, Valerie.” Sal finally pulled himself away from her to catch some sleep as well. “Sweet dreams.”

It was going to be something he instinctively knew he wasn’t going to have tonight …

It wasSal’s tenth birthday and had been going pretty shitty until he noticed his mother waving him down after the school bell rang.

To say school was fun when you were homeless would be a stretch of the imagination. Him being so advanced for his age only made it that much worse.

“You like it?” His mother wiggled her brows at her son playfully.

It took Sal a minute to figure out she was talking about the navy-colored car she was standing in front of.

“It’s a Cadillac Coupe de Ville,” she said proudly. “For your birthday.”

“What?” his child mind said in disbelief before they both jumped into the car. “This is so cool!” He knew it wasn’t new by any means, but it still felt like a spaceship to him, considering they had never owned a car before in his whole life. “Wow!” He ran his young hand across the dash. “I love it. How’d you get it?”

“I won it,” she said, flashing a broken smile.

That, Sal highly doubted.

Ruffling his chestnut hair, she started the car up, making his smile brighter. “How was school?”

Slowly, his smile disappeared. “It was okay.”

“The kids are just jealous of how smart you are, honey. Don’t you worry; everything’s going to be different now. We have this car we can sleep in, so no more shelter, and I’m about to come into some money, so we can finally buy a house on the upper side. That way, you can start going to school with kids who are more your speed.”

For his mother’s sake, Sal faked a smile and nodded his head, knowing that was never, ever going to happen. Every time she got better, it only lasted for a month or two before they were right back on the streets. While it was the first car she had ever gotten, he knew it wasn’t going to last.

Of course, he wasn’t wrong about it not lasting forever, but it did at least last longer than he’d originally thought before his spaceship was swooped up by a tow truck.

Those had been the happiest four months of his life, and one day, he swore he’d get one just like it for them again when he was older.

The day it was taken away had been hard. It had been so cold, wet, and rainy all day for them not to have a roof over their heads, and he knew the night was only going to be rougher. To top it all off, he was starving.

Hearing his stomach growl, she reached into her pocket to come out with only two dollars. “It’s okay, honey. We’ll make do. Come on.”

When cash was this low, there was only one place they could go and both eat.

Taco Bell.

You could get a burrito for less than a dollar; it being filled with rice and beans did a good job filling them up for the day so they wouldn’t go too hungry.

Entering the fast food place, he figured his mom planned on halving the burrito since she only ordered one. She probably wanted to save the rest of the two bucks for their next meal, since their luck had been so low lately.

He opened the food up from its packaging, but she stopped him before he could break it in half.

“No, thanks, honey. You eat it. I’m not hungry.”

Sal couldn’t help but notice her scratching her arms and the shivering, despite them finally not being out in the cold. It washard to stomach the food, considering it was their fifth night eating Taco Bell, yet you always were to finish your food if you weren’t sure where your next meal would come from.

The two stretched the time before they had to go back out into the cold for as long as they could until a worker finally came and told them it was time for them to leave.

His mother never went without a few curses, but Sal managed to get her to leave by pulling her out the door before he got too embarrassed, or worse—they could never return. Truthfully, Sal couldn’t have cared less if he didn’t get to eat at this shithole for the rest of his life, but it was better than starving to death.