I didn’t look back. Couldn’t afford to. The moment I hesitated was the moment they’d get their hands on me, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
For some reason, I knew I hated hospitals. A face flashed in my mind. A woman. My heart warmed. She was someone close to me.
My momma?
Yeah, that was it. The woman was my momma.
I remembered how the doctors had let her die. They had said her cancer was aggressive and there was nothing they could do for her. They didn’t even try.
Why would I believe they’d be different with me? I didn’t trust it.
The stairwell door was heavy, and I had to throw my full weight against it to open it. My shoulder screamed in protest, but I didn’t feel much pain.
I took the stairs two at a time, driven by pure desperation. The handrail was cold under my palm as I pulled myself down, down, down.
My chest heaved, and my head started to pound with every movement. I couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about anything except getting out.
My foot missed the next step, and for a moment that stretched like taffy, my body was weightless. My hand tore free from the railing, and I went tumbling down the concrete stairs.
My ribs cracked against the edge of a step, my shoulder slammed into the wall, and stars exploded across my vision. I braced for the sickening crunch of bones breaking, but my body hit the landing hard instead, knocking the wind clean out of my lungs.
I lay there gasping, my ribs on fire, trying to figure out which parts of me were still in one piece.
I wasn’t broken. Not yet, anyway.
I pushed myself up on my elbows, my breath coming in ragged pulls. My shoulder throbbed where it had connected with the wall, and my ribs felt like they’d been worked over with a sledgehammer, but I could move. Everything still bent the way it was supposed to.
I dragged myself to my feet using the railing, my legs unsteady beneath me. The adrenaline was wearing thin, and every bruise, every cut, every place my body had been put through hell screamed for attention. But the stairwell door to the ground floor was right there, maybe twenty feet away. Freedom beckoned.
I didn’t know where I was going or what awaited me outside, but hiding here would mean facing a past I couldn’t remember. Whatever waited for me on the other side of that door, I would confront it head-on. I had to.
With one last push, I lunged toward the door, my breath coming in desperate gasps as I pushed it open.
This was my chance to get far away from here, and I refused to let it slip away.
CHAPTER 1
KONIKA “KOKO” HOLIDAY
6 months later…
I stared at the lease agreement spread across the desk in Lakeview Pointe’s management office. My pen hovered over the signature line, and for a second, I sat there in utter disbelief.
After months of sleeping in my car, scrubbing myself clean in gas station bathrooms, and eating what I could when I could, things were finally looking up.
Mrs. Mary, my ex-boyfriend’s mom, sat beside me with her reading glasses perched on her nose. Her wrinkled finger pointed to where I needed to initial, and she glared at me impatiently.
“What are you waiting for? You nervous? Sign the damn documents, chile.”
I wasn’t nervous, far from it. If anything, I was trying not to smile too hard.
I signed my name on the dotted line and dated the lease.
“That’s my girl,” Mrs. Mary said, removing her glasses to wipe them on her cardigan. “You know Reverend Coleman at Mount Zion? He runs this housing initiative for people trying to get their lives back together. Been doing it for nearly ten years now.”
I nodded, even though I’d already heard this story. Mrs. Mary had told me three times over the past week, each time with the same pride in her voice.
“He owed me a favor,” Mrs. Mary continued, her voice taking on that matter-of-fact tone she used when she was about to explain something important. “And he owed me because back in ‘09, I helped his daughter get into nursing school after some trouble. Life comes around, you know?”
