Fight For You by Kayla Bain-Vrba Read Free Book Online

in her face until she choked to death on it.
    By the time they reached home, longing hurt had given way to bitter rage. Berlin threw her repaired leathers into a corner, and that release felt so good that she flipped her cot and knocked her belongings off her shelf, not slowing her rampage until she had overturned all her belongings.
    Cherry stood back, watching with wide eyes, as Berlin's bottled emotions broke free. "Berlin—"
    "Shut up, Cherry."
    Cherry actually gasped, but she pressed on, stepping closer. "Berlin. Listen to me. This isn’t helping anyone; you're only making things worse for yourself by keeping—"
    "You don't get it, Cherry."
    "Yes, I do. I know—"
    "You don't know anything!" Berlin screamed, eyes wild. "I lost my son. My son . Oh, poor baby, you're not free to go where you want? Someone is always telling you what to do? So what? You're just a little girl, Cherry; you will never understand. You want to get out of here? Well, I gave away my son, and I am never going to get him back. You've had everything handed to you on a silver platter; your life has been perfect compared to mine! You don't understand what it feels like; you've never loved anyone the way I loved my son. You're just a silly naïve girl who's never lost—"
    Burning pain spiked across Berlin's face, and it took her a moment to realize that Cherry had slapped her.
    "At least your son isn't dead." Cherry's voice was low and deadly, and Berlin gaped at her. "Come with me."
    When Cherry's fingers wrapped around Berlin's wrist, she resisted, until Cherry spun back to face her. "You come with me, Berlin; you come with me now ."
    Unable to fight the iron strength in Cherry's eyes and voice, Berlin did.
    Cherry led her from the house, practically dragging her across their cage by her wrist. At the simple graveyard at The Zone limits, Cherry let go of her, and Berlin followed her to stand before a tombstone.
    Berlin bent to make out the engraving, but Cherry knew it by heart. Tifani Goldstein. Trevr Goldstein. Together Forever .
    Berlin huffed. "Great, Cherry. What does—?"
    "No." Cherry's voice was firm. "You don't get to be angry here."
    Berlin pressed her lips together, biting back a snappy retort and waited until Cherry finally explained.
    "Tifani got here a year or so after me. She was even younger than I was, barely fifteen, but she looked older, more mature. They made her a prostitute when she got here. Beautiful Tifani, with the sweetest smile I'd ever seen and the prettiest laugh. They made her into a whore ." Cherry spat out the hated word.
    "She died inside a long time ago, long before her body did. What she was doing, the guilt, the shame, the pain, the loss, the meaninglessness—it killed her. Her heart died because she was feeling too much to survive but not enough to live.
    "She got pregnant but she kept working. She was going to get her baby out of here. For the first time in a long time, Tifani was alive again.
    "We were working so hard … and then she got sick, and all our savings went to the doctor to try to keep her alive."
    Cherry paused, taking slow, even breaths. "She died in childbirth without ever getting to see her baby, holding my hand as she bled out on the floor. The doctor couldn't save her. I held her dying baby in my arms for four hours while he cried for his mother, too weak to survive. I felt him shake when he had no more tears, no more voice, no more air, and I felt him go still and cold in my arms." Cherry let the warm tears run down her face silently.
    "And when I buried them using every coin I had left to buy them a stone, I buried them alone. In this entire city—this entire country—I was the only one there to say goodbye."
    For the first time since beginning the story, Cherry looked at Berlin. Her eyes weren't sad or angry, no rage or mourning; they just were . "Don't ever say that I don’t understand loss, Berlin. I just haven't let it win."
    *~*~*
    Berlin was conflicted again, even more so than she