Fool's Gold [Completed]

01: Introduction

One year.

It's been 365 days since I've last seen him. 365 days since I've last stared into those green eyes of his, since I've heard his voice begging me to stay.

Why didn't I stay?

"Please don't go," he pleaded, voice cracking. Throughout our relationship-if you could really even call it that-I'd never seen him this emotional, over anything. Yet there I was, staring at a broken man whose facade had finally fallen, and I didn't know what else to do.

So I ran.

But I guess that's not the beginning of the story, is it? Nor is it the end, but I should go back to the start, as all stories do.

My name is Mikayla Beaumont. I'm 22 years old and I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I'm going to tell you the story of how I met a boy with emerald eyes who turned my life upside down.

It all started when I was 16 years old. I had come home from school one day to find my mother desperately trying to cover up the fact that she'd been crying only moments before my arrival. For as long as I can remember, it's always been me and her against the world. We were by no means well off-in fact, there were many months where we had to choose between rent and food in our bellies-but we were rich in love.

My mom had always done as much as she could to provide me with a life that was worthy of a daughter she claimed to be one of the most capable little girls she'd ever met and even if I wanted to protest, say it was only a mother's natural bias to think so highly of her child, my marks in school always supported her statement. She never wanted me to have less of a childhood, and for that she worked three separate jobs, just to bring in enough to keep a roof over my head and send me to a good school. I never knew the full weight of the burdens she held being a single mother living in Brooklyn, but I tried to always show my appreciation for doing my absolute best in school and bring home the grades to show that the hard work she put in wasn't taken for granted.

She never wanted me to know when she was struggling and this time was no exception, though I later found the reason for her tears tucked away in the back of the designated junk drawer in the kitchen; a letter addressed to Penelope Beaumont from New York Methodist Hospital.

My mom had cancer.

Hodgkin's lymphoma, to be more specific. A cancer that affected the immune system and made it harder for her to fight off infections. For someone who primarily worked as a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Manhattan where businessmen from all over could track in whatever illnesses they had with them, it wasn't ideal. Then again, it's never ideal. Especially not when she's the only family I've ever known. I couldn't lose her.

I had never really noticed until then how weak she had grown over the past year-she had grown very good at hiding how miserable she felt day in and day out, a trait that I also seemed to inherit-and now it all made sense. I started to look for work as soon as I could, anything that would help me bring in some money to take the load off of my mother while she tried to set aside money to pay for the treatment that doctors recommended she begin immediately. I was willing to do anything, as long as it meant I would be able to help my mom like she had done so many times in the past for me. Even if it meant lying about my age.

Before I looked anywhere else, I started picking up the shifts my mom had at the diner at the end of the block. The staff there were a second family to us, and I'd spent many nights there while my mother was working, doing homework and eavesdropping on the latest neighborhood gossip. Waitressing only brought in so much money though when people were poor tippers and after a year, I was on the hunt again.

I was 17, but I'd always been told I looked older than I was through various means. My age certainly didn't stop men from catcalling me as I walked down the street, so I used that to my advantage when I found a "for hire" sign outside of a seedy strip club on the way home from school one day.