Violinist (CENTURIES series: Book #4)

29

It had to stop.

Taking a deep breath, I clutched the suitcase tightly in my hand as I sat on the subway train and rested my forehead against the bulk of the thick, shapely trunk.

It didn't deserve my touch, but she had done nothing more wrong than me. She might've been my competitor, but I was strong enough to know when I couldn't win.

She belonged with him, and either way, he was going to have her.

But I couldn't keep her anymore.

As the guttural voice over the speaker system on the train announced the station, I stood up and readied to walk off. The trains were half-empty, everyone wrapped up in their post-Christmas coma/pre-new years charge-up. The people of the city were gearing up for the largest party of the year which would take over the whole of the world in just five short days.

I had never believed in the turn of the calendar 'fresh start' hype, but after the year I had had... a fresh start was what I needed.

But I could never have that if I kept clinging on to old ways.

Stepping off the train with my large bag and the curvy case in my hands, I worked my way up the stairs from the subway and onto the lively street. I pushed through the crowds, bumped into several people with my heavy cargo, but then turned down a corner and stepped onto the street that would either be my torture... or my awaited ending.

Yesterday Tony had told me I was safe, but I wasn't. Maybe from the mobsters somehow—I still hadn't dared ask—maybe from getting killed or attacked, but not from him. He thought leaving was enough, but if leaving had ever been enough, then he wouldn't still be searching for Blue.

I had to cut my strings to him.

By handing over his own.

I stared at the Veteran's Place with an ache in my heart. The snowy streets had made many homeless people seek to warmer shelters such as churches and homeless centers – the ones who still had room, anyway.

A few too numb for the cold had stayed on the street however and had wrapped up together, some huddled under tarps and joined under old ratty blankets, while others stood around a steel drum with dying flames clinging to whatever dry, flammable material they had scoured up.

Christmas was a tough time, but these people were tougher. They had so little to fight for, yet they still stuck around.

It was easy to see why Tony had found this a temporary home...

Blowing out a breath, I crossed the street and started heading down the back alley. Tired faces looked up at me, some perhaps recognizing me from the growing times I had stopped by—or maybe they wondered what someone like me was doing here in the middle of the post-Christmas slumber. The volunteer season was over, so what was a homeheld New Yorker doing coming down to the Veteran's Place?

I looked around the unfamiliar faces and searched for a familiar one. I half-expected to hear his sweet hum and reinvented version of 'Baby It's Cold Outside' to ring through the alleyway, but not a hum was heard over the crackling fire in the steel drum or the silent wind blowing exhaustedly through the city.