Hard to Hold on To by Laura Kaye

efforts to fight back had been absolutely useless. She tried to swallow around the lump in her throat.
    “It’s over,” she whispered, bracing her hands against the porcelain. As she inhaled a deep breath, her gaze settled on a pile of toothbrushes resting behind the faucet nozzles. What she wouldn’t give to use one of them, but she didn’t know to whom they belonged nor did she know anyone well enough to be at the borrowing-your-toothbrush stage. She brushed her teeth with her finger. Twice. And then she gave in to the urge to borrow the mouthwash sitting on the back of the toilet.
    “I have some clothes for you,” Sara said from the other side of the door.
    Not wanting Sara to see any more than she already had, Jenna wrapped the white bath towel around her body like a cape, glad it was big enough to cover everything that needed covering. She glanced at her own clothes, which she’d stuffed into the plastic garbage can under the sink, then opened the door and found her sister standing right on the other side, her expression somewhere between hopeful and worried. The sweats and tee in Sara’s hands didn’t look familiar, which brought home the realization that Jenna had none of her belongings here. And neither did Sara. “Thanks. Where did you get this stuff?” Jenna asked, taking the items into her hands, which was a bit challenging with her arms under the towel. But Jenna didn’t want Sara to see all the bruises.
    “Becca,” Sara said. “Do you remember her? You met her last night, but you were really out of it.”
    Frowning, Jenna tried to remember seeing anyone but Easy, but couldn’t. “No, I don’t think so.”
    “Well, you can meet her today when you’re ready. She lives here, too. She’s a nurse, and she’s really nice. Luckily, she had some extra stuff we can borrow until we get ours.”
    Lives here, too? As in, what? They lived here now? “Why did you say it like that? ‘Lives here, too. ’ ”
    Sara rubbed her forehead. “Well, just that, we’ll be staying here now. At least for a while.”
    Jenna’s thoughts were suddenly in a whirl. About how their lives had changed so quickly. About the fact that they were still in danger. About their father, who had left them in this mess in the first place. He’d apparently been involved with and indebted to the Church Gang before he’d died in a prison fight, which in the gang’s estimation dropped the debt into Sara’s hands to pay off.
    “But all our stuff . . .” Jenna’s belly squeezed as realization set in. “My books. Your sewing machine. Our pictures. What . . .” She shook her head, knowing it was stupid to worry about things like this given what she’d survived, but whenever life got hard, books were what had gotten Jenna through. When their dad went to prison, then died a couple of weeks later, when she had a bad seizure that knocked her down for a few days, when she and Sara fought—books helped her escape it all.
    Now, she had absolutely nothing. Not even the clothes on her back since she planned to get rid of what she’d been wearing when she arrived.
    “I know,” Sara said. “And I’m sorry.”
    There Jenna went, making Sara feel bad again. She hugged the clothes to her chest. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. But I’m confused. If Bruno’s dead, why can’t we just go back to the apartment?”
    “Because Church isn’t dead,” Sara said, sadness slipping into her green eyes. “Dad’s debt was to Church, so as long as he’s alive, we’re in danger. We’re safe here, but our apartment’s off-limits.”
    “If that’s the case, what about moving to New York? I thought we wanted to get out of Baltimore altogether?” This was the plan they’d come up with a few mornings ago. The day after Jenna had learned about everything that had happened to Sara. And just a few hours before Bruno and his henchmen had broken into their apartment and dragged Jenna out. The only reason Jenna hadn’t insisted they