“Six hundred dollars? I’m not a whore.”
“I never said you were. You’re here because you remind me of my little sister and because I’m a fucking idiot. I have absolutely zero interest in fucking you,” he’d said. “Not even if you took a shower—which you really fucking need to— and not if you gained ten pounds, and put on some lingerie, and did your hair real nice. The only reason you’re here is because I couldn’t not get you out of that place, but I don’t have the first clue what I’m gonna do with you. Except maybe sober you up, and feed you, and make sure you get that goddamn shower. After that, your choices are up to you. I’m just doing the bare minimum I need to to get some fucking sleep tonight. You got that?”
For a criminal, James had proven a man of his word—he hadn’t made a move on her. Hadn’t put a hand on her except to usher her out of his little house, into his truck, through the entrance to a methadone clinic. A shake on the shoulder to wake her each morning . . . and a rougher, two-handed shake later, when she’d really pushed him.
She’d stayed with him for more than two months. Long enough to pass through the hell of withdrawal and get clean, to gain back the twenty pounds heroin had stripped from her bones. Long enough for her hesitation to grow to trust, for trust to become gratitude, and, in time, for gratitude to morph into a crush. He’d been thirty-seven, and she twenty-one, but age gaps had never given her much pause.
He’d resisted her flirtations admirably, for maybe two weeks. But in the end, no man was that saintly. James had tried to be, tried real hard, God help him, but it had been no use. Abilene had been helpless in many ways, but not without her leverage.
The sex had been good. Not amazing, but intense, and tender as well. With other guys she’d been in it for whatever benefits were to be gained—shelter or favors or money—but with James it had simply been the contact she’d wanted.
For him it had been sexual, too, almost purely. Sex and some affection, probably a touch of attachment. She’d made him feel strong and needed, she thought. He’d made her feel safe and desired. It had met their needs for as long as it had lasted, but it had always been doomed, and they’d both known it from the start.
Whatever they’d been had lasted just a few weeks. Long enough for them to mess up and for her to get pregnant, though she hadn’t known that when she’d left him. She hadn’t gotten her period in ages, hadn’t felt normal in forever; the symptoms had been wasted on her until she’d been four months gone, and by then James had been out of her life for longer than they’d ever been together.
She studied his expression, all that skepticism, maybe even pity. It burned her. There was a time when she’d been only too happy for people to see her as helpless and in need of safeguarding. It had been her currency. But with Mercy now in the picture, the concern grated, as did the assumption that she always relied on other people to get what she needed—the assumption that she couldn’t make it on her own.
“I’m not the same person I was when we met,” she told him.
“I hope that’s true. But you gotta understand, my imagination jumps straight to you using, not caring about anything except where your next fix is coming from. That girl I found in that trailer, she couldn’t take care of a baby. She couldn’t take care of herself. You’re a goddamn professional victim, sweetheart. So sue me if I was worried you might need rescuing. Again.”
“Well, I don’t,” she spat back. “And I’m not a victim. I never was.”
His smile was pitying. Maddening. “You were sleeping with a stranger for heroin when I met you. What the fuck does that make you? A goddamn feminist?”
“Fuck you.”
That gave him pause. His expression went from smug to uncertain in a blink.