The call ended, and I dropped my head back on my neck. “I don’t deserve those girls.”
“You’re right.” Clay slung an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sure kids their age could find management positions in any shop in town. I bet the owners would listen to their suggestions and implement their ideas. I’m sure they would get paid the same and benefits would be included in the package too.”
“Okay.” I huffed and leaned into him. “You made your point.”
Just not the one he meant to, since it got me thinking I had subconsciously been giving the girls hazard pay for years.
“You’re a nurturer, Rue.” He rubbed my back. “Through and through.”
Goodness wasn’t innate to me. I started out mimicking people who behaved in the way I wanted to act. I embraced fake it ’til you make it as a template for the person I wanted to become. I still had days when I felt plain fake, but moments like this gave me hope it was more than pretend change, that I was doing it.
The mantle of black witch felt most comfortable on my shoulders, but white magic sat easier on my soul.
With my peculiar lineage, I could have gone either way. Light, dark. Good, evil. Kind, cruel.
Until the director was awarded custody after my parents’ deaths. Until he brought me to his mansion on the cliffs where the Black Hat Bureau hid its compound under the waves. Until he decided a path for me.
To be fair, he only knew one road, the blackest of the black, but he forced me to walk alongside him.
Yes, I could have gone either way.
And now, in embracing white magic, I had come full circle.