“Not enough to stop her though, seemingly.”
“Paige isn’t like that! She wouldn’t let me stop her. You don’t know her.”
No. I didn’t.
Not yet.
But I would know her. I’d know her pretty damned fucking well by the time her sixty days were through.
“As I said, your sister is not your concern. Not until her contract is through.”
Her eyes softened. “Please,” she asked, changing tactic. “Please just let me see her. Just for a few minutes. Please just let me talk to her. I need to talk to her, need to see she’s ok!”
My eyes hardened in response. “What you need, Miss Emmerson, is a clear fucking bloodstream. What you need is a cold hard shot of fucking rehab with people who can get that crap from your system.”
I saw how my words hit her. She tipped forward a little, one hand to her belly as the other clutched her nicotine prop tight.
And I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be the cold hard sonofabitch baying behind my eyes to trample her to nothing in a beat.
“What you need,” I continued, “is a brand new fucking start. Another chance. A real chance this time.”
Her gaze was suspicious but her desperation was palpable. “There’s no such thing as a real chance,” she whispered. “Not for girls like me. Not when I’ve sold out in all the ways I’ve sold out. Nobody wants to know. Nobody except Paige.” Her pause was long. “She’d be better off without me. Maybe I should’ve turned myself in to those assholes and let them finish me off and be done with it.”
“Or maybe you should knuckle up and commit to a cleaner future. For your sake and hers.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Not if you associate with the dregs of existence and take whatever’s given by scum who’ve already taken everything from you.”
I stared at the night sky above and tossed my cigarette butt down the steps, well aware she was staring right at me.
I wondered whether this girl could be a guarded beauty like her sister. Whether her soul could be as tragically alive with the same sense of fight.
Whether she was in any way worth saving.
“I loved him,” she whispered. “He said he loved me.”
I couldn’t stop my lip curling. “Your pitiful excuse for a boyfriend? Believe me, any man who calls you his love then sells you out to scum in a back alley to fund his own habit isn’t worthy of calling himself a man at all.”
Her voice took on a hint of sass, even in her upset. “And what do you call yourself then? You sell women out to whoever pays, no? Just because it’s a mansion not a back alley doesn’t make it any more noble.”
And that’s when I knew it.
This girl could be a guarded beauty like her sister. Her soul could be as tragically alive as the girl I’d stormed into a shit show to save.
For money.
I’d saved her for money.
“I’ve never claimed to be anything other than a monster, Miss Emmerson. Not to you, nor your sister, either. And believe me, I never call anyone my love before I profit on their performances.” I pulled out another cigarette, but this time I didn’t offer her one. She clutched the butt of her last in her fingers as I lit mine up, eyes wide in the lighter flame. “Luckily for you this evening, this monster is feeling ever so slightly merciful.”
“Merciful?” she asked.
And that’s when I smiled, the generosity in my core spitting up a little harder.
It was a strange smile. Curious in its potency.
I felt the night sky smiling right back at me.
“Tell me, Phoebe May,” I said. “How do you like the idea of switching to the clean life once and for all? In a rehabilitation that holds no prisoners and accepts no defeat.”
“What kind of rehabilitation is that?” she quizzed, and the suspiciousness was back in force.
“One that works,” I told her. “A real chance this time. A brand-new fucking start, if you’re willing to work for it.”
I could hear her brain ticking through her shivers. “You mean that? Really?”
“I’m a lot of things, sweetheart, but a liar isn’t one of them.”
“What would you want in return? Some sixty-day shit from me too?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want anything but your guarantee you’ll come good this time. No fucking excuses. No chasing after some useless cunt of a boyfriend and signing back up for his bullshit. No back-alley visits for the cheap stuff when life gets a little tough.”
“And my sister? When will I see my sister?”
“When she’s finished and you’re worthy,” I said. “Not a minute before.”
The girl looked like she would cry all over again, blubbering and rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.
I could barely hear the words when they came.
“You’ll really give me that? A real chance? Why would you?”