Scratch the Surface

“Mer,” I finally prompted while he looked everywhere but at me.

Instantly, his gaze was back on my face. “The house has two wings.”

“Okay” was all I could think to say, because what the hell?

“I want to turn one side into a youth center and the other into a halfway house for troubled teens with nowhere to go.”

Under any other circumstances, I would have been thrilled to hear that anyone was thinking of helping the kids in our community, but I had to wonder about his motives. “Well, that’s mighty Christian of you.”

His scowl was dark. “Could you be more jaded?”

I shrugged. “You are, in fact, going to be the new mayor. Aren’t things like this—working toward a better community for everyone—part of the job?”

“Don’t you think this town needs a facility like that?”

The need was not in question. I’d had it bad when my mother left, but things had gotten so much worse for our town when we were hit by the opioid crisis. Ten years ago, when doctors stopped writing prescriptions for everyone under the sun, heroin became the new drug of choice and had soon become the family killer. Barrett Crossing, like many other small towns, had never seen anything like the wave of addictions that decimated the community.

“Well?” he barked, irritated with me.

“Of course I do. Who’re you gonna bring in to run it?”

“I understand you’ve been working at The Mission since you graduated.”

“Which has what to do with anything?”

“Betty Chow says you’re the best counselor she has.”

I squinted at him. “Why in the hell are you asking Betty about me?”

“Because I want to offer you a job, jackass.”

Somewhere between the time he’d left and now, he’d lost his mind. “Not sure if you know, but you need a licensed, clinical social worker to run a counseling center. Are you aware of that?”

“You’re in school, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “It’s gonna be a few years yet before I get my master’s, and let’s face it, you need your youth center-slash-halfway house up and running way before that. You need it live before your next run for office.”

“I have no idea what––”

“People will feel as though you’ve got even more skin in the game if you create something like that. It’s why you bought it in the first place, right?”

“I bought it to serve and enrich the community for which––”

I scoffed loudly. “Save the speech.”

“My family founded this town and––”

“That’s them, not you,” I assured him. “You went away to college; none of them did. Your parents live here; their house isn’t yours.”

“Oh no?” His retort was snide.

“Mayor was the first step, right? And then what? Maybe governor after that, or do you want to be a representative and then senator?”

“What?”

“Some way or other, your endgame is to be president; you just need to figure out how to get there.”

“I have no such aspirations.”

I shook my head. I knew he was lying. Leaning forward, I grabbed the handlebars.

“Explain what you’re talking about,” he growled at me.

“Stop playing games,” I warned him.

“Why didn’t you go to school right after graduation?”

“There was a lack of funds to do so,” I quipped.

He nodded.

“And now you’re going to school and working at The Mission and Kingman’s.”

I leveled my gaze at him. “Why the interest?”

Clearing his throat, he looked down, then across the parking lot, and finally at me. “Are you still doing the other?”

Ah. The heart of the matter. He wanted to know if I was still whoring myself out.

I was going to hit him with both barrels, say the nastiest, worst thing I could think of, but it occurred to me that I had no leg to stand on. Even though I’d been there in the hotel the night before because Shawn needed a favor, the truth was, if Doug hadn’t been lamenting his ex and had been willing to pay me, I would have sold my body. It didn’t happen often anymore, and I had to rack my brain to remember the last time. But now, thinking about Cameron and what I wanted from him, and what, hopefully, he wanted from me, I realized it could never happen again. And it wasn’t as though in the past few years it had been a staple, not like it had between fourteen and twenty. I made good money at the restaurant, and even though Betty only paid me minimum wage at The Mission—her budget was tight for anyone without a master’s—I didn’t do that for the paycheck. I got to work with kids and get lots of real-world experience. There was nothing better than that.

“Sorry, that was crude. It’s none of my business what––”

“You’re right, it is none of your business, but since I was a whore the last time you saw me, it makes perfect sense.”

“No, that’s not what I––”

“It’s fine,” I assured him with a shrug. “You think what you want.”