by Vivian Wood
“Because your dad’s fucking desperate,” he says, speaking more rapidly. He runs a hand through his hair with what’s most likely frustration, but it only succeeds in making him look charming. Is this what my prince looks like? No, my prince was the wild boy through the trees. “He would have gone to my father next. He would have lost everything.”
“We haven’t already?” I ask, bitter with grief.
“I prefer to think not,” he says, his voice casual, but I’m not fooled. It matters to him what I think. It matters that I don’t see him as punishment.
Tiredness sweeps over me, the weight of a thousand anxious days and a thousand sleepless nights. “I’ll talk to my dad. We’ll figure something out.”
“It’s too late for that. He’ll never come up with that kind of money.”
“Then what do you suggest?” I snap, my voice wavering.
“You pay the debt.”
I hold up my hands, as if they can encompass the griminess of the diner, the sadness of the west side. The complete worthlessness of my person. “With what?”
“With yourself.”
His meaning comes to me like a cold, hard slap. With my body. Whether he’ll use me himself or put me in one of his strip clubs, the result is the same. I’ll be wrung out as surely as the girls on the street. “No,” I whisper.
“You have to,” he says, leaning closer.
“Or what?”
“How do you see this playing out, Penny? You work your ass off to make five hundred bucks, barely a dent in the debt. And meanwhile Daddy’s out borrowing more money, from men more dangerous than myself.”
“He won’t,” I whisper, but we both know he will.
“The city is dangerous.”
“A guy slammed someone’s head into the bathroom floor last Tuesday. I know it’s dangerous.”
His eyes turn quicksilver. “More than that. You’re a target, Penny.”
God. My voice comes out shaky. “Do you know what it cost me?”
A pause. “What?”
“To hide everything I’m interested in, everything I can do. Everything I am. It cost me everything. And now you want me to pay ten grand. Fine. But I’m not going to be your whore, Damon Scott. I’m keeping my dignity. That’s the one thing I won’t give up.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
This is a man who loves slick packaging—his European suit and his fancy watch that glints in the dim light of the diner. Except I know what’s underneath, what it really boils down to, and it’s not pretty. “Will I be able to come and go as I please? Will you touch me? Kiss me?”
A weighted pause. “Eventually.”
“That’s my dignity,” I say, my voice sharp.
The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Not if I make you like it.”
I meet his eyes with a solemn vow, because this is the only part of me that’s left. I already gave up everything else for this dubious safety. “No,” I tell him. “Never.”
Frustration flits beneath his calm surface. Even a hint of vulnerability. How many people can see it? I know that not everyone sees the kind side of him. He has weapons and suits and a million kinds of armor, all designed to shield his humanity.
Assuming he has any left.
“I’ll give you a little time,” he says, his voice tight. “You can think it over. Weigh the lack of options. Come to terms with what you have to do. But I swear to God you’ll be mine.”
The words are a cold gust of wind, the tap of a branch on a window. The distant howl of a coyote at night. “No.”
He looks almost compassionate as he tells me, “You don’t have a choice.”
He moves forward, one millimeter, as if he might touch me. Then stops.
I freeze, every part of me still and waiting. Wanting things I shouldn’t. The only thing moving right now is my chest, the rise and fall so marked as we become statues.
And then his hand rises. I should duck away. Anything, anything.
My heart thuds heavy against my ribs. Two knuckles. That’s the only part of his body that touches mine, at the top curve of my cheek. He strokes down in what could almost be innocent comfort.
Except that he doesn’t stop at my jaw.
His knuckles slide lower, to the tender skin of my neck. To the hollow at my throat.
When his hand finally falls away, I suck in an audible breath. He didn’t touch me anywhere that would make this dirty, but my body still hums like a car left running. Nowhere to go from here.
He leaves me in that diner feeling like I’ve transformed.
There are crescent moons left on my palm, tinted red from breaking the skin. I wash my hands. Force myself to breathe even. I have an entire shift to get through. Every coffee cup in the diner is empty after that little chat. I have work to do, shitty tips to earn, even though they won’t make a difference. Nothing I make will ever be enough.
Damon’s words ring in my ear, long after he’s left the diner.
A promise. A prayer. I swear to God you’ll be mine.
Chapter Nine
When I played dumb on the elementary school playground, I didn’t fully understand what I was turning down. Mrs. Keller made it sound wonderful, a school with all the math problems I could ever dream about, a place with teachers who paid attention to me. I felt the dark undercurrent, the same way I did on that river. Every muscle in my body clenched tight, my breath coming fast.
As I got older there were other men. Other offers.
I learned to put a name on what I wanted. Freedom. The freedom to decide where I go and when. The freedom to say who can touch me. The freedom to say no.
Some days I wondered if it was pointless to fight the currents. This is what the dark streets did to a girl. This is how they pushed us along, eddies swirling around us, sharp rocks at the bottom.
And like that day in the tube I fought the pull.
I pumped my legs as hard as I could, even if I knew I’d go under.
I put on my uniform and go to the diner, because that’s the way I swim here. My only source of money. And the whole time my mind whirs, working on other options, some loophole. Worrying at the problem until the edges are raw. My brain has done things, improbable things, almost impossible things. And now it fails me?
When the bell over the door rings at midnight I barely register the sound.
The air changes in the diner. Even the drunks and the exhausted truck drivers from out of town straighten in their seats. Ruth Mae ducks back into the kitchen. I know who it is before I turn around.
Jonathan Scott.
He’s sitting in the corner booth, soft as velvet, his edges undefined. I know he’s a man, flesh and blood, bone and ill-intent, but he seems somehow unreal. As if he’s made of smoke.
I grab the pot of coffee and cross the diner. He won’t see me cower. He won’t see me beg. I give him my bland waitress smile as I pour. “What can I get you?”
He glances at the counter, where I can feel four men resolutely not looking at him. He exudes a menace that’s unmistakable, enough to make men his size stiffen in fear.
“What kind of pie?” he asks, his voice mild.
“Peach.” Ruth Mae’s one concession to decent food. She makes them herself.
“I’ll have that.” Of course he will.
I give him a tight smile before returning to the counter. Only there do I exhale. Being around him is like being underwater. He steals all the air, all the space. Until I’m drowning.
There are other customers that want refills and plates cleared. That’s my excuse for not returning right away. But really it’s because I need to be away from him the same way I need oxygen.
When I cut a slice of pie, quick, sloppy, I take a deep breath.
All I want to do is slide the plate onto his table and leave.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
Trapped. “Penny.”
“How long have you been working here, Penny?”
The way he says my name, it
sounds perverse. Like something dirty.
I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to talk to him at all, but ignoring him feels like turning my back on a rabid animal—he would go in for the kill. “Two years.”
That’s not exactly true. I worked here longer in the back, scrubbing dishes so no one would know they had a kid working here. When I turned fifteen I got upgraded to waitress. Most people know I’m underage. No one cares.
He nods towards his coffee, still black in the mug. “I prefer two creams. Three sugars.”
This isn’t Starbucks. He has a mug and a little plastic tray with non-dairy creamer and sugar, like everyone else. Except we both know he isn’t like everyone else.
My muscles are pulled taut, like the strings holding up a tent. About to snap. I reach for the tray, pulling out the creams, the sugars. He looks at me like it’s something obscene, pulling open the creams, tearing the corners of the sugars. It feels obscene, watching the white enter the black.
He’s unnaturally still, yet completely relaxed. Not quite human. Definitely not sane.
I find myself filling the silence of his body, my movement jerky and too fast in the face of this statue. I grab a spoon and stir, disturbed by the way I’m obeying silent commands. I don’t mean to do that. There’s something about him that compels me. An innate power. Or maybe plain old survival.
“Is that—” My throat gets tight. It’s hard to stand in front of him, feeling naked. Exposed. “Is that everything?”
His eyes are a clear grey, giving the impression I can see deep inside them. “What time do you get off?”
Men ask me that question all the time. Every night. Every hour. It’s just a habit, I think, for some men to proposition a girl of a certain age that they come near. Others think that a few bucks in tip means I’ll meet them behind the dumpster.
Most of the time I tell them I have a boyfriend. It’s the truth and it shuts them up, usually. Maybe it’s shitty that I need to resort to that excuse, that a simple no, thank you doesn’t suffice. Living in the west side you learn how to work within the system, because God knows you can’t change it.
Only, I don’t want to tell this man about Brennan.
That feels like a challenge he would be too glad to accept.
“That’s not really—”
“Appropriate? I’m rarely appropriate.”
I was going to say that it wasn’t any of his business. Except that’s also a challenge he would be glad to accept. There’s nothing I can say, no way that I can fight him that won’t make him hit harder. “I’ll come back and check on you in a little bit.”
“I’d rather you sit down with me.”
I take a step back, moving on pure instinct. A flinch away from fire. “Please stop.”
Strangely enough, he listens. He lets me run into the kitchen, where I huddle in a corner until Ruth Mae bodily shoves me back onto the floor. The corner booth is empty.
Beside the mug of coffee and the slice of pie, there’s a hundred-dollar bill.
Because this isn’t about money. That’s what he’s saying with that tip. That he has more money than God. That he doesn’t need whatever pennies I can put together.
It was never really about money, was it?
It’s always been about ownership.
He’s the king of this godforsaken land. He can have anything he wants. Me.
Chapter Ten
After leaving the diner I visit Jessica to give her my tips for the night. It was supposed to be her shift anyway, I figure, and she and her baby need the cash more. It’s not like this money is going to make a dent in the debt. She’s sympathetic about the news, but not very surprised.
“You know what you should do,” she says. “You should move in with Damon Scott. Like really wrap him around your little finger.”
“Absolutely not.”
I haven’t worked so hard, fought so long, hidden myself away only to belong to someone else. When I was six years old I could have proved to Jonathan Scott what I could do, if I wanted to be owned by a dangerous man. Now I’m fifteen. Only three more years until I can leave Tanglewood.
“Would it really be so bad? He’s hot, at least.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to wrap someone around my little finger.”
She shrugs. “I could give you some tips.”
I force myself to stay calm, to relax my hands so I don’t squish the baby I’m holding. Luckily little Ky is more interested in a dragon that lights up than our conversation. “I don’t know. Maybe the game is the safest bet. If I help Daddy win.”
Jessica applies rouge to her perfectly contoured cheek. Her hair is flat-ironed flawlessly, her eyes sparkling. It’s something she does when I come over, because I can hold Ky. And she needs to feel pretty, she says, even if she’s only going to stay inside.
It’s the only way she can get fifteen minutes to shower.
Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. “And if you don’t win?”
My stomach drops. “Then I’m screwed. Literally.”
She turns to face me, leaning back against the counter. The look on her face, the grief, like I’m already gone, it rips me to shreds. And I’m looking at her, already in pieces. She’s always been like this, as long as I’ve known her. We’re mirror images of each other. The same.
“You have to take what you can get, for as long as you can get it,” she says, her voice soft and earnest. “Right now you’re young. You’re pretty. That’s enough to keep Damon Scott for a few weeks.”
A knot forms in my throat. “That’s the coldest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“He treats his girls good.”
Treats, like we were dogs. Like I'm a pet. I refused to do tricks for the father. I'm not going to start for his son. “I don’t care. He still wants to own me.”
She meets my gaze in the mirror. “Better than my pimp treated us, that's for sure.”
My stomach drops. “Oh, Jessica. I’m so sorry.”
She gets up from the stool and takes Ky, her smile sad. “Don’t be sorry. You haven’t done anything wrong. But I’m worried. Worried that you’ll fight Damon even if he’s the lesser of two evils.”
The lesser of two evils. That describes him well. “Maybe you’re right,” I whisper.
“It’s not all bad. There are always bright sides.”
There’s love in her blue eyes as she kisses her son’s chubby cheek. His skin is darker than hers, his hair darker. He has her eyes, though, made a navy color by whatever genes his father contributed. A man I’ve never met. She doesn’t mention him often.
“Is that what his father was?” I ask, my voice low. Low even though Ky can’t understand us talking about his father. “The lesser of two evils?”
There’s no judgment here. Only a dark and twisted sisterhood.
“He worked for the man my father owed money to. I was a gift. I could have said no, I guess. Could have said I wouldn’t sleep in his bed, but that only would have made things harder for me.”
“God, Jessica.”
Her expression is deadly serious. “Don’t fight them. It only makes it worse.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can just… accept this.”
“Sometimes the best way to get past something is to go through it.”
This was the worst advice I could imagine, made more terrible by the fact that it was right. “What if I move in with Brennan?” I ask, grasping at straws.
“And he can protect you from these men?” she asks, the answer plain in her voice. No, he can’t. And being with him would only sign his death sentence.
“There has to be another way. Anything. The cops.”
She laughs, then. “You know who dragged me back to Nico when I tried to run away? That’s right. A cop.”
Anger burns, old coals stoked hotter. “So much for serve and protect.”
She picks up a figure with silver armor and a sword. A knight. “They serve and protect the king.”
; The man who owns everyone. Jonathan Scott. “Then who is Damon in this analogy?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want him for an enemy.”
He’s the prince, of course.
Not quite as powerful as his father, but close. Close enough to be a danger to me. They’re really two sides of the same coin. Either way I’m a peasant girl in a kingdom of gilt and glamour.
Whatever Daddy did, whoever he tried to betray, the Scott family would destroy us.
“What if I don’t survive?” I whisper.
“Oh honey, that’s not the problem. The question you need to worry about is, what if you do?”
“Move in with me,” Brennan offers.
I blink at him from his kitchen table, the same table where I first met his parents. “Your dad lives here.”
The older Mr. Peterson is a quiet man, brooding, made even more so by the death of his wife. He works at the garage each day and late into the evening before going home to watch the nightly news. We pass nods of formality in the hallway. That’s the extent of our conversation.
“He won’t mind.”
“He won’t mind an underage girl moving in with his underage son?”
Brennan shrugs. “He knows what your dad’s like. He’ll understand.”
Maybe he would, but I wasn’t sure I could do that anymore than I could give myself to Damon Scott. Either way I would be forfeiting my life, surrendering to a man, and God, if I were used for anything at least I’d rather it was my mind.
“I don’t think so. Besides, I can’t leave Daddy to deal with this alone. They’ll kill him.”
Brennan looks unimpressed. “He’s brought it on himself.”
I can’t help but gasp. “He’s family.”
“Fine.” It’s rare that he’s ever snapped at me. He’s usually easy-going, which is why we get along so well. Why we’ve lasted so long.
“Please,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “I don’t want you to be angry with me. I just need to figure out how to handle this. There must be something we can do. Like maybe a payment plan.”
“And while time goes by, your dad’s not going to gamble?”
