“How could he have gotten away with this for so long?”
Chris trailed a single finger along my jaw. “It’s hard to see in the dark. But everyone trips up eventually.”
It scared me that I’d been trapped there for months, unable to find a way out. And now, just like Xander’s closet full of secrets had been opened, so had the door to my cage. That burden of anxiety and fear had been with me so long, I hardly knew what to do without it. But this wasn’t a second chance I would waste.
“I’m going to talk to Tenley about Elbo again.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t get another job.”
“Ha ha! We’re having an above-average day for sure, but let’s not get crazy. How am I going to afford rent without one?”
“You have what, less than a month left at your internship? Don’t you think it’d be kind of nice to do that one thing, focus your energy on the life you want?”
“Elbo wouldn’t be like The Sanctuary.”
“Maybe not, but it’s still a bar. The hours aren’t going to be much better, and you’re already exhausted all the time. Do you even remember what real sleep is?” He skimmed the hollow beneath my eye.
I didn’t have any room left on my line of credit, but I’d managed to squirrel away about a thousand in emergency funds so I’d never have to repeat that situation with Xander. If I could make that last a couple of months, it could work. “What if I only had to pay half the rent?”
“I’m sure Cassie would go for that.”
“I don’t mean asking Cassie to do that.” Although she’d suggested she would for Ivy.
“I’m pretty sure she’d rather give you a break than watch you work yourself into a hole, or put yourself in another dangerous position.”
I sat cross-legged beside him, smoothing out the comforter because I couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting. “Probably, but that isn’t really what I meant.”
“Oh. I can help you pick up the slack.”
“I don’t mean borrowing money from you, either.” God, I hadn’t expected this to be such a hard question to ask. “I thought maybe you’d want to move in here.”
Chris’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Like, into your apartment?”
“It makes sense, right? You work across the street. We could cut a lot of costs.” I searched his face, but he wasn’t saying anything. “It was just a thought,” I added. “Maybe it’s stupid.”
“No, no…” He nodded seriously. “I’m not tied to my lease. I could stay with you for a couple of months—longer if it’s better for you financially.”
I didn’t like his focus on the financial benefit. “We’d get to see each other a lot more, too—especially if I don’t have to work two jobs.”
“We would.”
“And it wouldn’t have to be temporary. I mean, unless you want it to be.”
Chris tucked an arm behind his head, his thick biceps flexing with the movement. “I can stay as long as you want me to.”
“Maybe I’ll never want you to leave.”
He looked away for a moment. “You never know what kind of opportunities you’re going to have in the future. Someone could offer you a job halfway around the world that you can’t turn down. Or you’ll meet someone out in the business world and realize you can do a whole lot better than this.” He motioned to himself.
I dragged my finger down his arm. “There is no better than this.”
He laughed. “I think working in that club has messed with your idea of what constitutes good. I don’t even own a suit, and you’re going to be living in a world of high-rises and educated people. What happens when there’s some kind of company party and you have to bring your boyfriend or whatever? What’re you going to tell people I do?”
“The truth.”
“How’s that going to go over in a room full of corporates? I don’t even have a high school diploma, Sarah.”
“So what? Hayden didn’t go to college either, and Tenley doesn’t care. Why should you? Why should I? Wearing a suit and having an education doesn’t make a person good, Chris.”
“Hayden’s a genius, though. And he makes good financial decisions. Together they’ll have a good, stable life, which is what they both need, and it’s what you should have.”
“What about what you should have? Don’t you deserve that, too?”
“I don’t ever want to hold you back.”
“How would you hold me back?”
“By not fitting into your life once you start a job you’ll be proud of. I’ll move in here, but I don’t want you to end up stuck, Sarah.”
“Stuck?”
“With me.”
“You’re a choice, Chris.”
“And I keep wondering if you’re gonna realize there are much better ones out there.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chris
I wished I knew how to keep my damn mouth shut. Here Sarah was, inviting me to move into her apartment, and I was spouting off points to dissuade her. I wanted this, didn’t I? Candy hadn’t worked out so well, but I was different now, and Sarah was sure as hell different. Sarah was unlike any other woman I’d been with ever, which was part of the reason I felt like I should give her an opportunity to change her mind.
She propped her chin on her fist. “I think my idea of better and your idea of better differ fairly significantly.”
“I think you go to school with a bunch of guys who fit right into the category I’m talking about, not to mention the ones you’re working with at your internship.”
“Those guys are self-righteous assholes who think they’re God’s gift to women.” She dropped her hand and her head, focusing on her fingers. “When I was a kid, my mom went out with the kind of guys you’re talking about. They showed up in suits, drove expensive cars, bought her all sorts of gifts and clothes. The money they’d give her was insane. I had such nice things as a kid—for a while, anyway. All the good things we had disappeared as quickly as they came.”
I’d had very brief glimpses into Sarah’s life before she moved to Chicago, and details about her mother were limited to tongue-in-cheek comments about her being busy with her latest boyfriend. She’d never mentioned her father. I’d assumed she was like so many other kids who grew up with one parent absent from their lives.
“We’d live in these nice apartments for a while, and then all of a sudden we’d be back in some crappy one-bedroom, and she’d be pawning the jewelry the last guy gave her. For the longest time I didn’t understand why it was so extreme.”
Sarah followed the seam of her jeans with a finger as she got lost in a memory.
“Then one day we were at the grocery store, and some woman came up to her and started screaming. She called her a home wrecker and a whore. She said she’d ruined her marriage and slapped her across the face. I was horrified—at first because this woman had slapped my mother and called her such horrible names, but later because I realized the woman was right, and what she’d said was true.”
“Jesus Christ. How old were you?”
“Old enough to understand what it meant to be a mistress. It was our normal for so long, and my mom always had excuses. He said he was going to leave his wife. He said he was filing for divorce and they were going to start a life together. She never really worked, other than some part-time thing at a country club, and in between the boyfriends, she’d go on these dates. She always looked so glamorous, and for a long time I thought she had the most amazing life… But it wasn’t. It was empty and dangerous and sad, and she wanted me to be just like her.
“For a while I believed the lies she fed me about what she was doing, but things changed when I got older. She set me up with a waitressing job at the country club she sometimes worked at. Occasionally I was invited to hostess at private parties in big houses, like mansions. At first it all seemed very innocent—until it wasn’t anymore.”
“What happened?”
“One of the parties was different than I thought it was going to be. That’s
when I realized my mother was a glorified prostitute, and she was grooming me to be the same.”
My stomach turned. It wasn’t that far from what had happened at The Sanctuary, just with a different clientele.
“I didn’t want the life she had, so I worked hard at school. College was expensive, so I kept waitressing. I didn’t date. I didn’t go out. I worked and went to school. My mom couldn’t understand my motivation; she was far too focused on maintaining the life she’d set up for herself.
“She learned the hard way that beauty is fleeting. The older I got, and she got, the longer the spans of time between the excess and the poverty and the more time we spent living in unfortunate circumstances. It was... difficult.”
Based on the way she couldn’t seem to look at me, I had to assume unfortunate circumstances meant more than just below the poverty line. I chose my next words carefully.
“I don’t get how you ended up at a place like The Dollhouse. It seems counterintuitive.”
Sarah huffed out a laugh. “I didn’t ever want to rely on someone else to take care of me. When I told my mom I was coming to Chicago, she was upset, but then I guess she realized I’d be in a program with a bunch of wealthy assholes. I don’t know if she thought I was going to scope out her next bank account to leech off of, or find one of my own, but she’s the one who gave me the name of the club and made the initial contact.”
“She sent you there? Why?”
“Because I was making choices she didn’t agree with? To sabotage my efforts to become something she couldn’t? To show me how easily men will pay for something pretty to play with? I really don’t know. I think she honestly believed I would eventually do it her way. What a legacy, right? Anyway, I didn’t fully realize what I was signing on for at first, but then it was too late.”
“What do you mean? Why didn’t you quit and go somewhere else? Do something different?”
“The money was stupid, and I needed it to pay the debt I already had from undergrad. I don’t know. Maybe part of me still believes I don’t deserve what I’m working for, like you believe you’re responsible for everyone else’s bad choices. Plus, then you started sitting in my section all the time. After that it wasn’t so bad anymore.”
“Don’t tell me you stayed because of me.”
“I stayed because the money was better than it would’ve been anywhere else, and waitressing there was still a preferable alternative to what my mother wanted me to do. It was kind of like a middle finger to her. And it’s a helpful reminder of what my life could look like if I don’t make better choices than she did.”
“That’s a shitty lesson to torture yourself with.”
“It was stupid. I see that now, especially with how much I put myself and my potential future at risk. But I met you, so that’s something good out of something bad.”
“I’m the best of the worst.”
“That’s not true. You’ve never pretended to be anything you’re not, Chris.” She gestured to the ink on my arm. “You aren’t hiding behind a false exterior. Those men my mother dated looked so nice, but they were all screwing someone over, lying all the time. They promised my mother the world, and then they left her behind. I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it, but they were complicit in the decision to be unfaithful. They spent money on someone they didn’t love, had sex with someone they weren’t married to because she’d do things—or let them do things—their wives wouldn’t. And probably because they could get away with it. I never want to end up with someone like that.”
“That’s not every suit-wearing guy, though.”
“It’s more of them than you’d think.” She traced a line of ink on my arm. “I could put you in a suit, but it wouldn’t change what I know about you. You work hard to take care of the people you love. You’re loyal, and you’re as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside. That’s why I want to be with you, and that won’t change, no matter what else about my life does.”
I caught her hand and brought it to my lips. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s to appreciate the good things I have while I have them, and that includes you.”
Sarah dragged the hand I was holding to my chest and pressed her palm there. “Then let me in, and let me stay there.”
“If you’re sure that’s what you want…”
“It is. You are.”
I placed my hand over hers. “You’ve been in there for a long time already; you just didn’t realize it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Chris
Like Sarah said, sometimes good things came out of bad circumstances. At the moment, one of my good things was rushing up the stairs to the apartment so she could drop an armload of my crap and hold the door open for Hayden and me. The other good thing was bringing up the rear of our mattress parade.
“Why the fuck is this thing so goddamn heavy?” Hayden adjusted his grip on the mattress as we continued to climb.
“Maybe you’re just weak,” I huffed.
“Can you two stop arguing and keep moving? This thing is freaking awkward!” Ivy called from behind Hayden, who was at the back end of the mattress. She carried a box that was definitely too big for her, but she’d insisted on it.
Hayden looked over his shoulder. “We can switch if you want.”
“Less bitching and more moving,” she shot back.
I imagined he was giving her a look, but I couldn’t see past the mattress to know. I was just happy I’d soon be sleeping on this mattress with Sarah, rather than hers. I felt a little bad for Ivy, who’d inherit Sarah’s rock of a mattress, but it was still a huge step up for her.
A lot of things could change in a short period of time. The current happenings were a good indicator of that. Today I was moving into Sarah’s place, and Ivy was taking the apartment across the hall. She’d decided to train under Lisa at Inked Armor, and she’d worked her final shift at the sports bar a few days ago. Hayden had been surprisingly cool about the whole thing, probably because Lisa was so excited.
Moving in with Sarah halved the rent for both of us, and allowed her some breathing room for the final weeks of her internship. But it wasn’t just about smart financial decisions. Not for either of us. Although that might’ve been the way I’d framed it initially, that was for my own comfort. The truth was that Sarah and I were finally moving forward. Sometimes it took almost losing the things you needed the most to recognize their importance—and to see your own worth. Somehow, Sarah and I had become that thing for each other. And I was done fighting against it.
Sarah had the door propped open when we finally managed to get the mattress around the corner. We’d already moved her bed over to Ivy’s apartment, along with half of her furniture.
Telling Mom her plan hadn’t been easy for Ivy, and neither had the subsequent guilt trip. For now Mom wasn’t talking to either of us. It was hard on Ivy, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Mom needed something from me. And sad or not, Ivy told me she was done being someone else’s shield. I hoped I could help keep it that way.
We spent the morning moving my stuff in to Sarah’s, and relocating the last of Sarah’s extra stuff to Ivy’s apartment. There were a few tears from Ivy, partly because it was a big step for her to take, and partly because she wasn’t used to having anyone actually take care of her. Once everything was in its new homes, we helped Ivy set up. It didn’t take long since she didn’t have much. I’d given her most of my kitchen stuff since Sarah already had her own. The pots and pans were a huge step up from what she was used to.
“This is so nice,” Ivy said, adjusting the comforter on her new, much bigger bed. “I don’t know how I’m going to deal with all the space.”
“You’ll get used to it.” I moved a box of clothes over to the dresser. “You need me to unpack anything else, or are you good for now?”
“I think I’m good. I’m going to put away some clothes, and then I’ll head over to the shop to see if Lisa needs me for anything.”
; Ivy had taken to Lisa, and she was showing a lot of promise beyond setting up appointments and bookkeeping. When she wasn’t helping Lisa, sometimes she’d hang out and watch one of us work on a tattoo. I had a feeling she was going to fit in well over the long term, particularly since she didn’t take crap from anyone. In the short time she’d been at Inked Armor, she’d quickly become part of the family.
“You can take the day, you know. No one expects you to go in.”
“I know, but Jamie’s got a big piece scheduled this afternoon, and I wouldn’t mind watching for a while. Do you think that’d be okay?”
“He’ll be fine with it.”
We were still facing some bumps in the road outside of work, but all in all, things were good in Ivy’s life. Better than they had been in a long time.
Leaving Ivy to her clothing, I went back to Sarah’s to help her unpack the last of my things. The living room was already set up; we’d rearranged my couch until it worked with the rest of Sarah’s furniture. She’d refused to part with her ugly armchair, but I could live with that if it meant I got to live with her.
The kitchen was empty when I came in, but low music filtered from down the hall, so I had to assume she was in the bedroom. I stopped in the kitchen to grab a glass of water and noticed a note card propped up, with a selfie of Sarah and Dee lying on the counter beside it. I flipped open the note card; it was from Grant. Dee was out of the hospital, but she wasn’t recovering as quickly as he’d hoped. The OD had been hard on her body, compromising her liver function and leaving behind some holes in her memory. I wasn’t sure that was so bad, considering how things had gone down for her. Grant had moved her out of the city, hoping the tranquility would help. I resolved to talk to Sarah about planning a visit, once she was through with her internship.
Fractures in Ink Page 24
