I mumbled to any god or mother listening that I wouldn’t be stopped when I rounded the next corner. A girl I had buried long ago was thrashing deep inside me, trying to break free—but she wouldn’t.
Never again.
She meant hope. She was weak. I couldn’t afford either.
On the outside, I radiated confidence. I was the girl everyone wanted . . . or wanted to be. My hips swung just enough to catch the attention of every man who passed by me—and some of the women. My full lips were twisted into a sensual grin, causing people to stop in their tracks or stumble over themselves. My tight clothes dipped in all the right places so my body would be all they saw and craved that night.
On the inside . . . on the inside I was trembling and holding my breath.
Don’t stop me.
Don’t say my name.
My silent plea may as well have been shouted the way his head snapped up when I edged around the building.
He was always there. I doubted a day would come when he wouldn’t be. But I lived for the days when he didn’t call out to me.
I purposefully made eye contact to show he held no power over me.
Don’t stop me.
Don’t—
“Jess.”
A defeated breath punched from my lungs when he said my name just loud enough to reach me.
Not allowing my frustration or hurt to show, I let out a sharp, wicked laugh and sauntered up to him. Trailing my fingers over his bulky arm, I murmured huskily, “Beck . . . you’re always my favorite part of the night.”
He watched my fingers for a moment before lifting his glare to me. “You know the game, Jess. Gotta get paid. You just choose a different way of going about it than I do.”
My teeth gnashed, but I sidled up closer and forced my mouth into a taunting grin instead of the sneer that so desperately wanted to break free. “Beck, Beck, Beck . . . Baby, I know you’re craving to find out exactly why men keep coming back for me. Don’t pretend you’re better than me because you get to stay in that nice, big mansion. Or because you earn your money by assuring strung-out women they don’t need to pay for all they take when we both know someone has to pay.”
By the time I finished talking, my mouth was inches from his.
He dipped his head closer, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. Then whispered, “Three ninety, Jess.”
I jerked back, my face falling. “Like hell. You gave her two sixty worth a few days ago.” My stomach twisted as panic set in. Oh God . . .
He wrapped an arm around my waist and hauled my body back to his, his voice dropping low so it wouldn’t carry—an unspoken reminder there were people around who could hear us. “Not my goddamn problem your mom can’t stop using.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said. “Never again. Don’t ever sell her anything again.”
I’d said those same words to him countless times. Just as I’d said them to other sellers. The only difference between Beck and the others was Beck had never once laughed at my demands. But like them, he’d also never listened to them.
“I’m not selling to her. She takes and you pay.”
“Fuck you. You know what I meant. She’s going to die if you don’t stop giving it to her,” I said through gritted teeth, and was horrified when I realized my eyes were burning and Beck was blurry. I clenched my teeth tighter and blinked the tears back.
But he’d already seen.
“Jess,” he said softly, his expression equal parts frustration and shock. Looking around us at people randomly walking about, he pulled me toward the building and dropped his head closer to mine. “Jess, you know I don’t have a choice—”
“My life and my choices were taken away because you won’t stop feeding her addiction, Beck.”
Anger and disgust flashed through his eyes. “Jesus fuck, Jess. Don’t ever put that shit on me. You had a choice. You made it,” he reminded me. “This could’ve been different.”
“I told you my condition,” I hissed.
His eyes only hardened.
Time passed as we glared at each other. Eventually, he broke. “I didn’t have a choice,” he admitted. “If she doesn’t come to me, she’ll find someone else . . . and it’s best that she comes to me. You don’t know what would happen if she used one of the other dealers in town. You don’t know what they would do to her.”
“Don’t I?” I asked with a soft, demented laugh. “And don’t say that as though I should be comforted by the thought of what one of you would do to her if I didn’t pay her debt.”
Beck was in his late twenties—a few years older than me—and had been my mom’s dealer for the last ten or so years. He’d taken the protector role with me and tried to slip into something more than that for the latter half of that time, but it didn’t change who he was. What I was. And why we ended up in each other’s company every day.
He didn’t try to take advantage of me like other dealers. He didn’t try to touch me the way the older men had when I was only a child. But I would be an idiot to forget that he was incredibly dangerous.
It had taken many months slipping into that massive house and meetings unnoticed before I found out who Beck worked for—what ruthless family he was involved with.
The O’Sullivans.
When you find out the Irish-American mob is a very real thing that still runs as strongly as it does silently, and they control a good portion of the cocaine that moves through the south—and most importantly, that passes through your mother’s veins—you do whatever it takes to keep her from their wrath.
Even if it means destroying yourself.
Beck sighed through his nose and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s business, Jess.”
At least he had the decency to sound apologetic. Slightly.
Asshole.
I wanted to yell that his business was killing my mom—the only person I had in the world. Instead, I forced my expression to calm and my eyes to become hooded. My mouth fell into a pout as I leaned closer to him.
“Business? Beck . . .” My lips slowly stretched into a grin. “If you wanted to talk business, you only had to say so. You’ve already kept me held up here for five minutes now. In my business, time is money, even if you aren’t able to perform. Clock’s tickin’, baby. How much longer do you want to keep me in your presence? Because I have roughly half an hour left until that three hundred ninety dollars is mine again. Less if you decide to take me against this wall and make me—”
I cut off with loud peals of laughter when Beck shoved me away from him, causing me to stumble a little before I regained my balance.
“Aw, did I hit a nerve?” I cocked my head to the side and giggled wildly. “Nope, didn’t feel anything.”
“Fuck you, Jessica.”
Yeah, well, at least I wasn’t crying anymore.
I grinned mockingly at Beck as I sauntered toward him again, but faltered at his next words.
“You think I’d touch a whore as fucked up in the head as you?” he asked with a sneer.
My smile froze on my face, but I somehow managed to continue moving toward him. Somehow managed to press myself against him as I dug into my purse for what I had made that night. Somehow managed to look at him from under my eyelashes and speak in that low, throaty tone I knew he loved rather than screaming at him.
I pressed some of the cash into his hand. “I seem to remember a time where that statement wasn’t true.”
His eyes creased in the corners, like he wanted to apologize for what he’d said, but his voice was hard when he spoke. “That was before you started selling yourself.”
“Wasn’t before the rest.” I tapped on my head, lifting my brows knowingly, then let out another wild laugh as I ambled away, swaying as I did. “That’s all I have,” I lied. “You know how I can pay off the rest of what is owed. All you have to do is ask.”
I turned and continued my unhurried walk away when all I wanted was to run. I knew he wouldn’t come after me because I’d shorted him, just as I knew he wouldn’t let me forget tomorrow or the next day that I still owed him money.
But his words had terrified me.
Knowing Momma had taken so much more than usual scared me in a way I’d never been. I was worried about the state she would be in when I finally got home.
But girls like me? We didn’t run, and we didn’t show our fear.
Because to the world, we feared nothing and no one.
Once out of Beck’s sight, I let the crazed smile slip for a moment, and crossed my arms over my chest to ward off the chill spreading deep through my bones.
Come on, Jess. Come on . . .
It wasn’t that late, and as there had been when I was talking to Beck a few streets over, there were people around.
Head up.
Shoulders back.
Lips twisted.
Eyes laughing.
Give them what they want. Give them what they’ve come to expect from you. Give them the beauty and the crazy. Give them you.
Like any of them had ever actually had me . . .
A sharp, melodic laugh suddenly burst from my chest, and the couple walking in my direction stopped then went out of their way to avoid getting too close. But the man’s eyes devoured me, spilling secrets I knew well.
Lust. Shame. Need. Disgust. Intrigue.
That’s right. Steer your pretty little wife away from the crazy girl walking alone. But the next time you see me without her, you’ll be asking me to get into your car, begging to get off on that crazed laughter.
You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.
I already hate you . . . just as I’ve hated all the others.
Just as I’ve hated myself for six years . . .
Pain stabbed at my chest as Beck’s words played through my mind, unwanted and incessant. “You think I’d touch a whore as fucked up in the head as you?”
His words didn’t hurt for the fact that he didn’t want me anymore—because I’d never wanted his touch. They hurt because, for the rest of my life, men would only come looking for the girl Beck had described.
No one looked for the girl buried deep inside, screaming to be freed. Begging to be touched. Begging to be loved.
No . . . because she was weak.
And weakness was a word that couldn’t exist for me. Love was another.
Beck had waited until the day I turned eighteen before he said a word to me about his feelings. And then they were there. Words he’d held back for years and was finally laying bare.
He wanted to take care of me.
He wanted to be with me and take me away from the fucked-up world I’d grown up in.
He loved me . . .
The terrifyingly huge drug dealer—the sweetheart mobster—wanted me.
I hadn’t considered his offer for even a second.
Sure, Beck was attractive. There was something about his bear-like build, kind eyes, and bearded face. But he’d already been ruining my mom’s and my life for four years. In that time, bitterness had formed in my heart and turned to hate. There was no getting past that.
To pay him for everything my mom took, I’d had to find random jobs. But whether it was dropping out of school to have more time to work, my other jobs overlapping, or that my mom came in high too often . . . it proved difficult to keep a job for long. When my debts grew to the thousands and nowhere else would hire me, I began begging for money on street corners. Soon after, I started getting propositioned by men.
The worst kind of men.
So when Beck told me about his feelings that first night, I shut him down as soon as I heard the word love.
The second night, he promised to get me away from my life—the trailer I’d grown up in, my mom, and the people that hung around her. I told him he didn’t love me if he thought leaving my mom was something I’d ever choose.
The next night, one of the men who’d been regularly propositioning me tried to force himself on me when I’d been on my way home. But Beck had been there, waiting for me as he did every night, and had heard my screams.
It hadn’t been the first time a man had tried to force himself on me. There had been friends of my mom and other dealers when I was younger, but I always managed to slip away. I was as good at getting away as I was sneaking into places.
Still, it had been years since the last time anyone tried. And it had never been that man.
The encounter and his words that night had shaken me to my core. But I needed to stay strong. I’d always been strong. After he’d torn the man off me, I tried to assure Beck that it hadn’t affected me. Even though on the inside, I had silently begged him to make it go away.
All of it.
The men who came after me. My mother’s addiction. The madness inside.
Weak. So, so weak.
And then it was there . . . his offer.
That night . . . that night I might have agreed to anything—accepted anything Beck offered. All for the chance to get both my mother and me away from a life she’d surrendered us to long ago. A life I’d been struggling to keep us breathing in.
When he begged me to give him a chance—begged me to let him take care of me for the rest of my life—I gave in. On the sole condition he stopped giving my mom drugs.
In return, he shook his head subtly and told me how much I owed him.
Beck’s reaction was the cruel reminder I needed. I hadn’t kept us alive this long by being weak. By needing someone.
I laughed like a girl who lost her mind as I grabbed what cash I had on me and threw it at him. Unable to stop myself, I started doing what I always did when I felt weak and vulnerable: rambled and taunted Beck and watched his anger grow.
Make it go away, Beck.
My own sickness. My own destructive craving. No better than my mother’s.
Make it go away . . .
Beck snapped, unleashing a terrifying rage on the man he’d been holding in his unyielding grip. Beating him until his face was unrecognizable and promising worse when he least expected it. And though I never asked Beck what the worse was, I knew it was what I’d been protecting my mom from all these years.
I forced myself to watch until I no longer felt like I needed another human being to help me make it through this fucked-up world. When it was over, I shut up that weak, pleading voice in my head and left before Beck could say another word.
But that night, the man returned, making my dreamless night a nightmare.
My weighted eyelids and limbs. His heavy body. His hot, disgusting breath on the back of my neck as he ripped my clothes. “You’re mine, whore.”
I vowed no man would have control over me again. And if a whore was how they saw me, then that was how they were going to get me.
I started selling myself the next night.
Beck found out three days later. If it was possible to destroy the world, he would have done it that night.
He never looked at me the same way. He never told me he loved me—or offered to take me away—again. And he never attempted to stop selling to my mom.
As he said earlier, he didn’t have a choice. I doubted someone in the mob could decide to stop selling drugs.
But condition met or not, I would’ve never belonged to Beck.
I belonged to no man.