SAYLOR’S APARTMENT ENDED UP BEING right above the bar. To say yesterday was my lucky day would be an understatement, and I’m still shocked that it seemed so easy to get a job and a place to live all in the same day. At the same time, no less.
After Gus showed me around the layout of In Ruins while Saylor finished restocking the bar, he let her go for an early and extended lunch so she could show me to my new apartment. It can be accessed through a door in the back that opens to a flight of stairs that leads to a hallway with three doors: one at the end that exits at the front of the building, the one on the left is Gus’s apartment, and then the one on the right is my new home with Saylor.
She was right when she said it was clean. The place was practically spotless, and despite the almost run-down appearance of the hallway, the inside of the apartment was practically new. Neatly painted walls, dark hardwood floors throughout, and dark cabinets and granite countertops in the kitchen and bathroom.
We walked in to a small hallway with a closet that opened up to an open floor plan of a kitchen, dining room, and living room, the space roomy and inviting. Off the living room, furnished with black leather sofas and a matching recliner, were three doors. The middle was the shared bathroom that had a soaking tub and glass-encased shower. Then to the left of the bathroom door was Saylor’s room and to the right of it was…mine. My very own space painted in a muted sky blue with matching dark furniture.
I still want to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. I know it must not seem like such a big deal, but nothing ever goes my way like this.
Nothing.
Not ever.
It’s how my entire life has been. Growing up in foster care never afforded me anything easily in life. Not possessions or affections.
I was told my mother was young, too young and addicted to drugs to keep a baby, so she left me in the hospital after giving birth. She didn’t even stick around long enough to fill out the birth certificate. My father was never known, so the Department of Health and Human Services was called, and I was immediately put into the system.
At first, they thought I’d have no problem being adopted being an infant, from what I was told. Usually it’s the older children who have trouble finding a family. But being the product of an addict for a mother and not knowing the father’s background wasn’t appealing to the young couples looking to start a family when the natural way wasn’t working for them.
So from my very first days on this earth, I was bounced around from place to place. Foster homes over-crowded and too full to keep me long term. Then families who really wanted to adopt me after having me in their care not being able to afford the fees and the care it would cost for another child.
And then I got older.
Once I was over the toddler age, families passed me over time and time again, not wanting to adopt a child they couldn’t raise from infancy.
I was part of a cycle all too familiar in this world and part of a system much too broken and underfunded to be fixed.
So I spent eighteen years of my life in the foster care system. Under appreciated. Practically ignored.
Never wanted.
Some were terrifying, especially as I got older and my body matured; my looks drawing the attentions of not only foster brothers, but of foster parents who were meant to care for me.
But besides those few foster homes, most weren’t terrible. They just didn’t care.
Which almost made it worse.
None of them were home.
None of them offered the stability and family and love that my fragile heart so desperately wanted.
“You okay, doll?” Saylor’s husky tone has me shaking my head to clear my mind from wandering in the past. I look up to see her behind the bar.
I really am so thankful for her taking me in yesterday—offering me a place to live and showing me around not only the apartment we’re now going to share, but a little bit of what the main street has to offer.
“Yeah…sorry. Just got lost in my thoughts. Thank you,” I reply as I take the drinks she filled for my order before bringing them over to the table.
I turn before I can see the worry etched across her face and the concern flash in her eyes.
After setting down their drinks and letting them know their food will be out soon, I turn away from the table I’m serving and stop dead in my tracks when my eyes land on the biggest and sexiest man I have ever seen standing over at the bar, his eyes right on me as Saylor chatters on next to him as she slings drinks behind the dark mahogany.
His eyes are scanning me, taking me all in, and holding me captive to this very spot.
I can’t move.
I can barely breathe.
Butterflies have taken flight low in my belly as heat spreads through me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Through every square inch of my body.
I can feel the flush of color rising from my chest up through my neck and onto my cheeks. Burning hot.
The attention of men has always caused a flurry of emotion to take over my body, from the slight fluttering of butterflies to the desperation of wanting to keep their attention. But I’ve never felt this instant need and want for a man so intensely before.
Not ever.
Not with any of the men I’ve caught looking my way and not with one of the too many men that have actually caught me.
But it must just be because he’s simply the most attractive man I’ve ever seen, with his massive, bulky frame, rumpled dark hair, deep brown eyes, and lush dark beard that looks to be perfectly trimmed.
It has to be why my heart and my body are reacting this way. Wreaking havoc and causing war. But I can’t act on these feelings swarming through me.
Sunvale is my fresh start, my new beginning where I no longer let men determine my self-worth. Where I no longer seek the love and want of a man to make me feel loved only to be cast away after I give them all of me. Tossed away like the trash they always believed me to be.
So as much as I want to follow through with my old ways and lay my heart and body on the line for this sinfully sexy man, I can’t.
And I won’t.
Because it’s time I put me first.