“My mother was a drunk. Hell, as far as I know, she still is one. I haven’t seen her since I moved out after high school. I stayed with her until I turned eighteen, and then I got the hell away from her. She wasn’t the worse mother ever. She never hit me or anything. But she was a mess. She couldn’t hold down a job. She flitted from one thing to other, never managing to make much money before she got fired for being too wasted at work. She never seemed to really notice me much, I guess. Not when I was a kid. When I was older, I was able to get my own jobs to help take care of us. Well, then she noticed me. She used to steal from me, use my hard-earned money to get booze. It was a bad life, and I needed to get out of it.
“I wouldn’t have started stripping if I hadn’t known that I eventually did have a way out. See, I had grandparents. My mom’s parents were the best thing about my childhood. My mom didn’t take care of me, but they made sure that I was okay. They were the ones who remembered my birthday, who told me about Santa Claus, who took me out for breakfast on Sunday mornings. They were there for me in a way that my mother never was. I loved them so much.
“And then they died. First my grandmother. And then my grandfather six months later. My grandmother had a heart attack, and my grandfather had cancer, but I think he just wasted away without her. I know he wanted to stay for me, but I don’t think he could. They were close. They were a unit. And when they broke apart like that, well, there wasn’t much left for him.
“They had some money, my grandparents. They weren’t rich or anything, but they had a little nest egg left over. It was enough to live on pretty comfortably for about ten years. Or it was enough to buy a house and live on less comfortably for about that long. It was a significant chunk of money. And my grandparents knew that if my mother got her hands on it, she’d piss it all away. She wouldn’t have made good choices with it. It was enough money that it might have made things better for me, if she had it. But it wouldn’t have lasted, and they knew that.
“Besides, my grandparents didn’t trust my mother anymore. They pretty much hadn’t spoken to her in years. They interacted with me but not her. They made sure that I was okay, but they didn’t try to help her anymore. Because they realized that she was beyond help. She would spit on any attempt to change her. My mother was selfish. She cared about her addiction most of all. And if she cared about anything else, well, she hid it pretty well.
“Anyway, my grandparents didn’t want my mother to have that money. So they left it to me. But they knew that wouldn’t be enough. They didn’t want my mother to be given the money in lieu of me, since I was too young to inherit. So they made it so that I couldn’t get the money until I was twenty-one years old.
“I tried to hold on that long. But when I was eighteen, I couldn’t handle living with my mother anymore. She and I both worked crap jobs in food service. We were waitresses at this bar, and this girl who worked as a dancer used to come in. I’d talk to her while I was bringing her drinks or bringing hot wings to her table. And she told me that it wasn’t a bad job, stripping. She said it paid well, and it wasn’t hard.
“She said the biggest key was to have an exit strategy. She said it was like gambling. It was a little too easy to make the money. It was hard to quit. But if you didn’t, she said the life would eat you alive. All the gutter feeders. All the drugs. All the disrespect. All the objectification.
“And one day, I’d worked really hard. I’d pulled a double, and I’d made good tips. I had them in my pocket. I had planned to transfer them someplace safe when I got home, someplace where my mother wouldn’t find the money. But she pick-pocketed me. And when I confronted her about it the next morning, she had spent all of it. All of it.
“I couldn’t handle it anymore. I had to get away from her. There were probably other ways. Maybe I could have kept waitressing and saved up the money. Slowly. Carefully. And I’m sure that I could have supported myself waitressing. Once I was on my own. I would have been able to live off the money I made doing that.
“But it was getting out that was hard. That was what cost all the money. Getting an apartment. All the places required a security deposit in addition to the first month’s rent. That was quite a lot of money to have lying around. More than a thousand dollars. I didn’t have that kind of money. And I needed to get away from her. I needed it.
“So that was why I starting dancing. I was desperate. And I didn’t do it forever. It was never the plan for it to last forever. The plan was for it to be temporary until I got the money from my grandparents. And then I’d go to college. So that was what I did. I worked in different clubs in different places during those three years. I shook my ass on the stage, and I took off my clothes. And I got my money. And I bided my time.
“I worked here for a while. In Aurora. That’s how I met Darlene Perry. I don’t know if you recognize the name.”
Callum shook his head. He was staring at me with rapt attention as I spun this little tale for him.
“Well, she was one of The Phantom’s victims. And she was my best friend. We were both strippers, and we both did most of our work at a place down by the docks called The Crazy Horse. That was where we met Hayden Barclay for the first time. He liked both of us. Paid us for private lap dances more than once. Invited us to go with him after hours to party.
“I didn’t do stuff like that. I didn’t want to get sucked into that world. I didn’t date while I was a stripper. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone what I did for a living. And I certainly wouldn’t date any of the people that I met in the clubs. That was sordid to me.
“But Darlene didn’t care about things like that. She didn’t have an inheritance from her grandparents waiting for her on the other side. She didn’t have a way out. I told her I’d take care of her, but I don’t think she believed me. Most of the other girls thought that I was just making up stories when I talked about my inheritance, or when I told them I was only doing this for a few years, that I was saving up money for school.
“Eventually, she saw that it was true. But I let her down. I let her die.” Tears were beginning to form on the inside of my eyelids. I wiped at them.
And I kept going. “Darlene started dating him. She kept up with Barclay for ages. She went all over the place with him. He didn’t think of her as his girlfriend or anything. She was just some stripper chick he fucked sometimes. And Darlene didn’t care about that. She just knew that he was rich, and that he bought her drinks and drugs, and that he was exciting to be around.
“But then I turned twenty-one, and I got my money. I quit stripping. I went to college. I left Darlene behind. I tried to get her to come along with me, but she didn’t. She didn’t have the same kind of dreams as I did. I’ve always known what I wanted. I’ve always been driven. I could make it through anything, because I knew where I was headed. And Darlene didn’t have that. All she saw was that I was in a strange, new world, and that she didn’t belong there.
“It was this spring that she finally came to see me. She said that Barclay had gotten weird. She said he was scaring her. He wanted to play these violent games when he fucked her, and she didn’t like it. She wanted to stay with me, figure something out.
“I let her. Of course I did. She stayed with me for almost a month. And I kicked her out.
“I did it.” Tears again. I swiped at them.
“She was blowing it for me, you know,” I continued, tears filling my voice. “I got away from those parties and those kinds of people. And she was staying at my place. And she was bringing them all around. They were in my living room, doing lines of coke on the coffee table. And I couldn’t handle that. I needed that out my life. So, I told her to leave.” Tears were streaming down my face now. I didn’t bother to wipe them away. “And two weeks later she was dead.”
Callum got up off the blanket. He came to me and put his arm around me.
I shook him off. “That was how I knew. That Barclay was The Phantom. Because they found her body. Part of her body, anyway. And I knew that
she was afraid of him. I knew he had to be the one.”
“Cecily, what happened to your friend is not your fault.”
I turned on him. “That’s why it’s personal, you understand that? That’s why I have to get Barclay. That’s why he has to pay. Because he took Darlene from me. And she was the best friend I ever had. Maybe the only friend. You say you don’t want to kill him, but—” And I was overtaken with sobs. The wrenched through my body, from the pit of my stomach to my chest.
He caught me in his arms, holding me close.
I was crying too hard to struggle.
“Shh,” he said. “Shh, Cecily. It’s okay, We’re going to stop him. I promise you, we are.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I sobbed, clutching at him, for a long time. And all the while, he rubbed my back, assuring me that there was no way that Barclay would get away with any of it.
Even though I was upset, it felt good to be in his arms. I hadn’t been sure how he would react to the news that I’d been a stripper. If he was holding me, that was a good sign, wasn’t it?
Finally, I stopped crying.
He let go of me.
I looked up at him.
He looked away.
Why wasn’t he meeting my eyes? Was that a bad thing?
We went back to the picnic blanket, and we both sat down. Neither of us said anything.
Callum offered me a sandwich.
After all that crying, after getting out that long story, I was starving. I took it. I bit into it. It was turkey and curried mayonnaise with lettuce and cucumbers. It was delicious.
Callum started to unwrap a sandwich for himself.
I chewed, watching him, waiting for him to say something.
He wasn’t looking at me.
I swallowed my bite of sandwich. I felt anxious, but I tried to sound nonchalant. “Um, whatcha thinking over there?”
He peeled the plastic away from the sandwich. “This is a lot to take in.”
A lot to take in? Crap. That was bad. He was freaked. I ate more of my sandwich, trying to think of what I could say.
I decided to test the waters a little bit. “You’re not going to want to date me publicly anymore, I guess. It wouldn’t be good for your image.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed.
I waited.
He swallowed. He still didn’t say anything.
He certainly wasn’t jumping in to disagree with me. I kind of wished he would. I kind of wished he’d tell me that he didn’t care what anyone thought, that he still wanted to be with me.
But I didn’t know what he wanted. It was possible that he was really freaked. That he was looking for a way out.
“Maybe you don’t want to date me at all,” I said.
“Cecily…” He didn’t finish.
I waited. Again.
I waited, begging him to say something else. But he didn’t. He still wasn’t looking at me.
Damn it.
“It’s okay.” I set my sandwich down. My voice was flat. I was resigned to it. Why had I expected anything different? “I understand. You can’t talk to me? I’ll talk for you.”
“Cecily, just—”
“No,” I said. “How’s this? You feel bad me for me. You sympathize that I was in a tough situation and all of that. But you just don’t feel the same way about me anymore. When you look at me, all you can see is that I’m tainted, and that I’m used up. You imagine all of those men staring at me, and you don’t like the idea of having shared me with them, even if they never touched me. It’s deep inside you. You don’t mean it to be that way, but it is. And so, you want to end it.”
He stared down at his sandwich. “I’m not saying that.”
“What are you saying then?”
He was quiet.
“It seems to be like you’re not saying anything at all,” I said.
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, I think you’re right about the public dating. I don’t want to have to talk about all of it in public. And anyway, I never liked us trying to do that. It made my identity too obvious. And besides, you’ve always belonged more to Vigil than you have to me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, I can’t have sex with you, can I?” he said. “When I’m Vigil, I can. You belong to him, and maybe it would be easier if we made things simple.”
“So, you want me to go back to only interacting with you when you’re in the mask.”
“I…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
I felt cold all over. “It’s more than that,” I said. “You do want to break up. Completely.”
“I.. I don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t have any right to judge you.”
“But you are judging me,” I said. I could hear it in his voice.
He sighed. “What you said about all of those men staring at you? Well… I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that. And I can’t help it. It kind of bothers me.”
I shoved the rest of my sandwich in my mouth, chewing fiercely. Maybe if I ate enough food, I could hide how much he was hurting me. Because I hadn’t realized it, but I’d wanted him to be my knight in shining armor. I wanted him to tell me that none of it mattered, that he loved me no matter what, and that there was nothing that could tear us apart. I wanted a big, grand romantic gesture.
And there wasn’t anything grand or romantic about him.
What was I thinking?
This was the guy who’d fucked me over the back of a chair, who’d blindfolded me and forced me to suck his cock in a bathroom. He was hot. Dangerous. Exciting. But romantic?
I was an idiot for thinking he could be a knight in shining armor. I was too stupid for words.
I swallowed my sandwich. “Well, you know what? That’s fine. I’ll get out of your hair, and you’ll never have to see me again. Okay? Is that okay?”
God damn it, I felt like I was going to start crying again. How could I have any tears left?
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I want. Look, I promise, no matter what, we’re going to work together to take down Barclay. And if you could just give me a little bit of time to try to process all of this—”
“Fuck you.” I got up and started through the garden. The tears were blinding me.
He came after me. He grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me to face him. “That’s not fair, Cecily. You hid this from me—”
“Because I knew you’d react like this.”
“Bullshit. Maybe if you’d told me that story the other night when I asked you, it would be different. Maybe if I hadn’t read it an a newspaper—”
“Your stupid ex-fiancé did that,” I said. “She said it was because you guys are a dynasty, and she’s going to marry you. She couldn’t let me get in the way of that. Well, I guess she got what she wanted.”
“I’m not going to marry that bitch,” he said. “I hate her. I hate her for doing this to you.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s only that when I look at you now—”
“You see me differently,” I finished.
He looked down at his shoes.
“I have to go.” I walked away. Part of me hoped that he would catch up with again and stop me.
But he let me go. He let me walk all the way out of the garden by myself.
* * *
“Can I buy you a drink?” said the guy who’d just sidled up next to me at the bar. He wasn’t unattractive. He was young. He had blond curls and a broad smile.
I shrugged. “It’s a free country.”
His smile widened. “You look sad.”
I shrugged again.
“What are you drinking?”
I looked down into my mostly empty glass. “I think this was a whiskey sour.”
Curly gestured for the bartender. “Hey, two whiskey sours, please.”
The bartender mixed our drinks and brought them over. Curly paid the man.
I finished my other
drink in one gulp and started on the one that had just appeared in front of me. I didn’t say thank you to Curly. I didn’t care about him. I hadn’t asked for the drink. He’d decided to buy it for me.
“So, what’s wrong?” he said. “You’re way too pretty to be so sad.”
I tipped the drink into my mouth. “You make that up yourself?”
He set down his drink, laughing. “Hey, I’m trying to be nice to you. You don’t have to be so hostile. I don’t know who did you wrong, but it wasn’t me.”
“Maybe nothing’s wrong,” I said. “Maybe this is just my face.” I took another big drink. I wasn’t sure how many drinks I’d had. I’d been here for a few hours. I hadn’t been counting my drinks. But I did know that I felt fairly inebriated. And that being drunk wasn’t making me feel better the way I’d hoped it would.
“You got a mouth on you, don’t you?” said Curly. He offered me his hand. “I’m Troy.”
I looked at his hand. “Hi Troy.”
He laughed again. “You’re determined not to loosen up, aren’t you? Come on, I just bought you a drink. The least you can do is tell me your name.”
I glared at him. “I didn’t ask you to buy me a drink.”
“You didn’t tell me to get lost either,” he said. “From my limited understanding of Girl, that generally means I’ve got a shot.”
“I don’t actually speak the typical Girl language,” I said. “Sorry about your luck.” I swept off the bar stool. I’d find someplace else to sit if he couldn’t take a hint.
“Hey, wait a second,” he said. “You’re leaving?” He looked terribly upset.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not having a good day.”
“Yeah, and I was trying to cheer you up,” he said. “I saw you over here at the bar. You looked a little familiar, but I couldn’t quite place you. And I swear I’m being nothing but nice and polite to you. So I don’t see why you’re treating me like this.”
I hated when men used that subtle form of manipulation. The essence of what he was saying was that he was doing everything right, and I was doing everything wrong. He was trying to make me behave the way he wanted me to behave. I hated him. “Leave me alone, Troy. I mean it.”
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