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“And how does it feel to be a part of all that glamor now?”
“I feel like I’m playing, a little girl allowed to try on fancy costumes and make believe I belong.”
His brow creased and his smile faltered. “You do belong, Evelyn.”
Her lips curved softly, appreciating his effort to convince her otherwise. “No, Lucian. No matter how much I dress up and put on airs, I’ll always be the girl born in an alley.”
Lips pursed, he whispered, “Then I will always be the little boy afraid of my dad and sad for my mother.”
They sighed. Lucian lowered himself to rest his head on his arms and stared at her. After a while he said, “People change, Evelyn. We all grow and adapt and learn. Eventually we all break out of the mold we were assigned to and find a better fit. You never fit at the tracks. I see them and I see you and there is a difference, whether you see it or not.”
She said nothing. Was there a difference? She’d hated living on the streets and did everything she could to escape, but did she fit here, with Lucian? The problem with being homeless was never truly knowing what home felt like. The warm feeling she got when around Lucian was the closest she could guess to what having a home felt like. Belonging.
Once Parker had read her Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Perhaps she was Goldilocks. Everything she tried was either too big or too small, too hard or too tight. She wanted nothing more than to discover what it truly felt like to find just right.
They made love under the warming March sun, the cooling breeze rich with the scent of lilac. Later they napped and awoke for a quiet dinner followed by some television and a quiet game of chess that led to the two of them making love before they made it to their room. For as nice as Lucian’s bed was, they never seemed to make it there.
It was a perfect week. Whatever had been stressing Lucian seemed to stay in the city. Evelyn was afraid of what would come when they returned home. She hoped whatever the cause of his tension, it was concluded and irrelevant now. Lucian always had so many deals going on. These past few days were how she always wanted things to be.
It was wonderful to be with someone who loved her without expecting anything in return. All of her life she’d survived on a formula of trade, tit for tat. No one ever gave without wanting in return. Sadly, that even applied to her mother. But Lucian seemed to simply want . . . her.
For the first time in her life she felt like she belonged to herself. It was a new and extraordinary feeling.
They visited Pearl one afternoon. That was the only downside to their week. As usual, Evelyn left in tears. Her mother showed no gratitude for the shelter she’d been given. She never acknowledged Lucian with anything more than scorn and often blamed Evelyn for her misery as well.
Evelyn didn’t know how to make things any clearer. They were helping her. Pearl would’ve died last winter if not for Lucian and Dr. Sheffield. There was not a doubt in her mind that if her mother ever returned to the streets and her hard way of living, pulled between selling herself for drugs and being so stoned she’d sometimes sleep in her own waste, that she would wither away to nothing and die. How a return to such a pitiful existence tempted her mother, she would never understand. But it remained one of Evelyn’s greatest fears.
Before Lucian, the only thing she was given in this life that was solely hers was a mother. It didn’t matter how sick or screwed up Pearl was. She was hers.
In a life of uncertainty, that one absolute made a world of difference. Even Lucian, no matter how much she depended on him and trusted him, could never be as bonded to her as her own mother. Emotions changed; genetics remained the same forever.
It took months for Evelyn to finally trust Lucian enough to believe he wouldn’t someday suddenly turn her away and leave her desolate with nowhere but the shelters to return to. She wasn’t sure when exactly she gave him that trust. She just knew one day it was there when before it wasn’t. And even now, old insecurities sometimes reared their ugly heads.
Although Lucian would likely tire of her eventually and move on—a thought that caused her physical pain—she knew he would never let her return to the streets. He would never just up and abandon her. But, being a realist, it was one of the reasons she knew she needed to return to work.
She was approaching a time to make a decision about her life. She couldn’t simply exist through him. She needed her own identity. That didn’t mean they had to split up, it was just something she never had and knew she wanted. Evelyn wanted to be as independent as that acrobat from Lucian’s childhood. She needed to know she could do it on her own.
