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“But like I was saying, you’re keeping things from him. I don’t know why, but I know you have your reasons, Lil. Maybe try to understand that he has his reasons for doing things.”
I steeled myself, gritting my teeth against the resentment I felt. “Women are being kidnapped and sold, Beck. There’s no excuse for what’s going on in Texas, or that Kieran hasn’t put an end to it.”
Beck suddenly went still, his expression solemn. “Sometimes we have to do what we don’t want to,” he said softly. “And sometimes we hurt people because of it. I’ve been selling on the streets for your dad for as long as I can remember. With every year that passed, I hoped he’d put me somewhere else—doing anything else—because I hated selling. I destroyed the only girl I think I ever really loved because of it, and I continue to on a daily basis. I watched her transform into a shattered shell of herself, selling herself just so she could pay me because her mom keeps herself pumped full of our supply. And she fucking hates me for it.”
“Beck . . .”
I’d heard about her, the girl he used to love. He’d talked about her often before he’d stopped talking about her at all. I’d thought she’d died. To Beck, she had. He’d wanted to take care of her forever, and to spite him for continuing to control and ruin her mom’s life, she’d started selling herself.
It had nearly destroyed Beck.
“I didn’t put an end to it, Lil. I could’ve, but I didn’t because I knew if her mom didn’t come to me, she’d go to another dealer. One who would take advantage of both of them like her previous ones had . . . and I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”
He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, his eyebrows drawn tight as he thought about what could’ve been.
He looked so exposed. So completely unlike the broad-chested, thick-necked drug dealer who’d been my best friend for so long.
“And now? I’m who Kieran trusts most, which means Mickey trusts me. So now I know all this shit I wish I’d never heard about. Wish I’d never seen. But there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. All I’d wanted was to stop dealing on the streets, but now I’d give anything to only be dealing on the streets. For my only job to be out there every single night so I can check on the girl I destroyed by saving her. You understand?”
I could, but only because I’d been raised in this life.
But I wasn’t sure Beck could understand me. Wasn’t sure he could understand the girl he’d destroyed or the women being sold in Texas.
“Kieran might know about things you don’t, and, yeah, he might not be putting an end to it. But there might be bigger things at work. If you fight him—if you fight what the two of you have and the way he’s trying to protect you—it’s going to destroy you.”
He stood to leave and had just gotten to the door when I called out his name.
“Knowing what you know now—seeing what she’s become,” I added, hinting at the girl he’d loved, “would you still do it all over again? Or would you try to find a different way to put an end to it?”
“There was only one way to end—”
“There’s always another way.”
He swallowed thickly and gave me a sad smile, his eyes dulling with torment. “I told you, Lil . . . it’s a burden. This whole life is.”
It never stopped being disorienting—glancing in a mirror, expecting to see the same person you saw every single day . . . and seeing someone different. My reflection was as strange to me as my relationship with Kieran had become, even though I’d been catching glimpses of this stranger in mirrors for nearly two years now.
My ice-blue eyes were what people noticed first, and were a dead giveaway to anyone who knew Mickey or had known me. To pass as anyone other than Lily O’Sullivan, I hid them by drawing attention to them.
Hidden behind non-prescription thick-framed glasses and hazel-colored contacts, my normally bare eyes were now accentuated with shadow and liner, my lashes dark and full. My blonde hair that usually sat high up on my head in a messy knot was falling to my waist in waves.
In just over half an hour, I was a different person. One who would be gone with some makeup remover.
I’d only glanced in the mirror long enough this morning to acknowledge the stranger looking back at me before I’d ducked my head, grabbed my old purse filled with some cash, as well as everything required to create and erase the stranger in the mirror, and hurried out the bathroom window since it faced away from the main house and Soldier’s Row.
I hadn’t lingered.
I never did.
And I’d left Holloway property . . . as I did every Monday morning.
Now as I sat in a café booth downtown, a twenty-minute walk from Holloway, I found it hard to look away from the stranger staring back at me in the wall of mirrors off to the side.
The makeup alone was a big enough change since I never wore any . . . but the eyes and the glasses. The length of my hair. All of it combined was fascinating and horrifying to look at.
Whether ordering it under Beck’s name and card or having Conor buy it one item at a time . . . I’d spent the better part of six months stashing money and gathering everything I would need to slightly change my appearance for when Kieran and I ran from Holloway and North Carolina.
But when that dream had become nothing more than shattered promises, everything had remained untouched until two years ago when someone came looking for me . . .
