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“It’s Tasha tonight.”
He gazes at me for a long time, his green eyes searching mine. “Is there alcohol in your bag? Can you even do this sober?”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. There’s a handful of single-serve vodka bottles in my bag that I swiped from the bar at home.
“Let me take care of Tasha. I’m begging you.” Laz actually sinks down to his knees in front of me, right onto the wet sidewalk.
I glance up and down the street. At this rate, we’re going to be recognized, and I’m not wearing my wig yet. “Laz, stop it. Get up.”
“I won’t. Not until you promise to come home with me and let me take care of you.”
Something snaps inside of me. My breaths are coming too fast, anger and frustration making my adrenaline spike. “I’m supposed to rely on you now? Mom could find out about us at any moment, and you could be gone just likethat. You could die because my uncles will kill you for betraying her. What then? How am I supposed to trust anything you say or do?”
He gets to his feet and pulls me against his chest. “Breathe, Bambi. We’ll figure it out.”
Laz has made my life a thousand times more complicated. I struggle in his arms, trying to pull away, but he’s too strong for me. I slump in his hold, too tired to fight anymore. “This was my secret. My way out. You’ve made everything so much harder.”
“Yeah. I’m told I do that,” he mutters.
I groan and push my face against his chest. Clinging to him, my fellow fuck-up.
“You’re wonderful as Tasha,” Laz whispers. “Beautiful and fearless. The moment I saw you, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. But you know who’s twice as entrancing? Mia, when she’s curled up in an armchair reading a book, so absorbed in what she’s doing that she doesn’t notice she’s wrapping and unwrapping a strand of hair around her finger. I can’t stop staring at that girl. She’s real. She doesn’t have to be anyone else.”
That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me, but I need Tasha. She’s the one who’s going to pay for my freedom.
“I’ll come home with you tonight,” I tell Laz. “I’ll skip this week. But I won’t make any promises about next week.”
Laz groans in relief and squeezes me tight. “You won’t miss out on a paycheck. I’ll give you what you would have made.”
That’s not what I want from him, but he can’t give me what I truly want, which is to unfuck this mess we’re in together.
“You don’t want me to be a stripper, but you’re happy to turn me into a whore.” I look around and spy his car and, extricating myself from his arms, I head over to it.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he says after he gets in and starts the engine. He’s tense as he drives, the muscles taut as ropes in his tattooed forearms.
The inside of Laz’s car is fogging up because of the cold night air, and I can barely see out my window. All the streetlights and traffic lights are colored blurs. Maybe he’s not trying to force me into having sex with him in exchange for money, but that’s what it will feel like, no matter how much I want him. I’ll be Lazzaro Rosetti’s whore. His dirty little secret.
“What will you do once you’re free?” he asks me.
I stroke my fingers through the condensation, making patterns on the glass. “Just be. There’s nothing else that I want.”
“How about you just be mine,” he says in a low voice.
I reach over and touch the wedding ring on his finger. “You’re spoken for, remember?”
He gazes bitterly at the ring. “I’m going to do something about that one of these days.”
“And then we’ll be two broke fuck-ups instead of one. Don’t kiss your dreams goodbye for me, Laz. I’m already drowning under the weight of my own mistakes. I don’t need yours on my conscience, too.”
Laz drops me at home and drives off into the night. It’s raining once more as I head inside, wondering if I should just go back to Peppers and start my shift anyway. As I think about plastering a smile on my lips and swinging around that pole while people offer me wrinkled dollar bills, my heart shrivels up.
Mom looks up from the sofa with a frown. She’s wearing a white cashmere lounge suit and gold jewelry. “You’re home early. What happened to your shift?”
“They didn’t need me. I’m tired, so I’ll just go to bed.”
I head for the stairs, but Mom stands up and beckons me to the shelving at the back of the room. “While you’re here, I have something to show you.”
She picks up a framed photograph and hands it to me, and I recognize the picture. I recognize when it was taken, anyway. Six months ago, at a professional studio. Mom, Isabel, Rieta, and I all had our pictures taken, some as a group and some individually. Shots of the three of them appeared on the walls in this house and my sisters’ places, but I never saw any photographs of me.
