“Of course,” I said, putting my head back down. “I always snuggle up with the bathroom fixtures.”

“You don’t look like you feel okay,” she said, coming a few steps closer. Brave girl. “Should I get Devin?” That showed a certain unexpected courage on her part—Devin’s kids never called him by name where anyone could hear them.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” I abandoned the comforting stability of the sink and climbed back onto my feet, bracing one hand against the mirror. I was ready to catch myself if I fell, but that didn’t mean I was looking forward to the possibility. “I’m fine.”

Dare eyed me dubiously, saying, “You don’t look fine . . .”

“Okay, let’s try I’m better now than you’re going to be if you call Devin.” I leaned against the mirror, trying to look fierce. There are better conditions under which to look intimidating—any conditions that don’t involve me being dressed in a low-cut purple nightgown, for a start. “I think he’s worried enough, don’t you?”

The implied threat actually seemed to relax her. You take comfort in the things you know, and what she knew was the chaotic and sometimes violent world of Home. “You want me to give you a few minutes to get back together?”

“That’s probably a good idea, yeah.” I swallowed, trying to clear the taste of roses from my mouth. It wasn’t working very well. I hadn’t really expected it to.

Dare hesitated, rocking back and forth on her heels before turning wide eyes toward me again. I was grateful for the reprieve in the rocking—watching her do that in high heels had been making me dizzy. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Daye?”

“Sure,” I said, with a shrug. It wasn’t like she couldn’t learn my darkest, deepest secrets just by breaking into Devin’s files. I expected her to ask something vulgar or pointless and be finished.

She surprised me. “How did you meet Devin?”

“Devin?” I straightened, really seeing at her for the first time since she entered the room. She looked anxious, almost strained, like she was breaking some sort of vast, unwritten law. I didn’t understand it. “It was a long time ago,” I said slowly.

“Do you remember?”

Of course I remember, I thought. The question is why you care. “I met him a long time ago, when I ran away from . . . never mind what I was running away from. I was trying to avoid places where people might know me, and I managed to get myself pretty messed up. One day I just turned around and he was there. Said a friend told him where to find me. He asked if I might want to try something new.” I shrugged. “I came Home with him.” And that was the end of that. By the time I realized what I was getting myself into, it was too late.

“Were you . . .” Dare paused.

“Were we what? Friends? Yeah, after we established that me working for him didn’t mean belonging to him.” Those first few years had been nothing short of chaos, filled with power plays and tiny battles that never quite escalated into war. “Lovers? Yeah, that, too. At first it was because I needed to pay my debts, and then it was because he cared about me. Or seemed to, anyway.” Our relationship—if you wanted to call it that—ended the night I came into the room we sometimes shared and found him fucking Julie like it was an Olympic sport. Sex for payment was one thing. Sex with my friends was another. I took Connor up on his offer of dinner the very next day. “He bought me, the same way he probably bought you. I needed a place to go, and Home was that place, at least for a while.”

Dare’s cheeks reddened, embarrassment betraying her age. “Oh.”

The sex. People always focused on the sex. “You know the rules,” I said, more gruffly than I intended. Memory does that to me: that’s part of why I don’t like it very much.

But Dare didn’t deserve that. Softening my tone, I said, “If you don’t like the way it works here, get off the street. Find yourself someplace else to go.”

“I’m trying,” she said, so softly that I almost missed it. Then she looked up again, eyes pleading as she asked, “How did you get away?”

I blinked at her. “He’s not holding you captive.”

“If you think that, you got stupid.” She shook her head. “We came here because no place else would take us when our momma died. They all said go away, come back when you’re older, when you know better, when you’ve learned. Only no one wants to teach us how to be older, or how to know better—not even Devin. They just teach us how to be broken.”

“Dare . . .”

“Devin’s not so bad. He knows the deal, but—it’s like you said. There’re always costs.”

“What are you asking me for?”

“You got out.” Dare looked at me. “We all know about you, because he talks about you all the time. Even when he thought you were dead, he kept talking about you. We’ve heard about everything you’ve ever done, because you’re the one that got away—you’re the one that was his, and stopped belonging to him. And I want to know how you did it. Because we’re gonna do it, too.”

She was serious. I stared at her. Damn. Finally, quietly, I said, “I’ll do what I can to help you. If there’s anything I can do. Believe me. There’s no right way to do it . . . but it can be done, and if I can help you, I will.”

The look she gave me was radiant, full of gratitude and awe. I winced, trying to keep my dismay from showing on my face. The lingering taste of roses helped—it gave me something that I could focus on other than the look in her eyes. I’ve never liked being looked at like I was a hero. I always wind up letting someone down. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes the only person who gets hurt is me.

TWENTY

DEVIN LOOKED UP WHEN his door opened and smiled. He was alone—Manuel had vanished on some unknown errand—and his expression was somewhere between smug and exhausted. Smug was winning. It probably had seniority. “I see Dare found you.”

“I hadn’t gone far,” I said. “I got sort of distracted by my reflection.” Dare slipped in behind me, finding a place along the wall.

“Surprise.”

“Yeah. Big surprise.” I shook my head. “What did you do?”

“It was bad, Toby.” He walked over to me, expression grave. There were shadows lurking in his eyes, making it plain that the past few days had used him almost as hard as they’d used me. “We didn’t think you were going to make it. I didn’t think you were going to make it.”