Selling Out (11 page)

I wondered briefly if he was really thinking of my lips or
hers, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about me and him; it was about our
unfulfilled fantasies played out with another, and the wrongness of it was just
right.

He slid inside, and I worked the head of his cock in clumsy
swipes of my tongue. The more I flustered and bungled it, the more excited he
got, hard and urgent, seeping cum into my mouth. His words were sweeter than he
had ever used with me, almost painful to hear:
yes, you’ve got it, just like that, you’re so brave.

For my part, I played the role like I had been paid to do
it. That was how I liked it; I didn’t have to care, and that couldn’t be real
fear. It was just a job, just another part to play.

Despite my play at inexperience, or because of it, he was
close. So close his pretty words cracked into grunts and groans.

A knock came at the door. “Shelly, are you in there?”

Oh, Ella. Uncertain, stricken, I looked at Philip and saw
that it was too late. He was panting, flushed, already there, the sound of her
voice triggering his release into my throat. His orgasm was quiet, the raw
sounds of his breathing easily muffled by the rattling of the doorknob.

I swallowed.

After a moment, Ella said, “Okay, I know you’re in there.
Are you mad at me because of what I said?”

On my knees, with my mouth still tasting of salt and sex, I
couldn’t remember why I would ever be mad at her. I could barely remember a
thing she said either, except
“I don’t
know.”

“I didn’t do anything
to him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t
know.”

It was a puzzle. If I found all the pieces, then Ella got
her life back. And I got…what? Redemption, though the idea seemed laughable as
I knelt on the floor, naked and well used.

Philip nudged me, handed me my clothes, and I realized he’d
already quietly dressed. I tried to read his expression, but he could hide his
thoughts, even from me if he tried.

But Ella’s expression was clear as day when Philip opened
the door and strode past her: hurt. And then at me: betrayal. With a soft
hiccup, she turned and walked away. That’s right, I thought, because this was
all I had to offer.

Take of me, but all that was left was flesh.

Eight months earlier

I woke with a start, blinking eyelids that felt sore and
cracked. They felt broken too, jagged red seeping through and orange blurred so
that I wasn’t sure they were open at all. But then a dark face hovered over me.
I couldn’t make out the features, but his eyes were hazy pools of green rimmed
with red, and I knew it was him. Luke.

He hadn’t left me or had me killed or any other of the
rather unlikely things I had feared. No, he was too good to act on his
justified anger. He was too good for me, but at least he knew it. He’d been
careful to couch his lust for me in furtive glances. We both knew he wanted my
body, and we both knew he wouldn’t fuck me.

If I had been smarter, I would have taken what I could get.
A rich, handsome man had been willing to pay me for my company, for sex, and
that should have been enough for someone like me. So what if he was a little bit
criminal? So what if it was nothing more than bodily transactions? Philip was a
decent guy. He deserved my loyalty. He certainly paid for it.

But then Luke had contacted me, with his soulful eyes and
his stiff-as-a-flagpole ideals, and the longing had hit me so hard I couldn’t
breathe. I held myself back from all-out begging, but I found a way to stay
near him: I’d agreed to become his informant. And so I traded in the security
of my benefactor for the hopeless wish on a star.

It had all come out, and I’d gotten shot, so this was what I
got for it. The white-walled brightness of a sterile room and the
beep-beep-beep
of some machinery that
was no doubt attached to me through plastic and metal. And Luke’s face,
frowning and worrying and caring about me, and suddenly this whole mess seemed
like the best idea I’d ever had.

“Don’t go,” I said, but it came out as a groan.

He seemed to understand anyway. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m
right here. You’re going to be okay.”

How could I be? And though I’d never seen it coming, it was
somehow a cliché. Shot through the heart. I had been sure that was a metaphor,
but Bon Jovi had known. They’d called it. It’s all part of this game that we
call love. But maybe it wasn’t really love, this thing I felt for Luke. Just a
pale shadow, because I hadn’t been shot through my heart, just near it. Just a
loud sound in my ears and a sudden pressure in my chest.

I had no idea how close the bullet had come to the organ now
pumping liquid thick as mud. Certainly my whole midsection felt tight and too
large. It was like the time with that man who must have weighed over two fifty
and not in the good-shape kind of way, which hadn’t been so bad until I had
started to panic. But the face above me wasn’t his. It was Luke, and he was
talking to me.

“Expect a full recovery,” he finished in his cop voice. That
was the fake voice, the one he used when he needed to hide the truth. It was
the booming mirage, and he was the man behind the curtain.

I shook my head slightly, and for a half second, the whole
world shook too before righting itself. I didn’t want a full recovery. I wanted
this body broken and bleeding. I wanted it unable to perform. That was what I
deserved. It was what I longed for, maybe more than I longed for Luke.

“How long?” I pushed through my cracked lips.

His brows drew together, and I sympathized, because even I
didn’t fully understand the question. How long until I made this miraculous
recovery? How long would he stay?

But he answered something different entirely. “Five days.
You’ve been here for a week. You woke up a few times, but nothing coherent
until now.”

It took me a few minutes to process that. In fact, it was
possible I’d blacked out sometime during my study of what he’d said. For five
days, I had been laid up in this hospital bed, and he had been by my side often
enough to see me wake, incoherently, and coincidentally been here when I woke
up just now.

“This whole time?” I asked, incredulous. He had been here
this whole time?

He looked me in the eye, and it was like the curtain lifted,
not because I had nosed my way back and exposed him, but because he was
revealing himself, the man behind the curtain. All that earnestness was made
more potent by the slight tilt of his lips. “Where else would I go?”

And then, like a dam breaking, he unleashed it all. “I’m so
sorry, Shelly. It was my fault, not yours, not yours at all. I should never
have gotten you involved in this. I should have protected you, not put you in
danger. I should have convinced you to get out, and this never would have
happened.”

Maybe the bullet had gone higher than I’d thought. It felt
like there was swelling in the vicinity of my throat, making it hard to
swallow. And some sort of malfunction too, in my eyes, causing them to water
and spill down my cheeks. But he was there to fix it, drawing the tears away
with his lips. Kiss it where it hurts.

“But you’re done with them now, aren’t you?”

His voice sounded thick, like maybe he was afflicted too.
Like maybe it was contagious, this horrible, hopeful feeling.

“You won’t go back to Philip now, or anyone else. You can
start a new life. Anywhere you want, doing anything you want.”

“I can’t— I don’t know—”

“You can, Shelly,” he said fiercely. “I know you can do
this. I believe in you.”

He couldn’t know how much I wanted to quit. For so long I
had dreamed of leaving, like drifting away on a cloud—nothing practical, no
concrete plans that would disintegrate into dust the minute sunlight touched
them. But how could I… And then I looked into his eyes, and I thought, how could
I not? He was the goal here; he was the prize. All I had to do was the
impossible. Walk through fire, and I would win a chance with him. Be a normal
girl with a normal job, and I would be worthy of it.

“I will,” I said. “I’ll quit, I swear it. I’ll find a new
job and a new apartment, where they can’t find me. I’ll never…do that…“
Suddenly I couldn’t say it. I had performed the act a hundred different ways
with a hundred different men, but I couldn’t say the words.

“You don’t have to say. I know. I trust you.”

* * * *

Present day

The worst part of the whole thing was that he had. He’d
trusted me, and I’d fucking lied. I hadn’t meant it as a lie, but I should have
known it was impossible for someone with my past to live a normal life. But
there I went, wishing on another star, and this time there wasn’t even Luke’s
worried face above me, just a pissed-off, anxious teenager at nine o’clock in
the morning. After opening up to her, I hadn’t had any energy left—nor any
desire to hear her pity. So I’d hit the sack. It looked like my reprieve was
over.

Ella wanted to talk about the past. She wanted a plan for
the future. But I only ever lived in the present. It kept me from
hyperventilating and was cheaper than therapy.

“So what, are we just going to wait around until they find
us?” she asked.

Still frustrated from my dream, from my failures, I rolled
over. “Give me a few minutes.”

“You’ve been sleeping all morning. It’s afternoon now. Did
you know that?”

Sighing, I tried to rub the old hurt and bitterness from my
eyes. Now wasn’t the time to mess with me, but she didn’t know that or she
didn’t care. Wasn’t she supposed to be pissed at me for blowing Philip? Or
maybe she was glad about it now, because she didn’t sound angry. I couldn’t
keep up.

I glared at her as the pounding in my head grew louder. “I
should have left you there at that fucking hotel.”

“I did
tell
you to
leave me alone, if you recall. You’re the one who didn’t listen.”

“And I’m not listening now either. Notice a pattern?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

I rolled my eyes. “Go fuck Philip if you want to make
yourself useful.”

She looked stricken right before she ran from the room.

I flopped back on the bed, beating my head against the wall.
Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. It had just hurt so much to see Luke’s
brilliant eyes in my dream, then Ella’s with the same hopeful shine. I was
failing them both.

At least I was awake now. Self-loathing would do that to a
person.

Though it wasn’t all bad. I needed to make a visit, and
illicit anticipation rushed through me at the thought. I had broken my promise
to Luke, but I would still take whatever pleasure I could get from him, wring
every second of his company.

I thought about going to the club alone. Being Henri’s girl had
always afforded me a certain amount of protection. But now, this time, my
identity would be a secret. A lone girl in a place like that… Well, look at
what happened to Ella. Instead, my disguise would be commonplace, and
strung-out, drugged-up girls being dragged around by a grungy boyfriend,
dealer, and occasional pimp were a dime a dozen in Chicago’s underground scene.

Luke should come with
you.

Jade’s words kept repeating in my head, a slippery
invitation to my darkest desires, excuses to cling to when I slid down, down.
Besides, I reasoned, this way I could see Luke and not break down at the
thought that he’d never wanted me. What had he been thinking when I’d pushed
myself on him? Before, I would have said repressed desire. Now I thought maybe
disgust. The whore who couldn’t even be in the same room with a man without
humping him. And my actions with Philip last night proved it.

I didn’t waste much time on regret. Why poke the base of a
house of cards? And yet my situation with Ella irked me. I hadn’t really done
anything wrong. Why was she even mad? That I’d slept with a man on her behalf?
Or that I’d slept with the man who’d rejected her? Goddamn teenagers. I
couldn’t get her hurt expression from when she’d found us out of my mind.

Downstairs, I found Ella sulking into a coffee mug that
smelled like chocolate.

“So, did you have a good night?” I asked.

She said nothing, glaring at her drink like she could bring
it to boil through sheer force of will.

“I did,” I said, sitting across from her. “I always sleep
great. It’s a gift and a curse.”

“Why would that be a curse?” she asked before catching
herself.

“Isn’t that the proverbial moral compass? That way I could
know when I’d done something bad. Though I’d probably get permanent insomnia.”

She snorted.

“Hey, I know. You can just tell me why exactly you’re upset,
and we won’t have to rely on my faulty internal equipment.”

She frowned at me.

“Lay it on me. I’ll even let you smack me around if it’ll
make you feel better. I normally charge extra for that.”

She choked a laugh. “I can’t believe some of the things you
say.”

“Believe it, baby. Here’s a lesson about lying: tell the
truth. You don’t have to tell the whole truth, just the parts that work for
you. Me, I hardly ever lie.”

“That statement could be a lie.”

“What is this, a paradox? I’m trying to be a mentor here.”

“And for reasons that are beyond me at the moment, I’m
trying to learn from you. It doesn’t make sense, because I don’t want be a…a…”

“Hooker. Say it, or I’m going to start calling it
the-profession-that-must-not-be-named, and the last thing I need is another
mouthful.”

“An escort,” she finished. “I don’t want to be one, but I
still want to be like you. Is that crazy?”

It was sweet. Humbling. And a really bad idea. “If that’s
crazy, then so am I. I want the same thing, honey.”

“So why were you there, at the penthouse? Why not just
quit?”

Ah, what a question. If prostitution was the oldest
profession, then how to quit was the oldest dilemma. “It’s hard to explain.” I
thought for a moment. “Did you know a spider has venom to paralyze its prey?
Most people just think about the web, but it’s the venom that incapacitates
them. Then it liquefies them, all before the spider takes a sip.”