Jase nods. “Why’d you call me down? I thought you wanted me in the club today.”

Dornan shifts so that Jase can see me. Jase immediately looks unimpressed.

“I gotta go on a run for a day or two,” Dornan says. “I need you to keep this one company for me.”

“This one?” Jase asks caustically. “Isn’t this one supposed to be working tonight?”

Dornan looks from me to his son and sighs. “Look, boy, I don’t have time to get into it now. She’s something special, you hear? I’ve decided she’s better off here at the club, keeping your old man company.”

I am dying to speak, but I know Dornan likes his women stupid and obedient, so I keep my mouth shut.

“How long you planning to be gone?” Jase asks, looking generally disinterested.

“Two days, tops,” Dornan replies. “Get Kathy to cover you at the club. And son … ” He pulls me from my seat by my shoulder and stands me in front of Jase - “I would never let your brothers near Sammi here, you understand?”

Yeah, right, I think to myself.

“But you, son, I know you’ve had it real hard since Raelene left us. God bless her soul. So if you wanna sample this fine piece of ass,” he slaps my ass with his wide hand, “you go right ahead, you hear?”

My whole body jumps a little at being slapped and I look at Dornan questioningly.

Jase is glaring at his father and refuses to look at me or even acknowledge my presence. “I don’t need your sloppy seconds,” he says to his father, and I want to vomit. This is so much harder, so much more real, than I ever imagined it would be. The way Jase looks at me, when he does look at me, makes me want to scream.

It is a far cry from the guy who offered me a glass of water and a seat yesterday, and nothing at all like the boy who wanted to save me from all of this once upon a time.

The boy who I used to love.

“Are you sure you’re not one of those fucking faggots?” Dornan asks, clearly pissed off at his son’s blatant rejection of what he no doubt considers to be a generous offer.

Jase just rolls his eyes. “I’m sure, Pop. Go on now, before you miss your chance. That storm is a bitch and it’s only getting worse.”

Lightning cracks on cue overhead and I jump nervously.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jase demands.

I hate storms. I fucking hate them with a passion. When I was a little girl, I used to go and hide under my bedcovers and wait for the fury of Mother Nature to pass.

Sometimes, when we were younger, Jase used to hide with me.

“Nothing,” I say. “I don’t like storms is all.”

Jase eyes me curiously, flicking his eyes up and down me. In that moment, I wonder if he is going to guess who I am eventually. He is clever and shrewd, and I am probably only a few careless remarks away from raising his suspicion.

“They make my hair frizz,” I add, trying to think of other reasons why people might hate storms. “I have to use my hair straightener, like, three times a day when it’s this humid.”

Jase looks at me like one might look at a cockroach squashed on the bottom of their shoe. I shrivel inside under the power of his ambivalence.

You used to love me once.

I can’t think of those things right now. Maybe not ever.

Dornan pulls me towards him and plants his hands firmly on my ass cheeks.

“Gonna miss you, baby girl,” he says, sucking hard at my neck so that I gasp. He’s a grown man giving me a fucking hickey. Marking me as his.

I pull his face to meet mine and kiss him deeply, an I want to fuck you kiss that he must feel all the way to the tips of his toes. He shudders slightly, pulling me towards him, and I feel his hardness against the itch of my fresh ink and tentatively covered scars.

“Do you have to leave?” I ask sweetly, after we break apart. “We only just started having fun.”

“Ugh!” Dornan groans. “You’re killing me, princess. I gotta run. The boys are waiting for me. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

I nod, trying to appear sad, and I yelp as he slaps my ass again.

“Watch her,” he says, stabbing Jase’s chest with his finger. “I’m out.”

He leaves without looking back, and I relax immediately.

“Happy that he’s gone?” Jase asks darkly.

I had forgotten that he was there for a moment. Christ. I really need to keep my wits about me.

“I’m hungry,” I explain. “All the man wants to do is fuck, and I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.”

He gives me a look so withering, it takes all of my will not to break down and tell him who I really am. I didn’t anticipate having to be in the same room as him, let alone be babysat by him. Being judged like a common whore by him.

Jase strides over to the open window that separates the kitchen from the dining room. “Hey, Carol, you there?” he asks, in a voice more like a teddy bear’s than the asshole tone he’s been using with me.

Before I can think, a woman pops her head around the corner of the kitchen doorway, smiling.

“Hey, Jase,” she says, ruffling his hair. I swallow hard and look for an escape that doesn’t exist.

“Sammi here missed breakfast. Do you think we could grab some cereal or something from the pantry?”

Carol wipes her hands on a dishrag and smiles, looking straight at me. I freeze like a deer in headlights.

She is only forty but looks closer to fifty, a life of excess and violence written in each deep line that draws out from underneath her huge green eyes. Her dark blonde hair sits atop her head in a messy French bun, peppered with fine slivers of grey.

“Hello, Sammi,” Carol says, extending her hand. “You must be new here. I can fix you anything – eggs? Toast?”

“Cereal is fine,” I squeak as I shake my mother’s hand.

My mother sold me out for a bag of blow.

There.

I said it.

She was a terrible mother, a liar and a whore and a thief. Falling pregnant with me was an accident – she was barely seventeen and had just met my father.

Growing up, my father was like a mother to me as well. And my mother, when she was around, was like a distant older sister who lashed out at me when I did something wrong, and yelled at me whenever I cried. I learned from a very early age never to cry. I perfected my poker face at three years old, the same age I learned how to climb out of my own cot, how to pull up a chair and fix myself breakfast how to call 911 when my mother overdosed on heroin in the bath.

She was a horrid mother, but she was still my mother, and I loved her more than anything.

 The day Dornan took me – the day I “died” – was like any other day. My father was still at work at the factory; my mother was tearing at her skin, out of cash and out of meth. 

Then Uncle Dornan knocked at the door, flanked by Chad and Maxi. I was a streetwise kid. I’d grown up in the life, in the club. I could see the guns bulging at their waistbands, concealed under thin shirts and patched leather jackets.

My mother answered the door. I was in the kitchen, and heard voices. They were looking for my father, was he home?

When my mother told him that my father was still at work, Dornan burst in, apparently unsatisfied with her answer. 

Then his eyes landed on me, and a shit-eating grin grew on his beard-stubbled face.

“You’d better come with us, Juliette,” he said, his voice like sharp gravel scraping against my bare skin.

I looked at my mother, alarmed. Something wasn’t right.

“Why?” my mother asked, picking at her arm like she did when she was hanging for a fix.

Dornan withdrew a knotted baggie of light brown powder from inside his jacket and held it in front of her. Heroin.

“Relax, darlin’,” he said, grinning. I felt my skin prickle as my heart thudded faster. “We’ll have you back here in a few hours.”