Page 111 of Caught Between Two Billionaires
She stands gingerly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You like the show?”
I stand there in silent shock before I’m sure she’s talking to me. There’s no point in hiding anymore, so I take a step into the alleyway, my body still flushed in confused arousal. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s usually a charge for someone watching.”
“I didn’t mean to… but I can pay you.” I fumble for my purse, feeling slow and disconnected. This was happening outside the library, maybe every single night that I was inside, sculpting as if I could change the world with art. “How much is it? Never mind, I can just give you what I have—”
A harsh laugh. “Don’t worry about it. I know you weren’t with him.”
“How do you know?”
“Besides the fact that you look like you stepped out of an ad for Anthropologie? Because he’s a regular. And he doesn’t bring girls around or ask for anything more complicated than a BJ.”
There are things more complicated than that blowjob? Because it looked intense and difficult, every movement with subtle undertones of power. “A regular. Do you live around here?”
“Guess you could say that. I stay closer to here than you do, I’m guessing.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions based on jeans and a T-shirt.”
“Am I wrong?”
That makes me laugh. “Nah, I guess I’m easy to read.”
“I’m surprised you stuck around once you saw what was happening. You a perv?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t know that it was a… you know, a professional situation at first.”
She giggles, which unsettles me because of how young she sounds. “A professional. Well, I’m not putting on a suit and carrying my briefcase into work, but yeah, I’m a pro.”
I take a few steps closer, but the shadows don’t reveal her face to me. “How old are you, anyway?”
That makes her stop laughing. “You aren’t a cop, are you?”
“God no.”
“It’s none of your damn business how old I am.” The bravado in her voice doesn’t scare me. It just makes me sad that she needs such strong defenses. “So go get your pervy kicks somewhere else.”
She takes a step back, and panic rises in my throat. “Wait. Let me give you the cash I have with me. It’s not that much, but it should be a couple nights at a motel or something.”
That makes her pause, at least. “That’s what you are. A Mother Theresa.”
I’m the one who snorts a laugh. “Definitely not.”
“You want to save me? You want to protect me from the big bad wolves of the world?”
“I don’t—” Except of course I do. “I just want to help, like a tiny bit. That’s all.”
There’s a pause while she wanders forward, almost as if she is a deer walking through the forest, unknowing of the dangers within. Then she’s a few feet away. The eyeliner can’t hide the hurt in her eyes. Her lips are still swollen and slick from the blowjob. This is why the community needs a library; this is why they need art that looks like hope. Because the west side takes girls and turns them into prostitutes. It leaves them on their hands and knees with money lying on the pavement. Books are the answer to this. Knowledge and a safe space in which to learn it.
“I’m not some kind of fashion genius,” she says, her voice hard and cold. “I figured you were the library girl as soon as I saw you.”
“The library girl?”
“The one who painted the library and made it fall down.”
There’s a wealth of condemnation in that voice. I wasn’t the reason the wrecking ball went into the front of the library, but I blame myself that I didn’t stop it sooner. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah, it wasn’t so bad. I had a stash of the painted pieces for a while. That shit was like gold. I’d sell them for twenty bucks when people would come around during the day.”
Twenty bucks, and those people would turn around and sell them online for hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. My stomach twists with a sense of hopelessness. “I’m so sorry.”
“Now you just sound like the suit.”
“The what?”
She nods toward the library. Over the roof a skyscraper rises, gleaming in the wasteland. “The suit. He owns that building. Has eyes that look like coffee without any cream or sugar.”
Comes around to pay for rough blowjobs from desperate young women? Bile rises in my throat. I never had any right to expect monogamy from Christopher Bardot, but I pictured him with soap opera actresses and local socialites. “Is he…” I have to swallow down the acid before I can finish. “Is he a customer?” Don’t break my heart, Christopher.
“Nah,” she says, oblivious to the way relief fills me, warmth in my cold limbs. “He never touches me. But he gives me money whenever he comes down. Whatever he has with him, like you’re trying to do.”
