I got out of the car.
The Morrisons smiled and made a big show of welcoming me into their home in front of the social worker. But they weren’t even that good of actors. I could see right through them. They didn’t give a shit about me. They were obviously in it for the check. The social worker either was really clueless or too burnt out by her caseload to care. Dropping me off was a box she could check, and without too much of a look around, she was spitting gravel as she took off in her tidy little Pontiac.
Ray Morrison’s first words to me were to order me to get him a beer. When I didn’t move fast enough, he started cussing me out.
I quickly regretted ever getting out of that car.
Except for Tina. She’d been fostered there for six months already, and she took me under her wing. She showed me how to avoid the worst of Mr. Morrison’s rage and how to stay out of Mrs. Morrison’s way when she got to drinking.
I’d spend hours watching her put on make-up, listening to her talk about boys and bitches at school, and how she was gonna move to L.A. and be a famous actress one day. To me, she was more glamorous than any actress in a glossy magazine. She was a goddess. I couldn’t believe she even deigned to spend time with little ol’ me.
I wouldn’t realize it until years later, but it was more likely that Tina just loved an audience. She liked to hear herself talk, but it was even better when there was a worshipping acolyte to soak it all up. And within the year, I also proved to be a useful accomplice for her regular shop-lifting schemes.
I played the distraction while she stuffed her favorite cosmetics down her bra. It only escalated from there. I never wanted to do it, but Tina made it seem so effortless and cool… and it worked.
We only got caught once.
Well, strike that. I got caught. Tina was distracting—or supposed to be distracting—and I was stealing the merchandise.
But the shopkeeper looked my way, then called to her nephew to catch me. The nephew had been all but standing behind me, and I hadn’t realized he was there.
Tina ran away when she saw me get nabbed. I didn’t blame her. If I’d been in the same position, I would have run too. At least that’s what I told myself. It was bad enough that one of us had gotten caught. There’d been no need for both of us to get in trouble. No need at all... except I knew there was no way I ever would have left Tina behind. We were blood sisters. We’d done a ritual and sliced our palms and shaken on it and everything. I would have died for her.
But she ran. The shop owner was really very decent about it, all things considered. She could call my parents or 911. My choice.
So I gave her Ray’s number.
He was livid when he came to pick me up and overly apologetic to the shop owner as he paid her for the cosmetics and earrings I’d tried to steal. And I got beat absolutely black and blue by Ray that night after we got home.
But Tina held me afterwards that night while I sobbed in pain. So that was something, right? She never apologized, but then again, she hadn’t done anything wrong, not really.
Except for how it would be a pattern that would repeat over and over. That day was just the first chip, but every day, every month, every year, she’d keep chip, chip, chipping away at me. Taking more and more without giving back. Telling me how much she loved me and how we were the closest peas in a pod, us against the world…
In the end, she would drop me with no more drama, momentousness, or thought than she might swat at a gnat.
She thought her boyfriend was looking at me more than her, got jealous, and moved with him out of town. Just ghosted me after five years together. As if I’d never been anything to her—
Because I hadn’t. I’d always been disposable. Worth keeping around only as long as I was useful.
I blinked back a stupid tear as I made it to the kitchen.
Stupid to be thinking about any of this right now. I was sneaking around at two in the morning in a kinky sex mansion, for Christ’s sake. It was no time to be dredging up a past that was far better off dead and buried.
Simply because Beau Radcliffe could flip his emotions off just like my sociopathic ex-best friend/sister... Ya know. No big thing.
I huffed out a loud breath and then rolled my eyes at myself. I paused, trying to quiet my body and my mind listened. It was just as silent as it had been earlier. Good. Not that it surprised me. I was sure that all the other living souls were tucked up in their beds, snoring away as peacefully as Beau. There were no troubled consciences here.