Page 55 of Wait For It

Morgan wanted me to use my flesh to secure my freedom.

Helen wanted to use me for her own amusement.

But what about me—what did I want?

I squeezed my eyes shut, clenching my fist around the gardening trowel as I fought to hear my own voice over all the noise in my head. The volume reached a brief fever pitch, and when silence descended like a stage curtain, I found myself staring into a pair of glacial blue eyes.

Him.

I wanted Killian—a man who didn’t want me to be someone I wasn’t. A protector. I’d spent my life surrounded by fakes, starving for something real. Something deep.

Unfortunately, he was probably under the assumption I was a complete loon by now.

“There you are, young lady,” Helen crowed as she approached the table. “I was just thinking to myself that I hadn’t seen your face around today. How did your little thing go last night?”

Her upper lip curled, and it took everything in me not to launch the trowel at her face. Whatever doubts I might have had were gone now. The woman had intentionally set me up to fail.

I set my jaw against the wave of heat spreading up my throat and clutched the pendant around my neck, struggling to quash the familiar flare of humiliation. Touching the engraved tentacles had become something of a nervous habit lately, but I liked to imagine it was my talisman.

So far, it wasn’t that great at warding off evil.

Fury scorched my chest and rained ash down on my tongue, but I was a girl with no voice. I opened my mouth, only to sigh in exasperation.

Even if I could have told Helen exactly what I thought of her actions, it would have been pointless. The blame rested on my shoulders. I should have known better than to take advice from a woman who dyed the back of her hair jet black while leaving the front white.

She was a skunk, both in looks and behavior.

“You ready?” Tsega asked, her forehead creasing. I couldn’t decide whether it was in concern or disappointment. I imagined everyone in the building was aware of my failed attempt at dress-up.

She squeezed my hand when I nodded and began returning the gardening tools to a small wagon nearby. I handed her a shovel, spotting the headline on one of the old newspapers lining the table.

MVP Candidate Killian Reed’s Future Questionable.

Killian.

At first, I was convinced I imagined his name. After reading the headline twice, I began to realize what a fool I’d been to think that he and I could have worked. It was almost laughable.

The baseball star and the martyr.

We may as well have resided on different planets.

In my haste to learn as much as I could of his injury and what it meant for the Hurricanes, I’d temporarily forgotten I wasn’t alone.

“Not such a catch now, is he?” Helen taunted, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “You know, in my day, we had a no-nonsense approach to dating that you young girls seem to be missing. We accepted nothing less than everything, while your lot is hung up on money and status. It’s pathetic.”

In twenty-four hours, I’d gone from being clueless to completely indiscriminate when it came to the opposite sex. This, from a woman who’d been married four times.

“She didn’t know who he was,” Tsega contended, branding a gardening fork like a weapon.

Her smirk faded. “Wait—you didn’t know who he was?”

I touched the inked words again and shook my head.

“Oh, I bet you thought you were special,” she cackled, her face twisting into a hideous sneer. “You know, I called it the day you arrived. I told Margaret and the girls that you were going to latch onto the baseball player and bring trouble. You’re just lucky you went after him and not Arthur, or things would have been much worse for you, missy.”

The rules might have been a little different, but this world was no different than my own. It seemed ugly people existed just about anywhere. The Helens of the world were always going to be there, judging and finding me lacking.

It only hurts if you let it…

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