Page 1 of Highest Bidder

Chapter One - Olivia

This can’t be happening. It’s a nightmare. I’m going to wake up any minute now.

Somehow, no matter how many times I tell myself that, nothing changes. I’m still standing behind the diner, still holding the trash bag I was bringing out to the dumpster like I always do before heading home after work.

I’m a few hundred bucks poorer than I was before I came out here, though. That’s the difference. All he wanted was the money. He didn’t take my wallet or my phone. Just the cash I made in tips, cash I was going to use to cover the rest of my rent and utilities for the month. And now it’s gone.

What am I going to do? That was my last shot at covering my bills. I already worked a double yesterday and today in hopes of making the money, and I did. I fucking did it. And I have nothing to show for all those hours on my feet, gritting a smile in the faces of ignorant, handsy men passing through in their trucks. Who cares about touching a girl’s ass when you’re only passing through anyway, right?

Angry, frustrated tears well up in my eyes, but a blank them away. Crying isn’t going to get me anywhere. If crying helped anything, I’d be living in paradise right now, sipping margaritas on a beach.

What am I going to do?

Get evicted, that’s what. The landlord was pretty clear about that. No more extensions, no more looking the other way. I miss this payment, I’m out.

What am I going to do? I keep asking myself that question, don’t I? It’s not getting me anywhere.

One of those tips was a hundred-dollar bill. For some reason, that’s what hurts the most, losing that. It came from my friend Emma, who visits me at the diner once or twice a week. Now that she’s got her new life with her new man, I lost her as a neighbor but not as a friend. The only true friend I’ve made this past year. I always tell her not to leave me a big tip, but she always does. Today, that hundred-dollar bill was like a gift from heaven. And even that’s gone.

My hand is shaking when I pull out my phone and punch in her contact. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have no choice. “Em? It’s me. I need a favor.”

* * *

“You don’t have to do this, you know. Colten could give you the money.”

“I’m not going to take your boyfriend’s money, Emma.” I dig into the very back of my closet, looking for the few dresses from my past that I brought with me when I made a run for it. How has it only been a year? I was a different girl the night I left my father’s home. Sheltered and spoiled, someone who only thought she understood what it meant to work hard.

“Fine, then it would be a loan. Whatever.”

I close my fingers around the black Versace and pull it free from the hanger. It’s like touching my past. I haven’t had an excuse to wear it since I hung it back there when I first moved in. My third apartment in twelve months, but the one I stayed at the longest. “You know I love you for that,” I tell her, holding the dress up in front of me. “But that’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem.”

I glance away from my reflection in the full-length mirror and find her frowning. She must see the way I’m looking at her, because she lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Sometimes you come out with random things like that and I don’t know who I’m talking to anymore. Like you’re some guru delivering a lesson.”

Yes, sometimes I end up sounding like my father without meaning to. “But it’s true, though,” I insist. “That would cover me for this month, but what about next month and the month after that? I need to make a lot of money, right away.”

“But like this?”

“It didn’t go so badly for you, did it?” I’ve already showered carefully, shaving all my important bits, making sure my skin and hair no longer carry the stench of grease from the diner. I’ve gotten used to that smell. But I doubt a man willing to pay big bucks for me would appreciate it much.

“That’s different. I know I got lucky.” She got lucky because the man who purchased her virginity at an underground auction house happened to be her professor, who already had a thing for her to begin with. Turns out he does bookkeeping for the family who runs the house and was there in time to see her up for bid.

“I don’t have the luxury of worrying about that right now.” I slip into the dress, which fits me like a glove the way it did the day I picked it up from the boutique. After it had been tailored for me, of course.

“I remember how much you didn’t want me to do this when it was my turn.”

She’s got me there. “I was wrong.”

“Olivia. Please, let us help you.”

I leave her sitting on the bed and go to the bathroom, running the water in the sink as a way of drowning her out for a minute. I don’t want to lash out at her. I don’t want to alienate the only person I’ve met in my new life who was worth anything. But I don’t want her money. I don’t want her boyfriend’s money.

I want money of my own, and if that means selling my virginity to get it, so be it. Because that’s still better than the alternative of going home and admitting I couldn’t hack it out here in the so-called real world. “I’ve got it under control. I just need to know what to expect.”

“It’s pretty much the way I described it to you before.” She sounds sad, defeated, but I don’t have time to worry about that right now. I need to hurry up if I’m going to get to the auction house before bidding starts. “They take your information when you first get there, then you wait in a room with the other girls and eventually, they call your name. You stand on stage while the men place their bids.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. All sales are final.” I look up from the basin and to find her watching me from the doorway—which isn’t very far away seeing as how this bathroom is roughly the size of a postage stamp. “Are you absolutely sure? This is a huge step. Just because I did it doesn’t mean you should have to.”

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