Page 28 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

I can make out small, painstaking displays, little wooden, stretch-legged figurines I can’t afford, balanced around decorated canvases I also can’t afford.

I walk further on. This is all new to me: even when I did go to Wallack’s, I never went grubbing behind the store. Now, I’m getting a behind-the-scenes look at where Wallack’s keeps its lime-green dumpster, tucked in snug to the newly painted parking lot, and just how full it is—full to brimming.

Full to brimming.

I stop in my tracks. Look around.

It’s still the kind of too-early morning I never would’ve been awake to see in my previous life. Early enough that Wallack’s probably isn’t even open. There aren’t any cars in the parking lot.

But that dumpster, though, full to brimming …

I could just walk by, mosey on past all casual, just to see. Then, if I do see …

Then what?

I roll my eyes at myself. By now, I’ve dumpster dived more times than I can count. Outside the exotic-named health-food store for some hardly-bruised purple and orange carrots and just-expired probiotic blueberry-açai yogurt. Behind the shawarma joint, for the burnt fries nobody wanted.

If you don’t dumpster dive, the only other options for eating are stealing (no thanks), or begging, which I’m just not ready to stomach.

The soup kitchen is okay if you’ve got time for a walk, although it’s definitely depressing, with all of us hungry, grumbling homeless packed in there like rats.

Still. This is Wallack’s.

I inch closer, cross the street. My one eye stays peeled, as though Jeremy might be crouched somewhere near with high-definition binoculars on the off-chance his long-lost artsy love might be stopping by to dumpster dive on this fine Monday morning.

I chuckle, then shut up.

Time to get down to business.

And there is business to be had. I’m close enough now to see that Wallack’s dumpster has been kept up as nice as the store—no rust or stray garbage, only the peak of certain promising-looking items.

Do it.

I throw one last look around—Forgive me, Jeremy—and then I hoist myself up onto the steel frame and look in.

Jackpot.

I practically fall over. I can’t believe my luck.

These days, the only good fortune I get is just the absence of bad luck—getting through a day without getting assaulted, arrested, mugged, cannibalized.

But today, it is actual good freaking luck, heaven-sent good luck, the kind of good luck that is so rare and beautiful that I’d almost stopped believing it was possible. Here it is, right before me, the gold pot at the end of the rainbow.

A whole carton of half-used oil paint tubes, a thick forest of brushes splattered with paint that can almost definitely be washed off and made good as new. There are even three-ring sketchbooks—with some pages ripped out and others scribbled on, but still!

I don’t wait for someone to reveal the cameras and tell me this is all some big, cruel joke. I just grab the lot, press them to my chest, and hop out, throwing around one last look—more out of habit than anything.

The coast is clear.

Joy: 1. Witnesses: 0.

Time to go.

I practically levitate all the way back to my tent. I only let out the delighted cry I’ve kept buried in my rib cage once I’ve fully zipped my tent flap shut.

“YES!”

I pump the air a few times with my victorious fists, laugh, and collapse onto my sleeping bag.

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