Page 69 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

Iwas pretty sure AugustusQuinn wanted me to sleep with him instead of my landlord, and that was the reason for his proposition. I really didn’t give a rat’s ass who I was fucking, as long as they were clean, and I had a roof and a bed and a meal once a day. When he made his offer, I accepted it without a second thought.

“Come work for me. I can teach you to do basic administrative things. Answer the phone. File paperwork. Brew me some decent coffee. I work from home and have an empty bedroom you can have. You can stay there, and you don’t have to pay favors to your landlord anymore. I’ll get you your legal documents, and access to healthcare.”

“Okay, Sure. But why? Why are you doing this for me?”

“Because I think you deserve a chance. If you say no, I’m going to drive you down to the DMV and the social security office, get your paperwork, and then drive you back here to your boss and demand he back-pay you all your missed wages, so he doesn’t have a lawsuit on his hands. Then I’m going to file a statutory rape charge against your landlord. Andthen, I’m going to drive you home and put you up in my spare bedroom. Same result but significantly higher chance you’ll be picked up by social services and put into foster care, which would be the legally right thing for me to do, but practically, wouldn’t really put you in a better spot than you are now. I’m assuming you’d prefer the former.”

I took off my name tag, left the keys to the building in the drawer, and left. My boss was late for the 6am shift anyway. Fuck him.

While Augustus was driving me back to my apartment to collect my sorry excuse for belongings, I wondered if I was being stupid again. It was so hard to tell, because honestly, one day I thought I was sane, and the next day I thought I was crazy. Ninety percent of the time I didn’t really care what happened to me, and the other ten percent of the time I wanted to kill myself.

And if I was going to suck someone’s dick, it might as well have been Augustus’s instead of Mordecai’s. I had no loyalty to Mordecai. He was using me, and I was using him. Augustus was nicer to me anyway. And I could tell he had money. If I was being honest, he was a lawyer and had a reputation to uphold. I might be able to use that to my advantage.

He helped me bag up my meager belongings and I left the key to the apartment on the kitchen counter. Then Augustus Quinn drove me to his beautiful house in the heart of Orlando, twenty minutes from frickin’ Disney World, and brought me into his home.

I felt like a stray cat. A moody, ugly, scraggly stray cat who served no purpose other than being a loud, annoying mouth to feed. I gawked as I explored his three-story mansion. He set me up in the spare bedroom on the other side of his room, and then told me to come into his office at the end of the hall when I was ready to begin learning my new job.

“Hold on,” I said, turning to look at him. “If you work from home... why do you come to the gas station every morning?”

He gave me a slightly embarrassed smile. “To see you.”

Over the next few days, he taught me what to say when I answered the phone and how to file his paperwork. He gave me a small laptop and installed a software to teach me how to type, since I’d never learned. He taught me shorthand note taking, and how to sort his inbox and manage his calendar. It took months, but eventually, I felt competent and somewhat helpful.

All the while, he let me stay in that spare bedroom. It had a comfortable full-size mattress, a bedspread with flowers on it, too many pillows, and carpet on the floor. It felt like a luxury hotel or a princess’s castle.

He had me make his coffee in the morning and his sandwich at lunch. I was totally shit at cooking, so he handled dinner for the two of us. He did what he promised and filed for my paperwork, though he didn’t submit it until I turned eighteen, because he didn’t want to attract attention to the underage girl who was living with him and risk having me taken away.

When I turned eighteen and he got copies of my legal documents for me, he took me to a bank and opened a bank account under my name, transferring a significant amount of money into it. I argued with him about it, but he explained that it was my wages from the past few months of working for him. From then on, he paid me for my work. It wasn’t a high wage, but it was fair, and he taught me to balance my finances and pay my taxes.

He began teaching me more things about his job, and I started helping him more with his cases. He helped me apply for grants and loans and get into the local community college. I got my GED, then my associates degree by the time I was nineteen. When I wasn’t in class, I was helping him with admin work.

And the whole time, I kept waiting for the ball to drop. I kept expecting him to come in one day and say, “I’ve had a long day, Alice, and I need you.” Or for him to be on the phone and start undressing me. Or to grab me by the hair and shove me down on my knees and use me. After almost two years of no sexual advances from him at all, I started to wonder if maybe he was gay. But that didn’t add up, because sometimes, I caught him looking at me in a way that told me he did like the way I looked.

The thing was, Mister Quinndidstill have respect for me, even after I told him everything. I told him about my mood swings and my inability to not be paranoid, and my lack of emotional permanence. He took me to the doctor and got me a diagnosis and some medicine. I told him about the nightmares, and the panic attacks, and how sometimes I wanted to slit my wrists and just let all the pain drain out of my body, and he found me a kind older woman who I could talk to, who had experience in my disorders and my struggles. I messed up all the time, I failed regularly, and I knew I disappointed him often. But every single time, he redirected me, taught me, and guided me back on track. He refused to let me quit. He refused to kick me out, even when I acted up. I even started acting up on purpose to see if he would shout at me or get mad, but he always interpreted it for what it was: me being scared and needing his guiding hand.

It was starting to hurt, and I was starting to get scared, because I was starting to love him.

The day I told him, he broke my heart.

We were sitting on the couch after dinner, and I decided to sit a little closer to him than normal. Recently, I’d started noticing things about Mister Quinn that I hadn’t noticed before. I liked the way his eyes lit up when he laughed, and I liked looking at his square jawline and sharp nose. He had a handsome face and a beautiful smile when he chose to show it. His hair was getting even more grey, and he teased me and told me that it was all my fault.

“Thank you,” I whispered softly.

He muted the evening news and looked at me. “For what, babygirl?”

“For loving me.”

He shut his mouth and stared at me, his eyes guarded. I scooted a little closer.

“I know you do. You wouldn’t put up with me otherwise.”

He didn’t speak, and he seemed to be calculating his options on how he would respond. He cut off the TV.

“When you asked me to come live with you and work for you, did you already love me? Or did it take a little longer?”

He still didn’t answer.Damn lawyers, refusing to self-incriminate. I scooted closer so I was almost touching him. His body was tense, tight like a spring about to release.

“It took me longer,” I shrugged. “It snuck up on me. At first, I agreed to move in because I thought you’d be less violent than Mordecai. And maybe less smelly. I didn’t really care, you know?”

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