Page 65 of Worth

I raise a brow at her. “You don’t seem damaged.”

She gives me a wry smile. “I would think you’d know that sometimes it’s easier to hide your damage than face it.” She sighs, looking at the water. “I was ten when I was sold.”

I keep quiet, watching her as she plays with the tab on her can.

“My younger sister,”—her voice breaks—“and I used to play in an abandoned house a few blocks from home. Our parents had told us a million times to stay out of it because it was falling apart, but we would go and pretend to be whatever we wanted to that day. Explorers, mermaids, fairies…I always let Cressa pick, and we’d play for hours in that house while our parents were at work.

“A week before…before it happened, we were playing in the house and the floor gave way underneath us. We managed to pull each other out before we fell through the floor into the basement. My legs were badly scratched, but Cressa only had a single scrape on her arm. I didn’t want to go back after that, especially not after the beating our father gave us for disobeying. Cressa loved going there, though, and convinced me to go back a week later.”

She falls silent, and when she looks at me, there is sorrow in her eyes. “We were playing as far away from the hole as I could get us because I was terrified of falling. Not just the actual falling, but we both were terrified of the basement. It was pitch black and smelled terrible. We’d been too afraid to use a flashlight to look around down there; were so afraid that we had blockaded the door to the basement with a pile of bricks from the crumbling wall around the house. We had convinced ourselves that monsters lived down there.”

Her voice takes on a tightness. “She didn’t scream when she fell through the floor. She just made this gasping sound as the floor splintered underneath her. I can still remember how big her eyes got as she started to fall. I reached out for her, but before I could even get my arm out, she was gone. I could only hear my own screaming as she disappeared. When I finally calmed down enough to call for her, she didn’t answer.

“I grabbed our flashlight, but I was too afraid of falling to get close to the hole, so I ran for the basement door. I cleared every brick out of the way to open it. I was so afraid of going down those stairs, of seeing what was down there. It turned out,” she murmurs, eyes glazing over, “that there was nothing down there to be afraid of. Just an empty dark room. But my sister—but Cressa…”

A strangled noise comes from Val’s throat as the memory hits her. “When she had fallen, the rotted beam that had broken beneath her had hit the floor first. She had fallen right on top of it and its jagged edge, and it had skewered through her, just below her chest.” Val shakes her head, like she still doesn’t want to believe it. “It took me an hour to finally pull myself up the basement steps. My parents were devastated, and they blamed me for her death, for going back to that house after they’d told us not to, especially after almost falling through the floor once. On the night of her burial, my father beat me so severely that he broke a rib that punctured my lung. Then both of my parents drove me to the hospital and dumped me outside the door with an abandonment form tucked into my pocket. They didn’t even try to sell me.”

I know I have a horrified look on my face, but I can’t seem to pull myself together long enough to make it go away.

“The hospital didn’t treat me,” she says bitterly. “They called the Skin unit to come pick me up, and I was sold a couple of days later. I wasn’t even allowed to heal before my new master put me to work in the kitchen, cleaning dishes, and scrubbing floors by hand. Aiden nabbed me six years later and I’ve been working with them ever since—four years now.”

“I’m sorry for what you went through,” I murmur. “That’s awful.”

Val looks at me directly after a moment of silence. “It’s different, what I went through versus what you went through. But at the end of the day, our hurt is all the same. Trauma broke us, but we don’t have to let it control us. It’s why I changed my name when I started working with Zander and Aiden, to Valora. To remind myself that Iambrave.”

I don’t know Val that well, but I feel like she’s not telling me any of this to make me feel sorry for her, or garner attention for herself. I don’t think she wants me to fawn all over her, so I don’t. I consider how I would want someone to react to me saying what she just did and realize that I would want to anyone who heard me to act like I wasn’t a walking soap opera.

I raise my can, twisting to face her. “To being brave.”

Val grins, tapping her can with mine. “And to making them kiss every last goddamn toe.”

Chapter 22

Blake is fucking drunk.

I didn’t realize Val had been slipping her cans of some fruity bullshit until the sun was dipping below the horizon and she’d had too many. Most girls would have been giggling and falling all over themselves. But not Blake.

Blake seems to have become laser focused with alcohol on board. The way she keeps watching me is predatory—like she plans on hunting me down and absolving me of the last of my sanity.

Interestingly enough, her vicious attention hasn’t landed on Aiden at all. I can’t tell what that’s supposed to mean, but he should consider himself lucky. Her immature little attempts to get back at me are annoying, and he doesn’t seem to be encountering them anywhere near as much as I do.

Of course, I’ve also heard and seen the groveling.

I had followed him when he came back that day, waiting at the foot of the stairs to listen to him speak to Blake. To say it surprised me when I heard what he said, asking her to punish him, would be an understatement. Aiden didn’t accept punishment—not after our master we had in common at the end of our stint as Skins. Yet he was willing to do it for her.

I want to wonder whyher, but I already know. I knew the moment I saw the way Aiden looked at Blake on day one. I knew the moment I saw Blake tame Aiden during a dark spell. I knew from the moment I saw Aiden and Blake naked in a bed together.

Idon’tknow if Aiden has ever loved a woman the way he loves Blake.

Val says something to Blake and she tosses her head back, a laugh breaking out of her. The firelight dances over her, making her blonde hair gleam and shine. She leans forward, toward Val, a conspiratorial smirk on her face. I don’twantto fucking know what they’re plotting together.

Shifting uncomfortably, I have a moment of regret for coming with Aiden and Blake, pulling at the collar of my standard button-up that I changed into earlier; one of the ones which isn’t pink. I can feel how sticky I am underneath the material, the humidity thick around me, and my slacks aren’t helping either.

“You going to sit over here by yourself all night too?”

I glance at Aiden as he plops down next to me. “I’m avoiding that,” I answer curtly, nodding at Blake, whose attention is back on me and it burns hotter than the flames between us.

Aiden sighs. “Why won’t you just admit that you want Blake? You’re not tricking anyone, Z.”

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