Page 33 of Craving

Camilla glanced at the wall and kept moving her paintbrush along the edges where the roller wouldn’t reach. She hadn’t talked about her ex in a long time, and she worried that Marlon would judge her. In a way, it was easier to talk as they worked side by side, not looking at each other. After a moment, the words came. “I was basically homeless, and he offered me a place to stay.” She grimaced. “Which seems to be a theme in my life, now that I think about it.”

The roller paused. Marlon glanced over. “Yesterday, did you feel”—he cleared his throat—“did you feel like you had to say yes to me because you’re staying here?”

“Oh!” Camilla exclaimed. “No! Not at all. It’s different now. I’m not entirely homeless; I have options.” Even if one of them was just an air mattress on the bakery floor. She gave him a wry smile. “You just happen to be the best one of a bad lot.”

Marlon snorted, and tension drained out of his shoulders. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I think.”

A laugh fell from Camilla’s lips. She was mangling this conversation, but neither of them seemed bothered by it. “I was young: only seventeen. He was in his mid-twenties. I know now that he was preying on me because I was vulnerable and naive. I worked part-time and managed to get some loans, and he somehow persuaded me to deposit almost all that money into his bank account. He had me convinced I’d mess up my finances if I managed them myself, and that he could make better decisions for the two of us. Of course, now I know he just wanted my cash. He wanted to control me.”

Camilla’s throat grew tight. This stupid loan was the last vestige of her old life. It was the last bad decision she’d made, and she couldn’t wait to be free of it. She’d fought so hard to get to where she was with her bakery, her career. She clung to her independence like a lifeline.

In Camilla’s experience, that’s exactly what it was.

“How’d you get out?” Marlon’s voice was low, and there was no judgment in it; maybe that’s what was so comfortable about speaking to him.

“I finally opened up to one of my mentors at work, the first job I got after culinary school. She was this silver-haired hardass who’d worked in restaurants all her life, and I broke down sobbing in front of her. I thought she’d fire me for sure, but she just bundled me up and brought me to her house. She gave me five hundred dollars and said under no circumstances was I to pay her back, and she sat beside me while I opened a new bank account and had my pay diverted to it. Then she got a couple of the guys in the kitchen to come with me to get my stuff from my ex’s house, and that was it. I lived with her for a year and a half. I had to change my phone number because he wouldn’t stop pestering me, but he eventually moved on.”

“Strong woman,” Marlon said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Camilla answered, huffing, “I felt the furthest thing from strong at the time. Took me a long, long time to date again. I haven’t moved in with a boyfriend since. If anyone asks me about my finances, I get my back up.”

Maybe that’s why she hadn’t told her friends about the loan. It was part shame, part misplaced self-preservation. There were parts of Camilla’s life that felt wrong to share. After she’d got back on her feet and moved out of her mentor’s house, she vowed never to rely on anyone again.

“I don’t think being strong and feeling strong necessarily go hand in hand,” Marlon said. “You asked for help. You got out. You’ve built a life for yourself despite all the ways you’ve been mistreated. The fact that it was difficult just proves how strong you truly are.”

Camilla had to focus very, very hard on her paintbrush, because her eyesight had gone blurry. Her voice was rough when she said, “Thank you.”

Their eyes met for a long moment. From the top of the stepladder, Camilla was a few inches taller than Marlon. It would be so easy to lean over and press her lips to his. She could forget about her hesitations and let her desires take over.

They could work out the tension buzzing between them, give in to temptation. Sex with Marlon would be so good; she already knew it.

But Camilla had so much on her plate. She had to pay Frankie Smith. She had to keep her business afloat. She had to make sure she had a place to live. How would she feel if they slept together, and then it all fell apart?

Marlon seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he let out a breath. “We should keep painting,” he said, but there was a question in his eyes.

Camilla nodded and forced herself to look away from him. Her hands only trembled a bit when she brought the paintbrush back up to the wall.

That night, when her vibrator ran out of batteries, she nearly put a hole in the wall when she flung it across her bedroom in frustration.

ELEVEN

Frank Smith owned a payday loan business on the outskirts of Stirling. It was located in a strip mall on the freeway that led southeast to Massachusetts, in between a shady-looking massage parlor and a vacant shop. Marlon parked in front of the building and cut the engine.

“Ready?” he asked Elton.

“Could you have chosen a more frigid day?” Elton grumbled. “It’s not quite cold enough out there for me.”

A gust of wind shook the company van for emphasis.

Marlon huffed and shoved a beanie on his head. He zipped up his jacket and stepped outside, grabbing the file he’d created for the job before heading toward the business’s doors.

A car sat idling next to the entrance, and he spied a dark-haired man in a leather jacket warming his hands next to the car’s heater vents. He had a distinctly protruding forehead. The man glanced over, glowering, and Marlon looked away.

“I bet this place attracts the classy crowd,” Elton said, scowling at the car, then at the massage parlor, then at Smith's business. “It’s so swanky it makes me want to put my tux on.”

“You don’t own a tux, Elton.” Marlon opened the door and stepped inside.

A man stood behind a pane of thick glass. His eyes scanned Marlon and Elton, then moved to the logo on their chests. He pressed a button next to the back door and spoke into it.

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