Hail Mary by Hope Anika

Author:Hope Anika [Anika, Hope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hope Anika

Chapter 19

Shameless.

That’s what she was.

Don’t stop, she’d said. Please. More.

And Beau…he’d delivered.

Wynn stared up at the plaster ceiling above her bed and wondered why.

Why had she just…surrendered?

She’d learned not to trust at a very young age. Not her mother; not any of the people who surrounded her mother. She’d had to run from both more than once because her mother would try to barter her for the poison that ruled their lives.

Only Wynn’s awareness had saved her. Her reflexes; the savagery with which she fought if anyone got too close. But most of the time, she’d run, willing to face any danger to escape the hell that chased her. She would hide until it was safe, and then, because she had no choice—Lara was still her mother, which was better than being alone on the streets—she would return.

But always wiser. More distant, her blood a little colder. Knowing that someday she wouldn’t be fast enough.

When she’d found an abandoned butterfly knife in one of the drug houses her mother favored, she’d pocketed it. It was the first weapon she’d ever held, ever owned, and the glint of that steel—the smooth, sharp edge—had made her feel, for the first time in her life, powerful.

Instead of powerless.

There had never been a question of if she would have to use it, only when. And she’d realized then that she had to be ready to go if the opportunity presented itself. So she’d begun to stash pennies and cans of stolen food in unnoticed corners of the houses where her mother got high; behind pipes and under loose floorboards. She’d pocketed anything she could use as a weapon: an old fork, a railroad spike, a jagged piece of roofing tin. But then her mother had gotten pregnant with Jenna, and no matter the desperation she felt, Wynn couldn’t bring herself to abandon her helpless baby sister.

They were all each other had.

And Wynn knew, if she left, Lara would simply sell Jenna, or give her away, or just leave her in an alley somewhere and walk away. So she’d stayed. Lara had often left Jenna unfed and unwashed, crying in a filthy blanket on a hard wooden floor while she went out in search of poison. Wynn had always known, if she ran, Jenna would die.

Or worse.

So trusting was not in Wynn’s blood. It had taken a long time to let her guard down with Fran; longer still to trust Fran’s tenants. Even with Sasha, it had taken years. And trusting people was something with which Wynn still struggled.

Beau Greystone couldn’t possibly change that. Could he?

Bad-tempered and stubborn, with a wide strip of mean. A lawman.

A man who was still deeply in love with his dead wife.

Goddamn you. I gave up and I liked it. Then you came along, poking the bear, no judgment, no pity. Looking at me like you see me, accepting what I can’t even fucking accept myself.

She didn’t know what that meant…except that he didn’t seem very happy about any of it.

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