LITMIR.BIZ

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think you’re right about a lot of things,” he said, sounding somewhere between grim and determined. And something else she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before. “But especially this. I should have asked. I’m asking now.”

      And the trouble was, she loved him. She’d always loved him. And she’d waited a decade for him to ask. If he’d asked in Italy, she might have sugarcoated it, but things were different now. She was different now.

      She owed it to the life inside of her to be the kind of woman she wanted her daughter to become. That strong. That unafraid. That unflinching when necessary.

      “My mother was a drunk,” Paige said flatly. “Her dreams of riches and fame and escape from our awful little hometown came to a screeching halt when she got pregnant with me in high school, so it worked out well that I could dance. The minute I was done with high school she took me to Los Angeles. She made me use my middle name as a stage name because she thought it was fancy, and everyone knew you had to be fancy to be famous. She decided she made an excellent stage mother, if your definition of a stage mother is that she took all the money and then yelled at me to get out there and make more.”

      “That is the common Hollywood definition, yes,” Giancarlo said drily, but she couldn’t stop now. Not even to laugh.

      “A drunk Arleen was one thing,” Paige told him. “But a little while before I met you, my mother met a meth dealer. His name was Denny, and let me tell you, he was so nice to us. A new best friend.” Her mouth twisted. “A month later, she was thousands of dollars in the hole and he was a little less friendly. Two months later, she was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to him, there was no possible way she could get out of it and he stopped pretending. He laid it out for me.” She met Giancarlo’s gaze and held it. Unflinching, she told herself. No matter that she’d never wanted him to know the kind of dirt that clung to her. Not when his whole life was so clean, so pretty, so bathed in light. “I could work it off on my back, or I could watch him kill her. Or—and this was an afterthought—I could make some money off my rich new boyfriend instead.”

      “Paige.” He breathed her name as if it was one of his Italian curses, or perhaps a prayer, and she didn’t know when he’d dropped his hands down to take hers, only that his hands were so warm, so strong, and she was far weaker than she wanted to be if he was what made her feel strong. Wasn’t she? “Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t you let me help you?”

      “Because I was ashamed,” she said, and her voice cracked, but she didn’t look away from him. “Your mother was Violet Sutherlin. My mother was a drug addict who sold herself when she ran out of money, and it still wasn’t enough. Who wanted to sell me because until I met you, I was a virgin.”

      He paled slightly, and she felt his hands tighten around hers, and she pushed on.

      “The first night I spent with you, she realized I’d slept with you,” Paige said, aware that she sounded hollow, when still, she couldn’t regret it. Not a moment of that long, perfect night. Not even knowing what came after. “And when I got home that next day, she slapped me so hard it actually made my ears ring. But not enough to block her out. I’d already ruined her life by being born, you see. The least I could have done was let her sell the one commodity she had—I mean my virginity—to the highest bidder. She’d had the whole thing planned out with some friends of Denny’s.”

      “How did I miss this?” Giancarlo asked, his voice a hoarse scrape in the empty studio.

      “Because I wanted you to miss it.” Her voice was fierce. “Because you were my single rebellion. My escape. The only thing I’d ever had that was good. And all mine. And you came without any strings.” She dropped her gaze then, to where their hands were clasped tight. “But she was my mother.”

      He muttered something in Italian.

      “I think,” Paige said, because she had to finish now, “that if I hadn’t met you, even if I’d had a different boyfriend, I would have just slept with whoever Denny told me to sleep with. It would have been easier.”

      “It would have been prostitution,” Giancarlo said, viciously, but she knew that this time, it wasn’t directed at her.

      “What difference would it have made?” she asked, and she meant that. She shrugged. “I didn’t know anything else. A lot of the dancers slept around and let the men help with their rent. They didn’t call it prostitution—they called it dating. With benefits. Maybe I wouldn’t have minded it, if I’d started there. But I’d met you.” She blew out a breath and met his dark gold gaze. “And I was twenty years old. My mother told me a thousand times a day that men like you had a million girls like me. That I’d thrown myself away on you, that you would get sick of me sooner rather than later and we’d have nothing to show for it. And she, by God, wanted something to show for all her suffering.”

      “How, pray, had she suffered?” His tone was icy, and it warmed something inside of her. As if maybe all those foundations she’d thought he’d shattered in Italy had only frozen and were coming back now as they warmed. As she did.

      “It wasn’t my idea,” Paige said quietly, because this was the important part. “Denny insisted that sex sold. That you were worth an outrageous amount of money. And I thought—I really thought—that I owed her something. That it was just what love looked like. Because I might have ruined her life, but she was my mother. I loved her. I owed her.”

      “You don’t have to tell me any more,” Giancarlo said, his voice a deep rumble. “I understand.”

      “I loved you, too,” Paige whispered. “But I’d had twenty years of Arleen and only a couple months of you. I thought she was the real thing and you were just a dream. I thought if it was really a true thing between you and me, you’d try to understand why I did it. But I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t.”

      He let out a breath, as if he’d suffered a blow.

      “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. So quietly she almost didn’t notice the way it sneaked into her, adding fuel to that small fire that still burned for him, for them. That always would. “I wish you’d come to me. I wish I’d seen what was happening beneath my nose. I wish I’d had any idea what you were going through.”

      “It doesn’t matter now.” And she found she meant that. She kept going, because she needed to finish. To see it through. “I did it. I got half a million dollars for those pictures and I lost you. I gave the money to my mother. It was enough to pay Denny and then some. I was such an idiot—I thought that meant we’d be fine.”

      “How long?” he asked, and she knew what he meant.

      “Another month or so and the money was gone. Then she was in debt again. And it turned out Denny was even less understanding than he’d been before, because there was no rich boyfriend any longer. There was only me. And he was pretty clear about the one thing I was good at. How could I argue? The entire world had seen me in action. I was a commodity again.”

      “My God.”

      “I don’t know about God,” Paige said. “It was the LAPD who busted Denny on something serious enough to put him away for fifteen years. My mother lost her supplier, which meant she lost her mind. The last time I saw her, she was on the streets and she might be there still. She might not have made it this long. I don’t know.” She lifted her chin to look him in the eye. “And that’s what happened ten years ago.”

      “You can’t possibly feel guilty about that.” He sounded incredulous. He frowned at her. “Paige. Please. You did everything you possibly could for that woman. Literally. You can’t stop people when they want to destroy themselves—you can only stop them from taking you along with them.”

      She shrugged again, as if that might shift the constriction in her throat. “She’s still my mother. I still love...if not her, then who she was supposed to be.”

      Giancarlo looked at her for a long time. So long she forgot she’d been too ashamed

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