Page 33 of About the Green

I'm caught somewhere between vulnerability and defensiveness, I—I don't know what to say now that he's starting to see the cracks in my porcelain, the little chips that I've been concealing, literally and figuratively.

Vert wouldn’t stop pestering me and prodding at me. Consistently trying to catch what he could. I know that it’s not because he cares about me specifically. But he couldn’t have known what he was going to find when he kept digging.

It's strange, beyond strange, because for the longest time I had existed without any sort of questioning. As long as you look like you're good looking, better than good looking, then no one will ask any questions or wonder why. Why are you always so put together? Why are you always smiling?

Sure, people don’t need a reason, but how many people have one anyway?

Vert isn't having it. He refuses to accept what I’ve presented. He sees right through my deflection and continues to press.

Why did I tell him? Why did I let him find me again, even after he put me in a fucking trunk today? I could have gone anywhere else. I should have gone to my place.

At least then there would be a locked door between us.

He doesn’t say anything as I finish my strawberry treat and then settles the tab. Like someone who knows they’re in trouble, I follow him back to the car I fled from not too long ago. He holds the passenger door open for me to step inside. This time I’m in the front seat instead of the trunk. It only hurts when we hit uneven paving and my side jostles in the seat.

He doesn’t take me to my place. He’s going to his. I don’t have room to make any objections because I’m already injured and there is no fight left in me, even with the sugar rush of all the calories I sipped down earlier.

I have no weapons, nothing to protect myself, not really. My blade could only do so much in direct confrontation. I'd get hurt far more with nothing to help me in a struggle. I could probably wiggle away, but here I have no escape, especially not under his heated eyes—or how they're more than just heated. It's concern.

Why?

Compassion?

An even larger why.

It was my choice to jump from the car. I panicked but what was I supposed to do when faced with a trunk? I could not be taken again. I refused.

But now I’m back in the same car, facing the same conflict.

“You gonna tell me why you rolled out of the car like that?”

I still don’t want to. “Why does it matter? I’m here aren’t I? That’s what you wanted.”

He shakes his head twice. “Wanted answers. Even a stunt like that won’t get you out of it.”

I recline the seat back, uncaring of how the crumbling mud from my outfit is getting all over the rental. If I’m going to share anything, I might as well get comfortable.

“I hear for some people that fostering is something that saved their life. That without being in the system, they would have ended up dead, or who knows what.” For me, that wasn't true. “I didn't move from family to family or place to place, but I did have less than a perfect fostering experience.”

He listens intently, but I have to take a second to swallow back the bile from my memories. Maybe a milkshake was a bad choice. “How was it less than perfect?”

“The couple that took me in had three other kids, you could say that they fostered with the mentality that a child owes them everything. After all, they took you from your worse-off situation. After my mother overdosed when I was only five–in the room with me–you could say that my situation was better off by being in a household that had two parents and there was food every day.” I scoff, tucking a crusty lock of hair behind my ear, “What they didn't talk about was the continual spewing of religious dogma that had absolutely no bearings on good or bad or otherwise. If you stepped out of line… Well, let's just say running away at sixteen was nine years too late.”

With brows low over dark eyes, Vert questions, “You ran? Where did you go?”

“I didn't have very many options, especially being that young, and also running from the law, because all they wanted was to return me back to my loving foster parents. So I had to do something else.” Streets pass by in a blur as I recount what it was like being on them. Vert remains quiet though it’s his waiting silence instead of the one that indicates he’s ignoring me.

Though it’s hard, I continue, “I'd met Liezel, and though she was older than me, she recognized something in me that ended up being extremely profitable. Not while I was underaged… for–” I cut myself off, not wanting to talk about that part now or ever. “At first, I just hung out with her. Then I realized that I could do what they did at the club and I could do it better than some of them. I wasn't old enough to dance or work at the clubs, but I could absolutely entertain men. That I was pretty damn good at it. That's when I met him, he wasn't like the other guys…”

Even saying that out loud now makes me sound like a fucking idiot, because all men are the same.

“Chris liked me. It felt like he liked me for me. Broken, a little weird, too violent, aggressive, and oftentimes combative, he—” I take a deep breath. “He didn't try to change me. He liked me just as I was, and that felt different—good—but he didn't love me, and isn't that weird? He never wanted to do anything. A good thing since I was only seventeen. He certainly never fucked me, but I wanted him. I wanted him so badly it was tearing me up inside, but he actually loved someone else.”

I feel Vert’s eyes on me. The unspoken question hangs in the air but he doesn’t have to ask.

“He loved Liezel, and I realized that he was taking care of me, entertaining me, because he wanted to get close to her, and I also love Liezel. Not like, romantic, but like, familial. Like a big sister. I would never do anything to hurt her, but I wanted him. He didn't want me back. She didn’t want him back either. Something about me being too young, too naïve, or maybe he was just so blinded by everything that Liezel was that I never stood a chance.” Who could blame him? “She is an actual goddess.”

“What happened?”