Pacifier

🌹Della🌿

It was a strange hotel. Quiet.

The woman behind the desk looked tired and unsurprised. Like she'd seen everything so many times before she was blind to the worst now.

So we checked in with Conway and she offered us a sleepy half smile and our keys and said nothing about the bloody hand print he left on her desk.

Said nothing about the lost girl whose missing persons plea was playing on one of the faded fuzzy televisions behind her.

She just gave us our keys and smiled softly, seeing only Sam and the bag on his shoulder, and we went upstairs undisturbed, me tucked under Sam's arm, wearing his jacket, an unlit cig behind my ear.

"Well this is nice," I smirked sarcastically, eyeing Sam as I lowered myself backwards onto the bed and kicked my shoes off. I leant back on my elbows with challenging eyes, waiting to see what he would say.

"Aye basically the Ritz," he cracked a grin dropping the bag at the end of the bed, "make yourself at home lass," he said before he turned away, busied himself with Conway who he shoved into the bathroom, following after him and locking the door.

"Put the telly on or somet Elle," he said before he left me alone on the bed with nothing to do but wonder what might be going on behind those closed doors.

I heard a scuffle but Conways fight was weak and the moans of pain which escaped him proved how feeble he really was.

I knew who he was but only because I'd paid attention to the Reids in school. The lads who liked to brag about the secret billionaire who would visit their uncle Billy sometimes. Afford them all special priveliges.

Izzy had always ignored them, presuming them to be bullshitting, and so had I until I'd overheard a conversation in the balcony between Meghan and Nakita, on one of those evenings Id snook out to see my brother and his friends.

They'd been talking quiet enough for me to realise they were worth listening to. So I had.

And I'd heard Meghan mention that there were other people now, other places you could earn more. People you didn't even have to work for, people who would pay you just to keep them happy.

She'd dropped the names of a couple richies and Conway had been one of them.

So from then on I'd listened whenever I heard her talking, whenever I'd heard anyone talking about Conway and the poshies we liked to laugh at. I'd been curious, thinking id found something to invest my time in, a way to be involved in my brothers world, a way to be useful to them.

Now, seeing the disgust in Sam's eyes whenever hed glanced over to check on Conway in the back of the car and in the hotel lobby, I had a feeling I was lucky I'd only ever listened in. That I'd never asked or tried to get closer to the older girls.

I knew what they did for a living, knew that I'd heard the names of girls with the same occupation listed as casualties over those radios I used to listen in on. Knew I any sense of security girls like Meghan thought they had was imagined. That you weren't safe just cause you'd fucked a few richies, just cause you knew how to get under the skin of dangerous men.

I knew it took more than that. That's why id been so careful to play the game with Sam. That's why my every move and every action had been thought out so carefully.

It wasn't my body I'd needed him to love, it was me. All of me.

But I was beginning to realise I wasn't so clever as I had first felt. That I didn't know as much about all that as id first thought. That all these moves I'd made had wound up trapping me at the centre of my own lie. And it didn't really feel like a lie anymore.