Free Breathe Me In by Erin McCarthy Page A

it. But your life was hard too and basically it just sucks that people did what they did to us. But I’m glad you found me. I really am. I’m glad you’re my sister.” I meant that. It was as honest as I could get.
    She swallowed and nodded rapidly, multiple times.
    “You want to dye my hair for me next week?” I asked. “I need a change. I’d like to go blonde once I get a paycheck.” I’d have to apply for a job first, but that was tomorrow’s project.
    Does that mean you’re staying for awhile? (
    It seemed I was. “If you don’t mind.”
    Chloe shook her head and gave me a thumb’s up.
    “I suspect Ethan minds. He doesn’t like me.” With good reason. He was being protective of Chloe and I had been an asshole to both of them the first time we’d met. I’d also taken the ring he’d given me to hock, which hadn’t been the right thing to do. I felt guilty about it and I wanted to repay Ethan back as soon as I could.
    She waved her hand, like it didn’t matter. Hell, maybe it didn’t. I’d seen the way Ethan looked at her. Like Chloe was everything precious in the world and he would shift planets for her to make her happy. I was glad she had someone that thought she was the shit. She deserved that. Maybe someday when Asher was grown up and I wasn’t on the run, I could settle down with someone and be happy. But I wasn’t sure that I could ever trust someone enough to truly do that. Or that anyone would actually want me. Who wanted the girl with the tattoos and the attitude?
    “Should we dye your hair too?” I teased Chloe. “Give you a lip piercing?”
    That brought such a look of horror to her face I laughed out loud. Asher briefly opened his eyes so I clapped my hand over my mouth, still amused. “Oh, crap, way to go, Anya. Wake the baby.”
    You’re a great mother, by the way.
    Instead of feeling like I needed to apologize for all the things I had screwed up, all the ways that Asher’s life was lacking and I wasn’t the best mother, I let it go. I just listened to her- well, her body language- and I trusted her. I believed in myself right in that moment, that love was enough to qualify me as a good mother. That someone else could see that Asher meant everything to me and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to him. Or if he was taken away and he grew up thinking his mother abandoned him the way both of mine had. I never wanted that. Ever.
    I might not be a lot of things, but I was a mother who loved her son with everything in me.
    “Thanks,” I whispered. “He’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
     
    My alarm was set to go off at 7:30 but I woke up at five and couldn’t fall back asleep, thoughts of Anya and the night before running around and around in my head. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus. She had showed up, thrown angry words and a glass, then had nearly destroyed me in a fast and furious bout of kitchen counter sex. That was a first for me. While I’d had my fair share of hot sex, I’d never done anything like that. A hair pulling, lip biting, ass grabbing smackdown, both of us fighting to be the one in charge, both of us a little out of control despite the battle to be in control.
    It had been intense and as I lay in bed in the dark with a raging boner I wondered about her and what her story was. She hadn’t told me anything about herself at all really. Just that she was from New York and sang in a band, but I didn’t know where she was born and raised. She had a sister. A kid. No mention of the baby’s father. It bothered me that I worried and wondered. That I cared. She clearly didn’t care. She had just wanted to get off. So why shouldn’t I just be thankful for my good luck and fuck her as many times as I could before she disappeared never to be seen again?
    Because I was an idiot. A sucker. A bleeding fucking heart.
    If I were like every other dickhead out there scoring with women, I would just view her as a piece of ass.
    But