Dark Secrets(58)

"Vin? Fucking Vin, sweetheart?" he asked, keeping his voice low, but it still had power behind it. "You let me share drinks with that man and he's the reason..."

"Xander," she cut him off, snorting. "I work for him." 

"Yeah, well that's another kind of fucked up we need to discuss at a later date."

"Faith," K cut in, drawing her attention back to his serious face. "What are you going to do? You need a plan before you go back in there."

"I don't really see there being much of an..."

"From what I see," K cut her off, "there are three options."

Since she only saw maybe one and that one was not going to happen, being that it meant Daniel would die a bloody, painful death.

"What are they?"

"One, you tell Vin. You might be a hardass, Faith, but I can't see you doing that. Sealing his fate. That's not you. Two, you tell him you know and he better the fuck not show his face again or you will tell Vin."

"Or three?" she asked, her stomach in painful knots.

"Three is you pretend shit didn't happen. I see you, honey. I see he's in there. Whether or not you have realized that yet or if you're willing to admit it is beside the point. He's in there and you're hurting over this. So you can just bury your head in the sand and let it happen."

"I'm not a ostrich, K."

"She's more like an entire pride of lions in one small body," Xander agreed.

"So you're going with the second," K concluded. He sat back in his chair, considering her for a long moment. Then he shook his head, his cheek snagged by his teeth. "I think that's a bad move, Faith."

"You fucking serious?" Xander asked, brows drawn together. "It's the only choice. She can't trust him."

"What? Because he's a cop?"

"Of course because he's a cop," Xander said, looking at his friend like he'd lost his mind. "Who the fuck is to say he's not playing her? Weasel in then when she trusts him, try to get information out of her? Whose to say he's not building a case against her too? She needs to cut him off."

The reason those words sent a stab of pain to her chest, yeah, she was trying to not think about why that was.

But she couldn't help but think Xander was right.

Maybe it was her conditioning, her knee-jerk reaction to believe most people were generally shitty, always out for themselves. But she couldn't seem to believe Daniel's motives were anything other than ulterior.

That would just fit the pattern, wouldn't it?

Shitty guy after shitty guy.

That was her life.

"I need to get the fuck out of this town," she said, her voice completely empty as she leaned back against the booth seat and looked down at her coffee.

"Hey," Xander said, reaching across the table and covering her sore and beat-up hand with his big, scarred one. The two of them, they were full of the scars from all their personal battles. The difference was, he finally got his reward. He got Ellie. He got love and a future and a baby on the way. He got the world out of his struggle. All she got was shit.

"I don't..."

"No, listen."

"If you feed me some cheesy 'it's a bad day, not a bad life' line, I'm going to clock you. You have no idea how shitty my life has been."

At saying those words, at admitting an emptiness she never even acknowledged alone to herself, she felt the mortifying sting of tears at her eyes.

Fact of the matter was- she had long ago stopped hoping for a happy ever after. That wasn't meant for girls like her- the ones who were battered and bruised and battle-weary, the ones who had walls fifteen feet high and five feet thick around them, the ones who could never see a silver lining.

She didn't hate her life.

That was a bit dramatic and depressive. She certainly was never the woe-is-me type. But there was no denying that she just did what she felt like she needed to. She dangled jail time over Vin's head to keep him paying her mother's hospital bills. She worked so she could sock away money to leave the City and start over somewhere different, somewhere less cold. She taught women self-defense because she wished someone had taught her at a younger age and her mother as well.



       
         
       
        

She got by.

She did a lot of good.

But it was a hollow kind of victory.

It simply never really occurred to her to mourn that.

The fact that she felt like doing so right there in the shitty diner right next door to her work because she was confronted with the fact that the guy she was involved with was just another dirtbag, well, it made no sense.