She’d had too much awfulness in the past to not get everything good now.
“So yeah,” she said. “I worked there for like a year, but things kept escalating with the boss. First, he hit on me. Or would hold back my paychecks unless I came to his place to pick them up. Then he started paying in cash, under the table, which was fine with me because I didn’t have a checking account.”
“You don’t have a bank account?” he asked.
She flushed. “I know it’s stupid. But… it’s better to do everything with cash. If not, when you’re poor, you get hit with overdrafts if you aren’t constantly watching, and service fees. And you have to go in the bank a lot, and I just… It was easier to just keep an eye on my money. I was saving it after all.”
“If you’d been saving, what happened? How did you end up on the street?”
“Last week, Bernard came over. He was drunk, I guess angry at me for putting him off for so long. He said he’d put a roof over my head and given me a job for a year, and it was time to show my gratitude.”
“He didn’t give you anything. You worked for it.”
“There are men who will use any excuse to make a woman feel indebted to him. I’m sure I wasn’t the first woman in a bad situation Bernard hit on, and I won’t be the last.”
“So what happened?” he asked, his heart thumping from adrenaline as he resisted the urge to find this Bernard immediately.
“I turned him down, thinking he would be mad but leave, but he tried to force me.”
Adrien’s knuckles popped from the overly tight fists his hands were making. “I see. And?”
“I got away,” she said. “I smashed something over his head and made a break for it, grabbing the backpack I kept packed by my bed with my old sleeping stuff.”
“An escape plan. I like it.”
“I honestly hadn’t been planning to escape, though. If I had, I would have made sure the envelope with my money in it had been in my backpack, rather than under my mattress.”
His brows lowered. “So your money was left behind?” An idea struck him, something Dante would definitely approve of. “What do you say to us going to get it?”
Eleven
For a moment, Adrien wondered if she had even heard him, given the blank look on her face.
Then she shook her head. “No. Too dangerous. Nothing good would come of it.”
“You getting what is yours would come from it. And we will also go set you up with a bank account.”
“They check your credit,” she said, a pained expression on her face. “I doubt I have any now, especially since I closed my last account. I was young, though.”
He knew how complicated banks could be. In fact, due to the way he and the other precious metal dragons had been barely surviving in the modern world before the other dragons had found them, he understood many things more than she would ever guess.
He’d been as good as homeless, hiding out in a wreck with his friends as they tried to figure out survival in a world where you couldn’t just trade in raw metals without drawing suspicion.
You had to trade metals for paper money, and you needed to use that paper money to pay for goods, but it all ended with one carrying a bunch of coins and garbage unless you put the cash in a bank and then used a little card with the money on it.
It was much easier. Now that Kelsey’s money troubles were over, he was sure she would appreciate the convenience. Plus, it would be fun to help walk someone through the same things he’d been helped with.
“You’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be fine. I was late figuring out banks, too.”
“Really?” she asked. “I thought you would have always been fine with them, given that you seem like you’ve always had money.”
“I’ve had some rough spots. At one point, I had to start all the way over. I had practically nothing,” he said. “Except for a few friends and a roof over my head, which made all the difference. So yes, I’m not judging how bad things have been for you. I just want to help them get better.
“But why?” she asked, exasperated, as the waiter came with their drinks. Scotch for him and some kind of fruity cocktail for her.
“What is that?” he asked. “Is it even alcohol?”
She nodded, pushing the glass to him. “You want a sip?”
He wondered for a moment about how easily she would share something as intimate as a glass with him, but as they’d already kissed, he supposed it was pointless to worry about it.
He took a sip and then passed it back. “That is delicious.”
“Do you want one?” she asked.