Will gulped. “Solicitation.”
Those eyebrows that had been pulled down so low over Hector’s face shot up to his hairline. “You were a hooker?”
Will dropped his eyes, not saying anything. There wasn’t really anything to say about that. There was no way to interpret hooker any other way than what it was. He had sold his body for money, plain and simple.
“Can I ask why?”
Will glanced up. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Hector just stared, his dark eyes intense.
Will huffed. He dropped his gaze to stare at his fingers, twisting them together. “My father was in the military. The night before he shipped out, him and my mom snuck off and made me. My father died before he could come home and marry her.”
Hector grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
Will shrugged. “You can’t miss what you never had, I guess.” That was sort of true. He still missed having a father. “Anyway, because my parents were never married, she didn’t get any of his benefits, and because she was a young unwed mother, her parents kicked her out.”
“What about your father’s parents?”
Will shook his head. “They never believed my mother when she told them she was pregnant and my father was…well, the father. She was from the wrong side of the tracks, so obviously she was lying.” Will wondered if Hector could hear the bitterness in his voice. He hated his grandparents, both sets, for what they had put his mother through.
“They do have DNA testing nowadays, you know. It would be easy enough to find out if he was your father.”
Will shook his head. “They’d never go for it. They’d rather believe their son was some fallen hero who died in a big battle than someone who left a bastard from the wrong side of the tracks behind.”
“How did not having a father put you in the streets?” Hector asked.
“The usual way, I guess.” If there was a usual way for hooking on the streets. “My mom died of cancer when I was about twelve. I lived in a few foster homes here and there until I aged out when I was eighteen.”
“No problems in foster care?”
Will shook his head. “The foster homes I stayed in were okay. They weren’t my mom, but I wasn’t abused or anything.”
“Then again, how did you end up on the streets?”
“When you age out of foster care, they don’t give you a big fat check and help you get settled somewhere else. They give you a few days to pack your stuff, then put you on the streets. I had nowhere to go. I had a part-time job that I worked in high school, but I didn’t make enough to afford an apartment on my own. I didn’t have enough experience to get a job full-time. No one would hire me. So…” Will shrugged. “After I ran out of money and spent a few weeks in homeless shelters, I decided I needed to figure out a way to make some money.”
“So, you chose to sell your body?”
Will slammed his hand down on the table. “I was hungry, okay. I hadn’t eaten in days. I was cold and wet and I just wanted a few minutes to breathe. Some guy offered me twenty bucks to blow him. Twenty dollars buys a lot of warmth when you’re cold.”
“Look, Will, I’m not trying to judge you. I’m trying to understand how you came to where you are now.”
Will crossed his arms and glanced away when tears sprouted to his eyes. He hated people coming to their own conclusions about his life when they knew nothing about it. His life hadn’t been horrible by any means, but it hadn’t been easy either. He’d had no one to depend on, no one to make things a little easier or to tell him that everything was going to be all right. He’d just had himself.
“How did you come to know Wilson?”
Will sighed. It seemed as if Hector wasn’t going to happy until he heard the whole sordid story. “After giving that guy a blow job, I decided I could do it again. I saw this guy sitting in a bar and hit him up. He turned out to be Officer Wilson. He busted me.”
“Was that the only time you’ve been arrested?”
“Except for that thing with Terry, yes.” Will shuddered in remembrance of how scared he’d been. “Jail is a horrible place, even if you’re only there for a couple of hours.”
He never wanted to go back.
“Was that the only time you tried to sell yourself?”
Will nodded. “When I got out, Officer Wilson helped me get a job at his favorite diner. He let me sleep on his couch in exchange for doing chores around his house. With a roof over my head, I was able to go to school and be a paramedic.” Will shrugged. “Although now, I doubt anyone would hire me.”
