“Who?”
“Everyone… soon enough.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed once under his breath. It felt like a knife through her heart.
“Sweetheart,” he huffed, “half the town’s probably been waiting for this since the first time I walked you home.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
“You think this is funny.”
“No.” His expression went soft. “No, it isn’t.”
She looked terrified of what came next.
She had lived her entire life understanding one brutal truth—a story she tried to escape when her employer's son in London turned his interest in her direction. The job that had seemed like a lifeline when she was down on her luck and pregnant turned into a nightmare. She had spent years working for food and board with barely enough pay to put clothes on her son's back. It was only when life took a turn for the worse that she had fled and ended up here in Wakefield. And for what?
“We need to stop this.”
James stared at her.
“No.”
Asha gave a short humourless laugh.
“I am not asking. I am telling you.”
“YOU still want me. This is bull-scutter.” His accent was making it difficult for her to follow.
“You think this is nonsense?” Her voice wobbled. “People are talking.”
“Let them talk.”
“That is easy for you to say.”
He took a step toward her.
“Asha—”
“No.” She backed away instantly. “No, James. Listen to me for once.”
Something in her face made him stop.
There was a kind of determination on her face that people have when they are about to cut off their own arm to survive.
“We were stupid and selfish,” she whispered. “It was an itch and it has been scratched now.”
“That’s not all this is,” he insisted, anger and panic creeping in.
Her mouth trembled. Then abruptly she grabbed his wrist. Before he could react she shoved her own arm beside his beneath the weak light spilling from the doorway.
“Look.”
James frowned.
“What?”
“Look at my skin.”
