Page 28 of Legal Desire
But she sucked in a breath and regained her composure. “Voters don’t like surprises,” she said. “I need to know everything about you.”
He narrowed his eyes now. What was she up to? Edward had obviously admitted that Trev had pumped him for information. Was she returning the favor? Getting payback?
He had no idea what she was up to. But then he’d never known or she wouldn’t have gotten away with being the mole for as long as she had.
He shrugged, but that trickle of sweat streaked down his back again. He felt like he was on the witness stand, getting interrogated. “I think you know everything there is to know about me.”
She was the one who’d decided to use his and his partners’ pasts as teen runaways living on the streets in order to promote Street Legal. Not just as a rags-to-riches story but to show how resourceful and resilient they were.
“I know you’re a runaway,” she said. “But I don’t know why. What were you escaping? Druggie parents?”
That had been Stone.
“Con-artist father?”
That was Simon.
“Fighting parents?”
That was Ronan.
“You know all our stories,” he said. And he was chilled now. She knew them too well.
But she shook her head. “I don’t know yours.”
There was a reason for that. “I’m not a runaway,” he admitted.
She sighed. “You lied?”
“I never said that I was.”
“But you claimed you lived on the street with your partners,” she said as if she was about to call bullshit on him again.
He nodded. “I did. ButIdidn’t run away.”
She froze and stared at him, her blue eyes wide now with shock and her pale skin paled even more. “Your parents abandoned you?”
“Just my mom,” he said with a nonchalant shrug as if it didn’t matter. Hell, it had all happened so long ago that it really didn’t. “I don’t know who my dad is. I don’t know if she actually knows. I don’t even know where she was from. She moved to New York City to make it as an actress.”
“How old were you when you moved here?” Allison asked.
He searched his memory and sighed. “Young. I don’t remember ever living anywhere else.”
“What happened toher?” Allison asked. “Where did she go?”
“Hollywood,” he said. “She’d figured she’d have a better chance of getting acting jobs there. Maybe on a soap or something.”
“How old were you then?” she asked.
He shrugged again even though he remembered exactly how old he’d been. “Thirteen...”
And she gasped. “Only thirteen? Is that when you started living on the streets?”
He shook his head. “I stayed with the guy I worked for, refinishing floors. He let me live with him as long as I kept going to school.” Wally had only allowed Trev to help him after his homework was done. Wally Washington had also emphasized the importance of education, probably because he hadn’t had much himself.
Like Trev, he’d had to start working too young to help support his family.
She gasped again. “You were only thirteen. You shouldn’t have been working at all.”
