NAKED

stacey trombley

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Stacey Trombley. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Edited by Stephen Morgan & Elizabeth Vail

Cover design by Kelley York

Interior design by Jeremy Howland

Print ISBN 978-1-63375-007-4

Ebook ISBN 978-1-63375-008-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition July 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Chapter One

Sometimes being interviewed by the police is like a game.

It’s kind of fun, keeping them from the truth. At least until they get pissed and start hitting, bruising, breaking. Then it’s not so fun anymore. But until then, I have to keep my head up or I’ll never make it out alive.

I shift in the metal chair, uncomfortable, and lean away from the cold table.

Hiding the truth is easy when no one knows anything. What sucks is when the police know more than you do. If they catch you in one lie, the whole web collapses.

Good thing the woman in front of me isn’t a cop. She hasn’t said she’s not a cop, but she doesn’t have to. The way she smiles at me with the kind of innocence I used to have, it’s pretty obvious.

“What’s your name?” she asks. As if we’re just normal people having a casual conversation. As if she doesn’t know how dangerous that kind of information is for someone like me.

“Exquisite,” I say.

“That’s very pretty.” She says it so sincerely that for a moment, I think she believes me. Maybe she really is as naive as she looks.

In my world, naive might as well mean dead.

“My name is Sarah,” she says.

Why in the world would she think I care what her name is?

“Okay,” I say.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” The word slips out before I even think about it. That’s my go-to answer, a lie I’ve told so often I almost believe it.

“Hmm, you don’t look nineteen.”

Funny that in all the times I’ve been in police stations, a hundred set of handcuffs cutting off my circulation, my age has never been questioned. I’m nineteen. They know I’m lying—my seventeenth birthday is still months away—but they don’t care.

No one cares.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

A creak grabs my attention, and I look to the door. There’s a small window where the asshole cop watches us. My black eye throbs, even though it wasn’t him who gave it to me. Someone else gave me that black eye, with the same hand he used to hold against the side of my face as we fell asleep together.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got better luck with the woman in a suit than the man behind the window. The way he shakes his head every time he sees me, it looks like he wants to hurt me—he’d enjoy it.

“You don’t like the police, do you?”

My attention shifts back to the woman.

“Nope,” I say honestly, despite my minor surprise.

“Well, it might help you to know that I’m not a cop.” As if her being a cop was ever a possibility. “And I’m not here to get information and leave. I’m here to help you. If I can.” She smiles, like she’s trying to put me at ease. Yeah, good luck with that. “You’re sure you’re nineteen?”

“You calling me a liar?”

She smiles. “No. It’s just, if you are nineteen, there’s nothing I can do for you. You’ll go to jail, or go back to that life out there, on the streets. I don’t want that. And somehow, I don’t think you want that, either.”

“Why would you think that?” Now I stand. She thinks she knows me. She thinks that she gets it, thinks she gets me.

Her eyes soften, they grow…sadder somehow.

I don’t let myself show her any change in my expression. My walls keep the nightmares away. The second they fall, I’m screwed.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I can usually tell if I can help someone. And I think I can help you.”

I blink. My walls almost fall then, nearly crash down and crumble all over my feet, but I catch myself before it’s too late.

I make my face blank, impassive. Don’t let her see beneath my mask. It’s a trick I learned for when guys pay for me. An hour. All night. Never let them see how I really feel.

It’s more important than ever that I keep strong, keep this woman from getting to me, seeing too much.

“But if you were, say, sixteen,” she says, “I could help you. Give you a new life. No jail, just hope.”

I sit back down and look down at my hands. I don’t like how much she knows, suspects.

“What do you think you can do for me?”

She stands and walks slowly around the room. When she walks behind my chair, my heart pounds. I hate not being able to see her. I don’t care how kind she seems. I’m in a police station. I’m not safe.

“I really wish you’d tell me your real name.”

“Why?” I ask, just as she finishes her round and faces me once more.

“Because I don’t feel right calling you Exquisite, and I’d like to be able to have a real conversation with you.”

I roll my eyes. “I know better than to think you care. No one cares.”

She faces me again. Her eyes are a pretty brown, surprisingly firm for how soft she seems. “Do you really think that no one in the world cares? Or just no one in a police station? No one in the city? It’s not possible that someone out there would want to help you, somehow, someway?”