Page 15 of Ashes’ Addiction

A moment later, the prospect reappeared with their drinks, this time Winter looked up and thanked him. Maybe she wasn’t as scary as Miranda had thought, and just a little awkward at times. Miranda could understand that. She had her share of issues, especially after the last year.

“What did you do for fun, before all this?” Winter waved one hand in the air.

Miranda assumed she was referring to the time she’d spent in captivity. She lifted one shoulder and let it fall.

“Not much. I went to class, went to work, and I studied. Once in a while I’d hang out at the student union and see if I could find someone to talk to or play games.”

“You didn’t have anyone you saw all the time? No classmates that became friends?”

Miranda shook her head. “I did stay in touch with a couple of friends from home, from school, but we’d gone longer and longer between texts, that I don’t know if they noticed me disappearing.”

“Well, we can fix that. Do you remember anyone’s phone number?” Winter asked.

Miranda shook her head and looked away. Everything had been in her phone, she could log into the cloud and have it restore everything from the backup, but she couldn’t remember the password. That had been stored on her laptop and she had no clue what had happened to her things. “No, and the only way for me to find them is my laptop. It was in my room when Kevin took me. Who knows where it is now, or if it even still exists.”

Winter leaned over and gave her a one-armed hug.

“It’s not as bad as it seems. We’ll figure things out. If I know these guys, someone’s already working on finding out what happened to your things, but if that doesn’t work out, we’ll get Hammer or Forge to hack into your account so you can reset the password.”

Mirand stared at Winter. “They can do that?” she whispered.

“Babe, they can do a lot more than that. How do you think they knew where to find you?” Winter said with a soft laugh.

Miranda blinked. She hadn’t asked how they knew. Kevin had to have told them, but she also knew he probably wouldn’t have given her up easily. Especially if he deemed her ready, or nearly ready to be sold. He was too close to the paycheck to consider giving her up. He’d told her that more than once as she’d begged him to let her go. Usually as he was using one of the whips on her for whatever her infraction was to begin with. She’d never been able to figure how to keep out of trouble. Eventually she’d realized she didn’t have to do anything. He was looking for fault, and he would search until he found something to punish her for.

“Hey, none of that. First, we need to put things in perspective. We’ll get you back to where you started, or wherever you want to be. First thing, though, stop thinking of him as Kevin.” Miranda started to speak up but Winter stopped her. “No. I mean it. You can think of him as whatever you want, as long as it’s in a derogatory manner.”

“What do you mean?” Miranda frowned.

“As long as you think of him as Kevin, or even Mr. Dwyer or Dwyer, you’re thinking of him as a person. You want to give him sympathy, figure out his motives, whatever. But he wasn’t a good guy. He didn’t deserve that, even when he was around. Now that he’s gone, he deserves it even less. Especially from you. Think of him as something other than a person, if that makes sense.”

Miranda’s frown deepened as she tilted her head and continued to watch Winter. She thought she understood what her new friend was saying but she’d been told for years you don’t call names. Why was this any different?

“Look, I get it. It goes against what we’re taught growing up. But we’re also told we don’t lick or bite other people and we all know that’s a lie.” Winter shot her a conspiratory grin. “But we’re not calling him something to make him feel bad or cut him down.”

“Then why?” Miranda felt like an idiot. What Winter was trying to tell her wasn’t rocket science, but she couldn’t seem to understand why she wanted Miranda to think of Kevin with another name.

“Bishop calls him ‘that fucker’ or ‘the shithead,’ if that helps. If you don’t want to use that kind of language, you could think of him as ‘the idiot’ or almost anything else, just not his name or anything nice about him.”

Miranda tilted her head back and forth as she thought about it. She didn’t know if she could call anyone those curse words. It just wasn’t how she was raised. To use language like that. But she got what Winter was saying about not using his name. She might not be able, or willing, to use the words the Sons did, but she could call him ‘the monster.’ That was a name she could use.

“Okay, I got that. What else??” Miranda didn’t say what she’d decided to call him, only that she understood. She didn’t want Winter to laugh at her.

“Next, is mindset.”

“What do you mean?” Miranda frowned.

“Have you ever noticed that if you wake up in a bad mood, the entire day is hard and very little good happens? But if you wake up believing it’s going to be a good day, you’ll find the good in it, even if it’s small?”

Miranda thought about it. It had been too long since she’d had a normal day and she couldn’t think of a single one she’d known was a good day and had stayed that way. She could admit, at least to herself, she hadn’t had a lot of good lately, well, not until today.

“Let’s say I do. Where are you going with this?”

“You need to take a similar look at yourself.”

Miranda scowled. What the heck did she mean?

Winter sighed. “Have you ever known anyone who never admitted their choices affected the way they lived? Someone who never saw anything good? If they won a new car, they would complain about having to pay the taxes?”