A/N: This is where the story meets the first in the series, connecting the two and filling in some blanks. Yes, that is a large time hop. Wattpad likes happy endings, so here you go. 

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October 2018. Sixteen years later ...

"So ... you're firing me?" I ask.

The chief gives me a curt smile. "Not firing, no. It's just that we won't be needing you once you return from your vacation."

This is some bullshit.

I have worked here for two years. Two, long years of dealing with people's judgment and gossip while working for a laughable salary. Hard work doesn't matter. Your personality doesn't matter. All it comes down to is the stamp on your goddamn forehead. "May I ask why?"

He tilts his head slightly and looks away. Here comes the lie. "Your availability is not what we desire for someone in your position. We routinely look at qualified candidates and found someone we think will be a better fit."

"What exactly about my schedule of back-to-back doubles was lacking?"

"You take a lot of time off --"

"It's unpaid time off."

"-- to ... work in another profession some find inappropriate." And there it is.

"What do you mean by that?"

He avoids my eyes. "Some of the other staff members find it uncomfortable to work with someone who ... does what you do."

"Work part-time as a prostitute."

"Uh ... Yes."

"I'm just very confused. You have a hospital full of medical professionals meant to provide judgment-free care to anyone who walks in," I start in a warning tone. "But you're firing me because they don't like what I do on my own time?"

He laces his fingers together. "Judgmental or not, lack of trust in a teammate can affect the care of patients, and we cannot be held liable for mistakes made because of it."

"So, I'm a liability because people don't like the fact that I have sex?"

"No. Nurse Lorek, you are misinterpreting what is happening here ..."

"I think you've made yourself perfectly clear." I stand to leave but then stop. "Before you fire the next single mother on your staff, maybe you should ask why she needs a second job before judging her over what it is."

Dumb cunts.

♡♡♡

I am still fuming the next morning. My best friend has been staying with me for the past few weeks due to a stupid break up, but rather than getting to vent about my drama, I've been bundling it up and listening to her cry over hers. I'm supposed to leave in twenty minutes, and I can't even find her to tell her not to burn my house down. "Penny?" I call to her. I hear the sounds of melodramatic sobbing coming from the guest bathroom. Goddammit, I do not have the patience for this shit right now.

I walk in and find her sitting on the floor by the toilet, crying her pretty, little eyes out, so stressed about whether or not she should doom the man that loves her to being with her forever. I don't get it. They're both somewhat decent humans and they have amazing sex. What is there to cry about?

She's sweet, but she's a fucking dumbass.

She looks up at me with her face a blubbering mess. She never wears a stitch of makeup, only styles her long, perfect hair into a mess on top of her head and looks goddamn beautiful all the time. Oh, and let's not even mention the genetic masterpiece she's been crying over for weeks now. Her life is perfect and she keeps trying to ruin it for herself as some sort of punishment for the "bad things she's done". She's too much like the idiot I used to be, and I can't take it anymore.

"Penny," I start to say as I sit on the edge of my tub. "You're one of the best friends I've ever had. But this is some bullshit and you know it." She looks up at me pitifully as she cries. "You have one of the greatest men in the world dying to be with you. He's human, he fucked up. Whether you two are screwed up or not, he will never find someone better for him than you, and you will never find someone that makes you as happy as he does. You two need to grow the fuck up and talk about whatever it is you're not saying!"

She hangs her head in her hands and sobs, "I can't."

I roll my eyes. "You can. You're just too pussy to do it." She looks up and glares at me. The bitch is really trying it today. "Life is fucking hard, Penny. We do shitty things, we say shitty things, we make shitty choices. But happy endings don't just happen. We have to make them for ourselves," I tell her, and try to ignore the pain in my chest at the memory. Wisdom comes from experience, and experience from failure, after all. "Just fucking call him. Tell him you want him back, and tell him why you were so scared in the first place." I stand to leave.

"But what if it's not what he wants?" she blubbers. Oh, good lord, shut the fuck up!

"Just fucking call him!" I shout. I leave her alone in the bathroom to continue cry-vomiting.

I've had enough shit to deal with this week; fired again for someone finding out I make a lot more money being appointment-only at the Ranch than I do working my ass off full-time at a hospital. Sex work scares people, it makes them uncomfortable. Being a mother on top of it, people think I'm some kind of monster.

It is very human -- albeit shitty -- to hate what we fear. People are always so quick to judge me without asking me a single question. If they'd ever ask me something as simple as "why" I'd tell them the truth; I would never make my son suffer for my own mistakes.

People don't see all the mess I went through to get where I am now. They don't know how life twisted me up and tried to kill me. When my son came along, he saved me, he put me on the right path, he showed me what was most important. But life isn't quite that simple. Bills don't stop when times get tough, and they definitely don't stop once you have a kid.

LA is expensive. A growing boy that eats his body weight in food is expensive. Raising a teenager who is smarter than Einstein is expensive. My son is going to go to college. A good one, which means an expensive one. He's going to finish it. My greatest purpose in life is to make sure his is the complete opposite of mine. I will do anything to make that happen. Anything. And I do.

I worked my ass off as a nurse. When he started school, I went back too. It took me five years, but I finished my RN and got a sizeable increase in pay. I was doing everything right, living my life as society expected. But then he got sick. 

When you live paycheck to paycheck, there are no good surprises. When it came down to the bottom line, I needed the money, and I only had so many options to make ends meet. I called up some old friends, applied to the Ranch, and got it. The highest paid whore may still be a whore, but I don't regret a single thing I do to make his life better.

"Is Penny going to be okay, mom?" Gabe asks me. He walks over, his dark brown hair hanging into his face and over one eye in loose waves.

I don't know why he insists on wearing it so long, but it's what the kids are doing now. I'm lucky he's still too young to grow a proper beard to match all the flannel he insists on wearing. "She'll survive," I say to him as I brush the hair out of his face and behind his ear. He gives me a placating half-smile, though I know he wants to tell me to stop grooming him.

I can't help it. He is the love of my life.

It kills me every time to look at him. Though he's nearly a foot taller than me, I will always see the tiny baby that came four weeks early. I will always remember wiping my happy tears off that tiny, wrinkly forehead while he frowned at me. I make no claims of being a good mother, but that boy is mine, and he is the most amazing person alive. I look at him, and I know I did something right.

"Mom," Gabe snaps me back into reality. He stares at me with a comical grin. "Are you alright?"

My eyes bounce between each of his, taking in the charming heterochromia of his irises. His left a cool hazel, his right a golden brown. He is perfect in every way, genetic defects and all. "I will be," I say as I give him a reassuring kiss on the cheek. He does me the favor of almost hiding his grimace. I playfully nudge him towards the kitchen. "Go eat something. Your teen angst is unbearable when you're hungry," I tease him. He laughs as he makes his way into the kitchen behind me.

I find my purse and brush on a fresh layer of gloss. Penny walks out from the hallway and starts to make her way towards the guestroom. She wipes her little tears from her pretty, little face and closes the door behind her. Maybe that means she'll take my advice. She should.

Penny thinks nothing in life is worth regretting, that it's better to grow from a decision and work to make up for what happened because of it. Her idealism is cute. 

I regret almost everything I did sixteen years ago. I regret the mistakes I made, I regret covering my pain in the love of people I knew couldn't give me what I needed. There are many things I would take back. Why let her make the same mistake?

"Mom!" Gabe yells from the kitchen.

"What!?" I return with equal fervor.

"You're going to be late," he reminds me. "Again."

My mouth twists as I try to hide my smile. "Fine. I'm leaving." I walk over and pull him into a sideways hug, kissing his cheek once more. "Be good."

"You be good," he jokes. I'm sure people would find it odd that I'm so open with him. But he knows what I do, and he knows why I do it. It's formal, it's regulated, it's sterile. It's a job, just because it includes having sex doesn't mean it's any different. "I'll see you on Monday," he says, but I still haven't let him go.

"I'll miss you," I say with a grin. He's the proof I've done something right in my life. I may be a whore, but my kid is really fucking cool. "Bye, kiddo."

♡♡♡

The Ranch is my home away from home. I like walking in during the lineups to grab my supplies, seeing where I came from to get to the cushy place I am now. Jude, my most loyal client, still hasn't quite figured out how to combine business and pleasure. He says he loves his wife, but he doesn't love her enough to trust her. He can't talk to her about his more ... subversive likes and dislikes in bed, so he comes to me when she's frequently in Europe for business.

The same goes for Yuna and my couple -- two of the sweetest men I've met in my life. They can't trust a random woman to give them what they need without catching feelings, so they have me. My clients are my friends. They aren't strangers that live underground with unrequited kinks. They are broken humans like me, trying to find the love they are missing. It can't really be called a public service, but that is exactly why I do it. I know what it feels like to hurt. 

"Have I told you you're amazing?" Yuna asks me. She turns to look at me with those beautiful, hooded eyes. She walks over, her narrow hips swaying in their usual, subtle way. She lies next to me again and pulls me into her kiss.

"Only about a million times." She lies naked with her head on my chest. I stroke a hand over her hair and smile. "I'm glad you got to take a break from campaigning."

"I needed it," she sighs. "It's hard on the twins. They're old enough to realize that we have to pretend to be different than we really are, but they don't quite know what that means. This time away is good for all of us. Ron especially."

"Did you ever consider coming out when you were running for Congress?" I ask. Her husband knows she's only attracted to women. It doesn't bother him because he's not attracted to anyone. They're the perfect, nuclear family; two parents, two kids, and a whole bunch of secrets. "I'd like to think times are changing for the better. That more people will be accepting of people's truths."

"Maybe so, but we're still quite a few rungs from the top. Being a woman, Asian, and a lesbian? That's a lot of ladders to climb at once."

"I guess so."

"You either fit into the place made for you, or you spend your whole fighting. I guess I got tired along the way," she says. When she leans up to look me in the eyes, I smile. She leans in for another kiss. "You are my lifesaver, Maggie," she says against my lips. "I don't know what I would do without you."

My chest aches at the thought. "Let's not find out." She smiles and stands. Grabbing her phone from her bag, she walks toward the sitting room. "Time to call the kids?"

"Yep," she says, then pulls my partition closed, same as always. I take my phone from the drawer of my side table. Yuna gets it. She may need a break from living as a faux image of herself, but her kids will always make it worth it for her. I love this job, truly, but I hate being away from Gabe. Though I'm sure I annoy him, I still like to hear his voice.

I dial and listen to the rings, wondering how long it will take him to pick up. Only four this time.

"Hi, mom."

"Hi, child," I greet him. "How's it going?"

"Fine."

"Good." I wait for more, but of course, he is content will no elaboration. "What are you doing right now?"

"Nothing much, just selling crack in front of the police station and becoming blood brothers with my friends." My eyes close with my sigh. He's as sarcastic as I am. I'm pretty sure that's called karma. "Penny went home so I went to dad's to watch the game."

"Hey, Mags," his dad says in the background. 

I laugh. "Tell Remy I said 'hey'."

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A/N: Thank you for reading! Don't forget to vote, comment, and add to your library if you want more!