Page 2 of Hurt

Preppy staccato music began pumping through speakers, and he grimaced. Opal always danced to the same song.

The woman in question sashayed onto the stage wearing some gold bikini number. Kurt might not like her choice in music, but she could dance. Probably one of the better dancers they had, she kept in time with the music and knew where the line was between sultry and porn. Most of their clients came to see Opal. They were entranced by her dance but intrigued by her chameleon-like appearance. She never showed up with the same wig or hairstyle twice. It seemed like each wig had its own personality, like she was putting on a new character every time she taped the thing onto her head.

Rhett stood by the stage with his arms crossed. It was supposed to look intimidating, but Kurt just thought he looked like a kid playing at acting tough. Rhett was a good man. Probably the best in the place. How or why he ended up working for his sister at The Sunspot was something Kurt never asked.

Still, he was handy in a fight. Last month he had single-handedly thrown two bikers out the door on his own. The fact that he sheepishly apologized to them afterward was irrelevant. The dancers felt safe, and that’s all that mattered.

The Sunspot was safe. Molly made it that way. Her rigid set of rules protected not only the patrons but the weird set of people who found themselves employed by her. The woman was diminutive, but she was the scariest thing in this bar. The only thing sharper than her acrylics was her tongue. He wasn’t sure if she could kill him just by touching an acupoint, but he never felt the urge to test it.

Eight years ago, she had found him. Without asking any questions, she gave him a light in the dark. A spot of sunlight when he thought he might be lost in the dark forever. He never asked her why she did it, and she never asked why he needed it. Molly gave him a job and a home. Kurt had never thanked her for it. How could you thank someone for that?

A drunk trucker yelled something at the stage, and Opal flashed him a tit. A shower of ones fluttered to the stage, and she did some sort of flippy twist and managed to collect them without looking like she was.

Opal did two or three more dances before she caught someone’s eye. Walking off the stage in her ridiculously high heels, she went to give a private dance.

Kurt sighed when he recognized the next piece of music. He thought Evan would be next, but instead of something out of Elton Michael, it was a piece of classical music. Not the usual Bach or Tchaikovsky. Nothing anyone would recognize. It was zippy and upbeat. The cellos were mild, and there was a fiddler in there somewhere. The kind of music that didn’t fit in at a place like this.

But then, neither did the dancer.

Willow didn’t strut onto the stage. She didn’t sashay. She just appeared. Wide gray eyes sparkled under the spotlight, and despite her lanky appearance, she looked like she was born for the stage. There were no fancy outfits this time—no tearaway police uniform or glittering bikini. She was just wearing a pair of skintight red shorts and matching bra with knee-high boots that had buckles instead of laces. The kind of boots that should be clunking across the stage but instead moved silently as Willow grabbed the pole and began whatever kind of acrobatic sex dance she had planned this time around.

To call it a dance might be incorrect because Willow didn’t just dance to the music. She didn’t hit the beats just right or flail her arms around with the crescendo. No, Willow was the music. It was as if her bones were replaced with the notes, and she moved not with the music, but as it. The living embodiment of what the composer was trying to convey with inanimate instruments.

Willow had always been like that. From the moment the Becketts brought her into the home and gave her the gift of music, she was a prodigy. No one could touch her. It wasn’t just reading and composing music or playing what was on the paper. Willow was somehow technically perfect while also giving it life.

From the time she could hold a violin, Willow was astounding people. They flew her all over the world for concerts and sent her to special schools (which she always managed to get kicked out of). She would come back through the door, drop her violin case on the bed, and throw herself into Kurt’s arms.

Willow would be promptly pushed to the ground, but it didn’t matter. That thousand-watt smile would light up her face, and she would tell Kurt about her recent pranks. Everything from putting super glue on the seats to switching out sheet music. Once, she apparently managed to turn a cello hot pink. Kurt never asked her how she did it.

Willow was four months older than him, but sometimes the gap in their ages felt like a lifetime. A chasm his parents created, and the siblings desperately kept trying to build a bridge across. Kurt’s mother hated Willow, but she was the musical prodigy she had prayed for. The child she quite literally would have given her life to produce. The fact that she was the byproduct of someone else was something she never could get over.

After his parents and older sister died, Kurt had no choice but to drop out of high school. There was no money. His parents had left them nothing but a mountain of debt and useless instruments that they didn’t have the heart to part with.

With his eight-year-old nephew to support, he took whatever job he could. But he wouldn’t allow Willow to quit school. She had scholarships. People were going to pay for her to come to their fancy universities and play music, the thing she loved more than anything.

It was Kurt’s fault that she wasn’t there now.

Everything was his fault.

He looked down and realized he was clenching the edge of the bar and staring at the stage without seeing. Shaking his head, he got back to work. He needed to do something with his hands. Anything.

Kurt didn’t look back at the stage. There was only so much of his sister’s ass shaking that he could deal with in one sitting. He found his attention drawn to Elijah. The kid couldn’t be more than twenty. With a baby face and his styled blond hair, he wouldn’t look out of place surrounded by stuffed animals. Or on some sort of Boy Scout propaganda. He always had the most irritatingly pleasant smile on his face, like he was genuinely happy to be wherever he was.

Kurt found that suspicious as hell.

More than that was his boss Roland. Kurt knew Roland was second in command to the Weaver Syndicate. The largest and most powerful gang in the state. They were involved in so many things it was impossible to know just how many. The Weavers didn’t allow their members to drink or smoke. They were held to impossibly high standards, step out of line, and justice was swift. They were always dressed impeccably. Kurt figured their dry-cleaning bill must be massive.

He knew from experience that blood was a bitch to get out.

The two Weaver brothers had not frequented The Sunspot prior to Roland’s sudden appearance a few weeks ago. Members of the Weaver group had—often for an off-the-record drink or to get whatever new injury they sustained patched up by Molly. But not the brothers themselves. Which is why Roland’s appearance a few weeks ago turned some heads. Then he kept coming back.

He was hard to miss. Massive, his black hair was cut short. His face was always blank, emotions hidden behind his square jaw and icy gaze.

Obviously, he was here for the dancers, but no one knew which one. Kurt didn’t usually pay attention enough to see which dance struck the man’s fancy.

“Which one does he like?” Kurt asked Elijah.

The kid smiled softly, green eyes crinkling. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me even if I asked.”