Page 25

TWENTY-FOUR

I ignore the catcalls. The chills down my spine every time a man tries to eat me up with lust in their eyes or the way they adjust their cocks when they watch me dance.

Rachel was right. Tonight, lap dances is where the money is. There are so many routines you can do and according to her, this isn’t the city. Small towns don’t’ have many people and not many come through.

According to the girls, the carnival, the circus, and college students has continued to give the town life. Which translates into more customers for the club.

It’s funny when you need money, how quickly you pick up things when it comes to business. School doesn’t prepare you for this kind of life. The streets do and I don’t have experience in either. I’m picking up things as I go including how do to get men to drop their wallets without opening my legs. I didn’t realize it’s a skill. A skill I’m quickly learning to master.

“Hey, sweetheart.” I pause giving the man seated at a table for two minus one chair my attention. “Would you mind giving me a dance?” he asks.

I do fucking mind but I can’t tell him that. It’s bad for business. Instead, I smile. My red lipstick smooth on my lips as I step closer, the long black hair from my wig brushing on the small table as I lean in. “What would you give me for one?” I say, loud enough over the music.

My eyes run over his face, down his brown, black beard to the bulge between his legs and back up to his face. He isn’t that old. His hair isn’t gray but dark brown, long nose, and only a hint of a frown line on his forehead. I’m assuming middle-aged with rough hands judging with the way he reaches for his wallet. He certainly doesn’t work in an office. He probably works construction or is some sort of handyman.

He produces a fifty-dollar bill. I arch a brow, glance at his wallet and back until he takes out another one. That’s better.

“One song,” I tell him. A hundred is better than what I made dancing on stage earlier. A lap dance is fifty bucks but a girl can ask for whatever she wants without actually asking. Rachel says she doesn’t it all the time.

“I’m assuming this is okay,” he says holding up both bills.

I nod hating the scent of his cologne. I glance around and notice everyone else around is wearing a mask.

I wait until the song ends to make sure he gets what he paid for because I need the money. My eyes scan the bar and a pair of brown eyes collide with mine. Rose.

The lights shift right and I see her mouth turn down into a frown. Her eyes flicking between me and the man in front of me.

A girl has to do, what she has to.

Shit, I should get his name. I’ve seen girls do that. It wins them over even if they give you a fake one but my eyes can’t seem to pull away from the disapproval in Rose’s gaze as she cleans a glass. I give her a half shrug. A girl like Rose doesn’t understand and I don’t need her to.

The song ends and another one begins. Gina takes the stage, whistles and cheers float in the air.

“My name is Jack,” he says, without having to ask. He runs his gaze over me as I move between his legs. He didn’t let me get to that part but whatever. He must have come here before.

I take a deep breath, the smell of cigars, cigarettes, alcohol, and this man’s cologne mixes in my nose and it makes me want to gag.

I look over my shoulder toward the stage and my eyes land right on Gina. She gives me a wide smile. She turns back to the DJ and then turns to face me giving me wink.

Great, she chose the song.

When it begins, the sounds of a violin followed by deep bass shakes the walls. Dip by Tyga and Nicki Minaj take over.

“Let’s play,” the little voice pops in my head as I lock eyes with Jack swaying my hips.

Jack’s gaze dips to my hips. Disgust tugs at my skin making me ready to snap wanting nothing more than to spill is drink that I now know is whiskey with every breath he takes.

He picks up one of the bills using it has an excuse to lift my skirt and suddenly a hand slams on the table. I look up and there’s a man with an ivory-colored mask that says DEVIL dripping in red paint.

Jack’s eyes go wide.

I look at the entrance to Hank who is manning the door. He stares at the man with the mask but does nothing.

My eyes land on Jack not knowing what to do. Jack is about to protest, the words about to spill from his lips but the masked man shakes his head slowly. Mechanically.

Well fuck. I need the money and I haven’t finished the dance.

Something inside me kicks in. A surge of something powerful. I feel it in the tips of my fingertips making the tiny hairs on my skin to stand.

My smile drips sex as I stare at the man in the mask. “I’ll be just a minute.” He shakes his head again. “What’s wrong,” I say innocently. “Devil got your tongue.”

“Hey man, wait your turn,” Jack says.

Pussy, he had to wait until I said something for him to have the balls.

I glance at the masked man. He’s tall and there is something familiar about him. Like I’ve seen him before but I don’t know where. It’s not here that’s for sure. I would have remembered.

“Come on, baby,” I hum, right when the song ends and give the masked man a wink. “I promise take care of you.”

He looks at Jack and I don’t need him to take off the mask to know he’s giving him a lethal stare but what has me confused is that no one is doing anything.

Rules of the club, one customer cannot interfere with a dance from another. If you’re rowdy, drunk or touch the girls without permission, you’re out. Same with recording and pictures which works for me nicely.

I tilt my head and suck in a breath when the masked man plucks the money from the string of my panties and tosses it in Jack’s face.

I glare at him. Then smile and say through clenched teeth, “What’s your problem?”

Who the fuck does this guy think he is?

My gaze runs over his lean muscled frame, rage burning like a rebellion in my veins. He’s dressed in black and doesn’t say a word. His eyes are blacked out by his mask. His hands in black gloves giving nothing away as to who the fuck he is.

I roll my eyes dramatically. “Well, aren’t you a little shy one?”

Nothing.

I glance at Jack. “Sorry, sweetheart. I think I have an impatient one over here.”

But Jack isn’t having it. He grabs me by the thick part of my thighs. The masked man is about to intervene but I stop him putting a hand on his chest. He looks down at it like it’s a snake.

I lean close to Jack so he can hear me over the music. “You like to touch before you buy and I’m not for sale.”

“There’s two fifty-dollar bills right here that says you do.” I tilt my head back and laugh. Men . “What’s so funny you bitch?” he sneers.

My laugh goes silent. I drop my smile and tilt my head like a serial killer. The images floating in my head of all the ways I can slice his face and hands with the glass from his whiskey.

“Oh, Jacky,” I admonish. “That’s no way to get what you want.”

Rages crosses his features, annoyed that I’m mocking him. I drop my hand away from the masked man’s chest and step back, giving myself some space to make the sign of the cross over his frame like I’m a priest.

“What the fuck?” Jack says pissed off that he isn’t getting what he wants.

I glance at the masked man still watching me without saying a word. “See what you did?” I say playfully. The mask man responds by walking away disappearing out the exit. I place my hands on my hips and pout. “Well, that wasn’t very nice.”

“You’re a crazy bitch,” Jack spits.

My eyes gleam with something dark and dangerous as I watch him stuff the two fifties in his pocket moving to leave. He snatches his glass and watch him leave to the back room.

“Oh, Jacky baby,” I mutter. You haven’t seen crazy yet.”

“Hey.” I turn around to see Rose ready to leave. “Need a ride?”

“What was that all about?” Rose asks once when her car heading to the motel.

“I don’t know,” I say staring at the moon in the dark sky. Because I don’t.

Something is happening to me and I don’t what it is. It’s like I’m two different people and it feels good.

“Who was that guy in the mask?”

“What guy?” she asks.

I glance at her briefly. “The one with the mask when my lap dance went to shit?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see his face. One moment he was there blocking my view and then he was gone and then that guy at the table stormed off.”

He was a dick.

“Should have cut his dick off, that would’ve taught him not to fuck with you.”

Silence stretches between us for a few seconds. My phone vibrates and I see an unknown text.

Unknown: Who buys it but can’t have it? Who touches it but wasn’t supposed to? What am I?

“What the hell?” I mumble.

“Is everything okay?”

I shake my heard rereading the text. “I don’t know. Someone sent me a random text.”

“What’s it say?” she asks curiously, pulling into the motel parking lot.

I show her once she stops the car.

“It’s a riddle. Do you know who it might be from?”

The only other person who has my number is Kaden and I have his contact saved.

“I have no idea.”

She reads it out loud and we both think for a few seconds staring at the screen.

“I have no idea,” we say in unison and then laugh.

But the next text that chimes in has a brick dropping in my stomach.

Unknown: A dead man.

We both look at each other and I’m not sure what she is thinking but it can’t be.

“Do you think…who would?” she trails off.

But I do. In the pit of my stomach but the man who was at the club with the mask wasn’t Draco. It wasn’t Kaden. I would know. The masked man was taller than Kaden but an inch shorter than Draco and was leaner in build. I haven’t met the rest of the guy’s Draco and Kaden hang out with but there is no way anyone could have recognized me. I was wearing a wig and no one has intervened when I’m at the club or has gotten out of line with me directly.

Except, Charlie.

I look at my phone and then swipe up repeatedly. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong,” Rose asks looking me swiping up my thumb pressing the screen. “The text. It was here and now it’s gone, how’s that possible?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know but someone fucking around. Hacker, maybe. Spam?”

She saw it too so I’m not crazy. It was there. I glance at my motel room door with trepidation. It had to be Draco but what if it isn’t? I don’t have a gun. I couldn’t’ get one legally anyway. I don’t expect an axe to magically appear in room if someone tries to attack me.

“Why don’t you stay with me tonight?” Rose asks.

“Where?” I ask, wanting to but not sure if I should.

“Dorm.”

“Aren’t there rules?”

“Just curfew but I can get in. I mean, if you want to,” she says, hopefully.

I should take her up on her offer but then again, I shouldn’t. The less people know about me the better. But don’t want to be alone tonight.

“Alright.”

After grabbing a change of clothes from my motel room. We enter through the back of the building before the security guard comes back from his break. Rose has the security’s schedule timed to the tea. She knows their schedules and who is on duty and when.

When she unlocks the door to her dorm, it’s nothing like I expected. It’s small with a twin bed against the wall. A small desk and room for nothing else. I expected her to share a room with someone or something.

“It’s small. We’ll have to share the bed or I could sleep on the floor.”

“I’m okay with the bed if you are.”

I’ve never been close with someone like this. I was hoping when I started school in Stockbridge High that I would make friends but none of that happened.

“You could put your stuff there.” She points at the desk and sits on the bed.

I drop my stuff and sit next to her looking at the picture of her and what I assume is her mom. Nostalgia hitting me like a brick wishing I had a mother who would give a damn.

I tear my gaze away and look at her late model computer and tablet charging in the corner. The doll from the fair sitting in the center on the desk staring right at us.

“Does she creep you out when she’s staring at you?” I ask.

“No, I kind of like it. I think she is gorgeous.”

“Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend? What does he or she say about it?”

I ask because there is no way she doesn’t have one somewhere. Rose is hot. I see the way guys follower around. The professor still hasn’t shown up but not for long.

“Boyfriend. Well, sort of.”

“He is or he isn’t?” I ask leaning back with my elbows on the bed.

She shifts on the bed, so that she’s facing me. “It’s complicated. We were good for a few months in high school and then when he decided to stay and go to school, he’s changed.”

“How?”

“He’s a dick like most of the assholes that go here. Entitled. Not everyone, but most of the guys that grew up here are.”

I remember what Kaden said but I’m not sure if she knows him.

“I wanted to ask; do you know a guy named Kaden.”

She snorts. “Who doesn’t. Why?”

“Ran into him at the motel.” It’s the truth but don’t want to tell her how well I know him and how. Not yet.

She watches me for a few seconds. Then looks away like she wants to say something but is afraid.

“What?” A sinking feeling wraps around my lungs squeezing.

“Uh…why was he there?” That wasn’t what she meant to ask but I let it slide.

“Why do you think he was there?”

She thinks for a second. I quirk a brow. Realization dawns. “You fucked him?”

I make a face. Bile pools in the back of my throat at the thought. It’s like I finding out I accidentally fucked my brother. “God no! Not me.”

“Oh, sorry.” She looks away embarrassed. “I thought…”

“It was one of the other girls.”

I don’t need to elaborate. She probably thinks one of the girls told me he went to college here.

“Oh…” she says, a shocked look marring her features. “Why would he?

“I asked myself the same thing.”

“Not that I find him attractive like that.” She shivers like she’s cold. “He could have anyone. I mean girls go batshit crazy when he’s on campus. Guys give him shit but he gives it back just as good. Some say he works at the carnival.”

It’s a little more than that but it’s none of my business.

She grabs her laptop and powers it up. “Want to watch a movie?” she asks getting comfortable on the bed.

I smile not having watched anything good in years. “Sure.” I try not to sound too eager as I push off my sneakers and get comfortable beside her on the bed.

She pulls up the horror section and I smile when I see IT.

She looks at me with a grin. “I guess I know which one we’re going to watch.”