Chapter 18

Riley

My morning warm-up routine started before anyone else arrived at the studio, Veronica included. Of course, I’d dance when she arrived too, but when it was this early and I was all alone, I finally understood my body.

I hooked one leg around the pole, arched my back against the metal cylinder, lifted my free leg and grasped the toes behind my back, swirling in circles, my eyes closed, lost in the rhythm of the music.

Music box—that was the position’s name, and I loved it because it stretched me out. I landed on the boards, then brought myself back up into the iron X, my hands on the pole, my legs out to one side and open. It took extreme concentration and focus on the core, but the burn in my center brought me a type of high I adored. It was good.

Stretching, moving, working my body into the different poses, and twirling around the pole in-between more strenuous moves. I didn’t have a set routine, per se. I moved as my muscles needed it.

“Escalate” by Tsar B pumped through the stereo, and I moved sinuously, landed, and scissored my leg up in a high kick.

“Starting so early?” Veronica’s voice cracked over the music.

I kept my center and lowered my leg, opened my eyes. “Hey,” I said. “I could say the same about you.”

Veronica carried her gym bag on her shoulder and wore a pair of gray yoga pants and a matching crop top, her hair tied up in its usual messy bun, a few blonde strands escaping. Her cheeks were flushed and dark half-moons had made an appearance under her eyes. Very unlike her.

The last time Veronica had had those was three years ago—when Nessy’s sleeping problems had finally come to an end. The woman maintained that she’d missed enough sleep in those three years to account for her nightly ten p.m. bedtime.

Veronica shrugged her shoulders. “What?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “You look good.”

“Oh, whatever. You know I don’t look good when I haven’t slept well.” She stomped over to the chairs in the corner and dumped her bag on top of them. She zipped it open, too viciously, and brought out her water bottle. She slurped water noisily.

“Ron,” I said.

She held up a finger until she’d finished gulping.

“Ron.”

“Don’t Ron me, OK? You didn’t come back last night. You didn’t answer your texts. I was worried sick about you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I replied. “I can handle this.” I looped my arm around the pole and touched my temple to it. “Veronica, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not fine. None of this is fine,” she said and tossed her water bottle back into her gym bag. “I—I’ve had no one for the longest time. No one except Grandma, who died when I was twenty. You know that. And now, he just rocks up and he’s some billionaire who’s made something of himself while I’m struggling along. Struggling to support Nessy. It’s embarrassing.”

“You could ask him for help.”

“No! That’s not what I’m saying, Riley. You don’t get it. It’s just—we’re from the same family, and we took two completely different paths, and I just refuse to believe that any of this is happening right now. I know who he was back when I was in my teens. I heard all about it when he called me. The only time he called me, by the way. Why should he get to have such a big piece of your life now? What’s the guarantee he won’t walk out on you like he did on me?”

“Ron, you were five when you guys were separated, and it wasn’t by choice.” I broke down what Jax had told me about the separation, swiftly. Bullet-pointed it, basically.

Veronica’s throat worked. She sniffed and pressed the back of her hand to her nose. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “Maybe it was stupid of me not to ask, but every time I spoke to Grandma about it, she told me that it was Cole’s choice.”

“She was trying to protect you in her own way,” I replied. “Ron, listen to me. He’s not a bad person. Yeah, he’s been through some shit, but he’s not some wicked guy who’s going to ruin everything.”

“He already is,” Veronica replied then bit on her bottom lip. “Shit, forget it.”

“No, tell me.”

She squared her shoulders, then thumped across the boards toward me. She stopped a pole away and grasped it. “It’s going to sound selfish, Riley, but for the longest time it’s been me watching you with Michael. It was Michael for five years, and before that it was me and Craig, and it’s been one royal shitfest. Finally, it’s just us. Two friends, single, working out our own problems, and now this happens. I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you like him. I know he’s probably attractive to you or whatever, but he’s—he’ll always be the brother who never contacted me. The one who wound up in prison. The one who never bothered. When I needed family the most, he wasn’t there.”

I sighed and shook my head against the cool metal. “Babe, I know this is hard for you, but what’s going on with him and me has nothing to do with that, OK?”

“I don’t trust him. Bottom line. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I’m not going to.” Last night had been amazing, but the conversation after had driven home the point that Jax and I weren’t meant for each other. It was only a couple more weeks until the thirty days were up, and then I’d be out of his hair. I’d find somewhere else to live.

I’d—what, forget all the feelings that soared through me the minute I so much as thought his name?

I’d have to. He already had opinions about me and my future.

“There’s nothing you need to worry about.”

“So you’ll move out of his place?” Ron asked. “You said you’d sleep on my sofa last night.”

That was before the rest of last night had happened. I couldn’t bring myself to judge Jax for his past, only for his actions now, and so far, they’d been pretty darn amazing. He’d picked me up and saved me from sleeping in my studio, he’d fed me, he’d offered to help me.

“No,” I replied. “I’m not moving out. You might not trust him, but I do. At least, enough to stay with him until the month’s up.”

“Why?” Veronica’s grip on the pole tightened, and her bicep corded. “Why? I don’t understand why you trust him when you don’t know him, and I’m telling you that I don’t trust him. Doesn’t my opinion mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does, girl. Come on. You’re ‘I told you so,’ and I respect that,” I said and smiled with the joke. She didn’t crack a smile. “But, Veronica, you don’t see what I see, and you don’t know what we’ve been through over the past ten days. It’s been a strange roller coaster. It’s there, but it’s not there, and I don’t know. I need to work this out myself.”

She kept quiet and wrung the pole’s proverbial neck with both her hands.

“It’ll be OK,” I said. “I’m thirty, not three. I’ll manage.”

She still didn’t speak.

“Veronica, come on. We’ve got a long day ahead of us, and you’re tired. We’re both not in the place to discuss anything serious today.” I checked the time on the clock on the wall. “Our first class starts in an hour. Let’s get in a good workout, and if you really want to talk about it, we can do it tonight after class, all right?”

She managed a nod, but her emotions were written all over her face, and they weren’t pretty.

We did our warm-up in silence, and I tried, but failed, to lose my body in the movements again. It was difficult with Veronica nearby, casting rough glares in my direction. Finally, classes started, and we separated into the two halls—thankfully, Jax’s guy had come and repaired the poles.

The day passed, and in our breaks, we sat in silence in the studio or in the office or in the little bakery down the street, sipping coffee. Veronica didn’t bring him up again, though she did open her mouth, hesitate, and snap it shut again like seventy times over the course of our lunch break.

The dancing continued, and finally, at the end of the day, it was time to go home. I packed away the stereo as usual, went through my little closing-time routine, and grabbed my gym bag. I turned and ran right into Ronny.

“Oof!” I rebounded and stumbled to a halt. “Damn, you scared the shit outta me.”

“Ew,” Veronica said, but without her usual humor. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Home? To take a shower? Maybe have something to eat. And then I’m going to make a sacrifice to the powers that be. That’s a typical Tuesday for me, though.”

Still not a single smile. Tough crowd.

“Home where? My place?”

“Ron, stop it. I’m going back to Jax’s apartment,” I said. “I’m fine, and you need to let go of all of this. It’s eating you up, and it’s not even your problem.”

“I just—you can’t trust him. I mean, he changed his name.”

“So?”

“Why would he change his name if he had nothing to hide?” Veronica asked.

“Because,” a man’s voice grumbled across the room, “I didn’t want the same surname as our uncle, Veronica. Surely, you can understand that.”

We both spun on the spot.

Jax stood in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “Riley, I came to talk to you about that business proposition I made last week.”

I drank him in, the open-collared shirt, the tattoos, and the sleeves rolled back on his forearms to reveal his muscles. I couldn’t help myself with him. I stared, shook my head to clear it. “I told you, Jax, I’m not selling.”

“You need to reconsider, Miss Robinson. If you sell the studio to me, all your problems with disappear.”

I cleared my throat, slung my gym bag over my shoulder. “I told you, no. I won’t allow my studio to be turned into some sleazy strip club. No amount of pizza and pancakes will change that.”

“Pancakes?” Veronica muttered.

Jax’s grin was undeterred by the rejection. He strode across the room instead, glanced his sister’s way. “You going to unclench tonight?” He asked. “Or drag her off to your apartment again?”

“If she’d come with me we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” Veronica said. “Listen, dude, I don’t really know you anymore, and I don’t want to, so I’m going to avoid this after-school-special moment and go home to my daughter.”

Jax blinked at her. “You have a daughter?”

“Later,” Ron said and waved at me over her shoulder. She padded out of the room and down the hall without a backward glance.

I sighed.

The entire situation here was a clusterfuck.

Jax took the gym bag from my shoulder, then grabbed my hand and started walking for the exit.

“Hey,” I said. “Wait a second. Where are we going?”

“Somewhere.”

“Jax, you can’t just caveman-drag me back to your lair.”

“I didn’t use a club,” he shot back.

“Very funny.” I kept pace with him, thoughts mulched up from Veronica’s insistence that he wasn’t to be trusted, to the prickles of anxiety and joy that resulted from my hand tucked into his. “Seriously, though, where are we going?”

“Somewhere sleazy,” he replied.