Chapter 28

Riley

It didn’t matter that the supply closet was locked and I couldn’t get out the stereo, nor that I couldn’t switch on the lights without risking discovery. I danced in the dark. I swayed to an inner beat—an emulsion of pain and self-expression.

Each position on the pole, each measured movement of my legs or core or arms brought a different thought and answer.

What do I do about Jax?

Tell him. That was the only thing I could do—suck it up and tell him the truth about the baby. It didn’t matter what he did for a living. He had a right to know, not that I’d ever truly doubted my capability to tell him.

I gripped the top of the pole with both hands and shimmied against it, arched my back and dipped backward, then snapped upright again.

Anything for you.

Tears welled in the corners of my eyes. I’d do whatever it took to keep this child warm and safe. I’d make sure that this little boy or girl had a better life than I had, and I’d support its decisions, no matter what.

I practiced my Iron X, tension spreading in my core, pain that was almost sweet. I held the position for as long as I could then lowered myself to the ground, sweating. I checked the time on the clock, illuminated slightly by a sheath of light from the lampposts outside, and sighed.

I’d been dancing for an hour with short breaks. Veronica would be tearing her hair out at home, freaking out. She’d already left me a voice message, though I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it yet. She’d either spit fire and brimstone or apologize, and I couldn’t stand either right now.

Ron had been with me through thick and thin, but her behavior over the past month and a bit had been bizarre. Jax had brought out an insecure side of her I’d never seen before.

I shook the thoughts from my head, fetched my coat and cell phone from the stack of chairs in the corner, and hurried out of the dance hall, loathing the fact I hadn’t brought a gym bag with me or any water, for that matter. I stopped in the bathroom and drank from the faucet, then opened the small window I’d come through. Easy in, easy out—I squirmed through ass first and lowered myself to the alley on the other side.

“Easy,” I whispered and did a mock gymnast’s landing position, then clapped my hands. “Everything will be fine.”

“No, it won’t be,” a voice said from the end of the darkened alleyway sandwiched between the studio and the construction site next to it.

I turned toward whoever the hell it was, my heart beating out a tattoo of panic on the inside of my rib cage.

A silhouette waxed into view, just outside the light of the lampposts on the streets. Heels clicked against the gritty concrete, hips swayed, and the rough scent of perfume physically assaulted me.

“Who are you?” I asked, squaring my shoulders. God, I was a dumbass. I’d broken into this damn studio and hadn’t thought for a second to bring something with to defend myself. I was hardly in the bad part of town here, but this was Miami. Shoot, it was Florida. Crazy shit happened here all the time.

The figure didn’t answer my question. It clip-clopped closer and halted a few feet from me, face hidden in shadow like some horrid nightmare creature.

I clenched my fists and forced myself to anger. “Who are you?” I growled this time.

“You know who I am,” she said and took one final step forward, out of the darker shade and into the murk. Bright red hair propped atop her head, falling past a pale face with lips stuck in a perpetual “fuck me, daddy” pout.

It was Cherry Vanilla.

The stripper.

“What the hell? Cherry? What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t think I’d let you get away with it, did you?” she asked, folding her arms and tapping her long nails against her forearms.

“Get away with what?”

“With having me fired! With pulling me away from Mr. King! He was always mine, mine forever until you came into the picture and ruined it all,” Cherry hissed. “And now you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”

My mind reeled, grabbing at facts and thoughts aimlessly. “Cherry, I—how did you know I’d be here?”

“You own this place,” she said, simply, and shrugged her shoulders. “And I see Jax here all the time.”

“All the time…” This was bad. This was real fucking bad. “Cherry, have you been following me?”

“As if,” she said, and tossed her hair.

“OK, have you been following Jax?”

She didn’t answer that question, which had to mean she had been. Cherry was so obsessed with him she’d decided following him was the only option left to her, and she blamed me for how she’d been dismissed. Of course, it’d had nothing to do with me…had it?

“I warned you,” Cherry whispered, her voice snaking through the night. “I warned you to stay away from him, remember? You hoed yourself out to him in the club, and I told you it’d be the last time you ever got to be with him. Why didn’t you listen? Now, you’re going to have to pay the price.” She took a step forward, and I took several back, my sneakers scraping on loose pieces of gravel. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“Cherry, you don’t have to do this. Jax isn’t—” but I couldn’t finish the rest of the sentence. Jax wasn’t part of my life anymore? Except he was. The baby growing inside me was part of him. I’d have that little piece for the rest of my life, even if I couldn’t have him.

“He’s what? He isn’t what?” Cherry asked and stepped closer. Streaks of light from the lamps on the construction site moved across her form, across the breasts on display in their purple velvet cupped bra and the ripped leatherette jacket she’d tugged over it.

I glanced back down the alley, sought my escape route. I could probably run faster than she could in those heels.

“Don’t even think about it,” Cherry hissed, and I snapped focus back to her.

The stripper dragged a switchblade out of her bra and clicked it open. Light glinted on the end of the blade—at least it wasn’t rusty—and she swished it from side to side in front of me.

“Cherry, this is ridiculous. I’m not anything to Jax. I’m not—”

“You’re not?” She let out a ridiculously high-pitched giggle. “That must be why he sold Club Queen. Because you’re not anything to him.”

“He did what?” I forgot about everything but the club and Jax for a second, searched Cherry’s expression for the truth. “He did what?”

“I’m done talking,” the stripper whispered and stalked forward, assuming a crouched-over pose, the knife out like a jagged tooth.

I backed up several more steps, keeping time with her movements, and eyed the chicken-wire fencing that separated the construction site from the alley. I could climb it, right? I’d likely get my ankles slashed by an insane stripper during the process, but better my ankles than my carotid artery.

“Hold still,” Cherry said. “I’m going to cut you now.”

“Thanks for the instructions,” I replied, and looked back at her. I flinched, but not because of the knife or Cherry’s comical attack position—Crouching Stripper, Hidden Benjamin.

Another figure moved down the alleyway, keeping close to the fencing, hulking, strong, with shoulders I’d clung to, a body I recognized even in the dark because I’d dreamed about it, tasted it, felt it beneath me and inside me.

Jax.

“Uh, uh, Cherry, you don’t have to do this, OK? If you do, it will only ruin your life. Do you get that? I mean, think about it. Murder or even assault is a punishable offense, and I will press charges, I guarantee it.”

“You can’t press charges if you’re dead,” Cherry said and slashed the knife toward me.

Two feet separated us now, and I kept up my backward pace, pressing my palms forward and moving my ass back so my abdomen was the section furthest from her. “An astute observation,” I said. “Listen, I understand times are tough for you, and I know exactly what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you back.”

“He does love you back,” Cherry snapped and jabbed the knife toward me.

Jax burst out of the shadows and ran right into the stripper. He grasped her wrist and twisted it hard. She dropped the knife and let out a shriek, kicked her legs. He held her around the waist and dragged her back down the alley, away from me and toward the lights on the street.

I skirted around the switchblade and hurried after them, trembling from head to toe.

“Hey,” Jax called to me. “You wanna call the cops, maybe?”

“Right!” I fished my cell out of my coat pocket.

The next two hours were a blur of activity. Cherry screaming blue bloody murder and Jax holding her at bay. The cops making the arrest, removing the knife, asking me for my statement, shoving Cherry into the back of a cruiser, all while Jax looked on. He stood close to me, his arm brushing mine, but not around me, just yet.

After Cherry had been carted off, screeching at the top of her lungs, Jax spoke at length with one of the officers about taking out a restraining order against her.

“It’s better to follow a legal process in this case,” Jax muttered to me, out of the side of his mouth. “If it was up to me, this would be handled differently.”

“It’s not up to you?” I asked.

He studied me, those ocean-blue eyes glittering by the neon light from the lampposts. “Not anymore,” he said.

Shivers spread down my spine, but the cop returned from his cruiser with the information Jax needed, and the tension dissipated somewhat. Finally we were done, and Jax walked me to his car—an Audi this time—and opened the passenger-side door for me.

I slipped onto the leather seat and put on my seatbelt, then leaned back against the headrest, and squeezed my eyes shut.

A car door slammed, the engine purred to life, and we cruised away from the studio and the scene of mayhem. Tonight had been yet another reminder of how tough life would be, of how—a thought struck me in the center of my forehead and I turned my head only, opened my eyes and watched Jax.

He drove with both hands on the wheel, his grip strong, his focus on the road. Lights flashed by, casting beams of orange and yellow across his open-collared shirt, the tattooed forearms, his neatly trimmed beard, the strong nose.

“Did you sell the club?” I asked at last, my pulse ticking up again. All through the debacle with Cherry, my mind had been divided between the threat of the blade and that question. Had he really sold Club Queen? And if so, why? “Jax?”

“We’ll talk when we’re home,” he said.

I looked out the window and frowned at the skyscrapers, the palm trees, the lights. “This isn’t the way to Ron’s house.”

“No,” he replied. “I said, when we’re home. My home. Our home.”