Eighteen

Jasper

After I make sure nobody’s lingering outside the back door entrance to The Whip, we slip inside. Ace has a shower stall in his office, and there’s a stack of fresh employee polo shirts in the closet. After I grab one, I hand it to Winnie and place my hand on the door to the bathroom.

Before I open the door, I tell her, “This doesn’t change how I feel, Winnie.”

She swallows and says, “About what?”

There’s so much more I could say, but there’s no use in arguing about it now. If I overstep my bounds again, Winnie could walk away from me and never look back. Then, she really would be all on her own, and that’s one risk I can’t afford to take.

I settle for the simplest version and tell her, “About you going back to the trailer tonight.”

“You can’t make that decision for me.”

“I know,” I whisper.

And then I squeeze her hand, so she knows that, if I could make that decision, I’d choose her safety over everything else. I’m still determined to figure out a way to keep her out of that place. Until I can, her squeezing my hand back has to be enough.

The gesture is slowly becoming my favorite thing about us. Listen to me—us. There really isn’t an us. Not unless you consider what we have as more than a friendship. I’d like to, but I don’t think Winnie’s there yet.

“Get cleaned up. You’ll feel better,” I tell her.

She peeks inside and seems shocked that there’s a full bathroom hiding in this office.

I asked Ace about it. He said the owner used to practically live there. When Ace took over, he got rid of the double bed and replaced it with a nicer desk. And then he emptied the closet out and stocked it with employee uniforms and placemats for the bar. There wasn’t much he could do to the bathroom, so he keeps it in working condition and uses it when he comes to work straight from the gym.

Winnie looks back and forth between the shower and the toilet. I can guarantee this bathroom is a lot bigger than the one in her trailer.

“Towels are under the sink, and there’s some soap in the shower. It’s my brother’s stuff. He won’t care if you use it.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t move or try to close the door.

Her lip is tucked between her teeth, and she looks like she wants to say something but is afraid to. That’s not like her. Not with me anyway. She might hesitate sometimes, but she always gets it out when she’s ready.

“What’s wrong, Winnie?”

“Will you stay in the office while I’m in the shower?” she says so softly, I barely hear her.

But I’m glad she had the courage to speak up when she didn’t want to be alone.

I point to the desk and tell her, “I’ll sit at the desk and wait for you. Take your time.”

“Okay,” she says as I close the door.

A second later, the lock turns. Her locking the door is probably nothing more than natural instinct, but it’s just another reminder that Winnie’s trust level is low.

If you’d told me at the end of the school year that I’d be sitting at The Whip, in my brother’s office, while Winnie was in the shower, I’d have told you to get your head examined. There’s nothing sexual about us, but I think about her all the time.

Even now, when I’m sitting in Ace’s chair and he walks in, I have the urge to tell him all about her. I can’t though. The things she told me were spoken in confidence. If I want to keep her in my life, I have to keep her secrets. That means, I can’t ask my brother for advice this time, and I can’t ask him for help. Whatever he knows about Winnie came from her, and that’s the way it has to stay.

Ace tosses his keys on the desk and glances toward the bathroom. “Who’s in the shower?”

“Winnie,” I tell him.

He grabs the stack of mail on his desk, and then he opens the mini fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. “Can I ask why?”

“You can. That doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you.” I try to make my voice sound light and airy, like there’s nothing for him to worry about, but it’s not easy to hide the fact that Winnie’s in trouble.

I must gloss over the obvious pretty well though because Ace just rolls his eyes and sits on the corner of the desk. His long, dramatic pause tells me I’m about to get a lecture.

He finally looks at me. “Jasper, whatever you’re doing with that girl, be careful. And don’t do it in my office.”

Maybe telling him the truth would have been a better idea. At least then, his opinion of Winnie wouldn’t have changed.

“I know what you’re thinking, and we definitely didn’t do that.”

“She’s in my shower, Jasper. That speaks for itself.”

My own brother doesn’t believe me. If he had found Winnie on that playground today, he’d never be saying these things.

Before I can clear the air, Winnie comes out of the bathroom with her wet hair piled on top of her head. She’s wearing a clean polo shirt, and most of her coloring has returned. There’s even a little bit of pink on her cheeks from the both of us staring at her.

Now that they’ve been cleaned, the cuts on her cheek aren’t nearly as bad. There’s no makeup on Winnie’s face though, so they’re still noticeable. My brother sets down the stack of mail in his hand and gets to her before I have a chance to cut him off.

“How did this happen, Winnie?”

She shies away from his fingertips, not wanting Ace to touch her. There’s no way she’s going to tell him what happened, especially when she hasn’t even told me the whole story yet.

Her eyes find mine, and they beg with me to save her. She doesn’t have to ask me twice. I get up and take her hand, and unlike with Ace, she lets me touch her.

“Winnie had a little accident at the playground earlier, but she’s okay.”

My brother waits for Winnie to add anything to the story. She doesn’t. Ace looks like he wants to call our bluff, but he lets us leave his office and go out the back door.

“I can’t leave, Jasper,” she says. “I need the money.”

I can shut her shift down with one word to my brother; that’s the only reason she’s pleading with me. But those marks on her speak louder than anything she could say.

“You’re in no shape for a shift tonight, Winnie. You’ve been through hell today.”

“I’ll stay in the kitchen with you. I promise I won’t go beyond the kitchen doors. It’ll be like I’m not even here.”

“But you are,” I whisper. “You’re right here.” I’m so torn between doing what’s right and what she wants that I cave before I say another word.

When she looks at me like she needs me, I can’t deny her. I want her to want me—simple as that. And, right now, she’s asking for my permission like she needs it. I don’t know what that means. I just know I like it.

“Fine. We can stay.”

She gives me a little smile and wraps her arms around my neck. “Thank you,” she says.

I breathe in the scent of her freshly washed hair and realize how much Winnie wants to be taken care of. She’s still determined as ever, but for some reason, she’s giving me control over some of her choices. I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it, and I’m not about to clue her in. Not when she’s finally starting to trust me.

“Come with me. We have half an hour before we can clock in, and it’s too hot to stay outside.”

Winnie follows me through the dancers’ entrance and down the hallway. We slip into the back room, and I flick on the switch to turn on the black lights. It takes a second, and then our black polo shirts disappear, and Winnie’s teeth glow brightly enough to light up the entire room.

“We’re not supposed to be in here, Jasper.”

“We’re not supposed to do a lot of things, but we do them anyway.”

She can’t argue. With limited time, this is the only place where we can be alone right now. Before long, this room will be filled with frequent flyers looking for private time with their favorite dancers.

Ace hates this aspect of the business, but without the stage and the dancers, there’s little separating The Whip from every other dive bar in town. Ace needs the business. The business needs the money. And the bulk of the money comes from the crowd who comes to watch the dancers. It’s a vicious cycle, especially when one of his biggest moneymakers is Tess.

Winnie looks at the benches lining the wall and the few chairs in the middle of the room. Everything’s spaced out by round drink tables and random plush ottomans. I’ve never been in this room during a shift, only after, and I’m kind of glad I haven’t seen exactly what goes down. Winnie though, she looks like she has a pretty good idea.

I laugh when she says, “I’m afraid to touch anything.”

She’s too good for a place like this. We’d have been better off risking being caught at the bar than hiding out in here. But, when I saw Winnie trying to hide the scratches on her face from my brother, I wanted her someplace she wouldn’t have to hide.

“Let’s go to the bar. We can sit in the back corner.”

For a second, she considers the move, and then she shakes her head. “I think I’d rather stay here.”

She finally decides on a place to sit down, but she hesitates long enough that I sit first and then pull her onto my lap. This way, she doesn’t have to actually touch the fabric.

“Tell me if I get too heavy, and I’ll get up,” she says sweetly.

In the dark, her eyes are so smoky, I can’t stop staring at them.

“You weigh, like, ninety pounds, Winnie. I think I’ll live.”

“Not by choice.”

I don’t know what she means, but I drop it. Arguing with a girl about her weight is asking for trouble.

I change the topic entirely and ask, “How did you end up at the playground?”

She turns her head away from me and stares at the wall. She doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Like I said, Jax ransacked my room and stole my money. Tess got her fix and showed it to me. The bag got knocked out of her hand, and she came after me.”

“So, you ran? I still can’t believe Tess fought her own stepdaughter.”

Winnie plays with the ring around her thumb and ignores the question at first. I move my hand from my thigh to hers, and she turns her head toward me again.

“Tess doesn’t think of me as a daughter. Maybe when she first met Dad she did, back when her life didn’t revolve around drugs and dancing. Believe it or not, there was a time I kind of liked her, and we got along.”

“I believe it,” I tell her.

Memories flicker behind the glowing whites of her eyes. I can’t imagine anyone not liking Winnie. If Tess were in her right mind, I’m positive she wouldn’t be so angry all the time. There wouldn’t be this overwhelming need to compete with Winnie. Because that’s exactly what she’s doing.

“Has Tess hurt you before?”

“Tess hates me, Jasper. She’ll do whatever she wants to make that clear. I don’t matter to her.”

“You matter, Winnie. I promise you that.”

She shrugs like the thought is foreign to her. “Trey’s the only one besides my dad who has ever cared about me. He’s been gone a lot though, and now that I’m older, he thinks I can handle more and take care of myself. I’m trying, but my age holds me back from everything. I can’t get my own place to live. I can’t work in a lot of places or sign important papers to free myself of Tess.”

“You mean, like emancipation papers?”

“Tess won’t sign anything. I’m not sure she could though. She and my dad were never legally married, so technically, I belong to the state. She worked things so that, even if I run away, they’ll bring me back to her or someone else—someone who might be ten times worse than she is.”

I can’t see the tear fall in the dark, but the droplet of salty water lands on my arm. It could have come from her wet hair, but another and then another follow, and I hear Winnie sniffle. Pulling her against my chest, I hold on to her as her shoulders shake.

She grabs a handful of my polo and holds on with everything she has.

“Please, let me take you home. To my house. We can even go to Ace’s if you’d rather go there. I have a key.”

I wish I’d let her cry in silence because suggesting that we leave again has her wiggling out of my arms.

She glances at the clock on the wall and wipes away her tears. “We have to clock in.”

Again, I let her have her way. What choice do I have? At least, if we clock in, I can be with her. Once we leave, there’s no guarantee she’ll stay with me, and I can’t let her go back to that trailer with Jax and Tess.

Winnie opens the door, and the light from the hallway blinds us. She intertwines her fingers with mine and waits for me to lead the way back to the kitchen. The goose bumps on her arm are probably from the air-conditioning, but I stare at them anyway, hoping I’m the one who put them there.