Zeb…

She’d been tense on the way home, the regular text message check-ins had been short but taking her into her work today, she’d seemed fine. I kept to myself, let her sort through her head, and had a pretty good night of my own at the bar. No trouble, which was the way I usually liked it, being hired muscle.

Zeke waved me through the velvet rope, on his phone, exchanging a nod with me and I plunged into the heat and pounding music of the neon-lit dark. I threaded my way through mostly empty tables and ran into Cherry, one of the girls that hung around the MC.

“Looking for Francesca?” she asked, snapping her gum and rolling her eyes. Cherry was a nasty piece of work sometimes, and most of us just ignored her. This was no different, at least when it came to me.

“Yeah, where she at?”

“In back,” she said with a smirk.

“Ta,” I thanked her and went that way. I didn’t like what I found.

She was on a counter, her eyes lifeless and empty while a bloke plowed her but good. I stopped in my tracks and her eyes focused on me. Panic flashed in them, then they flooded with such a deep sorrow.

I’d been about to pull the bloke off her and beat his ass to death but I realized that she wasn’t struggling and then it hit me and my stomach nearly dropped out. I put up my hands and shook my head and backed out of the room, the bloke never even realizing I was there.

I went out to the parking lot and pulled the bike around back since she knew I was there, she’d come out when she was ready. I rolled myself a fat one and calmed my nerves some.

I hadn’t reckoned it went beyond dancing for her and I was sort of dumbfounded that she was a whore. It didn’t sit right with me. Something about it bothered me. The disappointment so strong I could taste it, but something else was there, keeping me from being hot-headed about it.

She came out pretty quickly and I couldn’t look at her.

“I’m sorry, I told you –“ I waved her off and straddled my bike, firing it up. I didn’t want to talk to her, not yet. I was afraid I might say something unfortunate. It was best I take her home and go talk to my bros.

She looked taken aback, then angry, then resigned and got on behind me in short order. I took her home, waved off her next attempt to talk to me, and made sure she went up and locked her doors. I rode out to the club next and found a pretty busy common room.

I spied out Dragon and went over, dropping into a seat at his table.

“I know that look,” he declared with a gusty sigh.

“You maybe forgot to mention she was a whore?”

“Didn’t figure her line of employment was all that important to the job at hand. Of course, I also figured it weren’t none of your business.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Dragon, you stay in the truck. I think I’ve got this one.”

Shelly dropped into the chair across from Dragon and next to mine, her blue eyes calculating. One of her little ones was under a baby blanket, latched on and having a feed.

“You eavesdropping, Girl?” I asked and she rolled her eyes at me. Dragon’s eyebrows went up.

“Always, and for the most part, I stay out of it, but consider me cashing in a year’s worth of my get-out-of-jail-free cards because I won’t stay quiet about this one. Now you listen here, I want to lay out a story.”

Dragon leaned back in his chair grinning and crossed his arms, I leaned back in my own and folded my hands on the table in front of me real proper and let her know with raised eyebrows that I was listening.

“Picture this, you’re a pretty girl. Hook up with a nice guy who ends up being a total douche and pretty much wrecks the only thing you’ve got going for you which is that you are pretty. Still, you manage to work it. Get the best job that a high school dropout with barely her GED can. You need cash and you need a decent amount of it, what else are you going to do, am I right?”

“I reckon.”

“So you find out there’s even more money to be made and maybe you’re pressured into it, maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t really matter. Sure, it’s illegal, technically, but seriously. What the fuck else did you expect her to do? In this piece-of-shit patriarchal society, what else is there for her to do?” Shelly leaned back in her chair and took a second, trying not to raise her voice.

“She’s pretty much wrecked by our society’s standards as it is and the only thing she’s got to sell is herself. Now, I, of all people, get it. If it weren’t for the club, I might have ended up like her, and to be honest, I respect the bitch. I can’t fucking blame her for having a better business model than me. I was just a slut giving it up for free, she’s way smarter. She’s getting straight up paid.”

“How the hell you know all this?” Dragon asked baffled and Shelly smiled sweetly at him.

“I know everything that goes on around here, that and Cherry works over there. She’s got a big fucking mouth. Probably equal to the size of her cunt by now.” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad and Dragon let out a laugh that started as one of his characteristically booming ones, but he strangled it at the last minute so as not to wake the baby Shelly had in her arms.

“Still would have been nice to know,” I said getting back to the subject and shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Shelly’s practical view of things was making me feel like a total asshole.

“How could you not? You seriously thought she and I were just platonic buddies? I’d go for a dance and that was it?” Dragon asked.

Then I did feel like a total asshole, especially when I blurted out, “You?”

“Yeah, me! The fuck you think when you met her in just one of my shirts sleeping in my bed?”

“I didn’t think…”

“Ah, but you knew. You always knew,” Shelly said knowingly.

“How d’ you reckon?”

“Because you’re disappointed, but yer not pissed. You ain’t come storming in here downing a bottle. Something tipped you off and your back-brain probably caught on but the front, not so much.”

I thought back to the vacant look as she danced, a mirror for the vacant look in her eyes as whoever-he-was fucked her in the back of that shit-hole club she worked. I shook my head and sighed. I knew coming here was right, but I also knew I needed to head back to her place and apologize.

I scrubbed my face with my hands, and Dragon said to Shelly, “You said your piece, now kick rocks a minute.”

“Sure,” she said softly, her expression thoughtful as she looked at me; not unsympathetic. She got up carefully and shuffled away from us bouncing her kid and I stared after her.

“Living proof that there’s a life after that kind of life. She’s right, you know. If it weren’t for Reave or this club, she could have easily ended up like Tiff.”

“She shouldn’t have to do that,” I said.

“Do you really think she wants to?” he shot back.

I made a frustrated noise and leaned back, staring at the ceiling painted black. Dragon shook his head.

“You like her.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer, I just looked back his way. He nodded and asked, “She like you too?”

“She kissed me back the other day.”

He nodded slowly, “She’s never let me kiss her. I imagine she doesn’t let just anybody.”

“I wouldn’t say anything to her, I didn’t want to upset her more or say something unfortunate.”

“She locked in her place?”

“Yeah.”

“You headed back over there?”

I wanted to, but I didn’t know if it was best. Dragon sighed and said, “I know it ain’t going to make you feel better, but as far as someone in her situation goes, I know she’s responsible about it.”

“How so?”

“Condoms, always. Goes in for regular testing. Real selective about who she’ll fuck. She may sell herself for sex, but she at least has enough self-respect that she ain’t doin’ it cheaply.”

I grimaced, “Too right, you ain’t makin’ me feel better.”

“You want I should have someone else help her?”

“No,” I said quickly and he sat back.

“Well, I think that’s the only answer either you or me need. Now man the fuck up, and go work out your shit.”

“That an order, Boss?”

“For once, yeah. Yeah, it is.”

I nodded and got up, “Thanks, Bro.”

“You’re learning,” he said with a nod. “I’m proud of you.”

That struck me right in the heart. It meant a lot that he would say so.

When I’d come here, I’d been lost without my family, my people, far from home – shit, you name it. Dragon had sat me down and asked me what I wanted most out of life and I’d told him honest; I wanted to be a man. A man my mum and my people could be proud of and he’d told me flat out that only I could make it happen and I needed to figure my shit out.

Part of figuring my shit out had been admitting to myself that it was all right not being the best, the smartest, or the craftiest one of any given bunch. I needed to leave my pride be, and just concentrate on finding myself and that connection to the rest of it.

I’d put in a lot of work on myself since coming here and I had to admit, even to me, that while I didn’t like what Tiffany was doing, I hadn’t been completely blind to it, even though I didn’t want to see it. I also had to admit, that while I could judge her for it, keep things strictly business and try never to think about her like that again, doing that would just make me a bigger asshole.

She hadn’t judged me, even though she’d told me her friend had done plenty of it. She’d always been honest about things and while she didn’t readily volunteer what she did, I couldn’t recall her actually ever hiding it.

At the end of it all, we were just two people stumbling around in life trying to make our way and be better than the people we were the day before and if anything, I could respect that. In part of being a better man than I was yesterday, I wanted to help her be a better woman, but I didn’t want to end up with things more munted than they already were, and so Dragon was right.

I needed to go back to her place, even if it was out in the wops, and talk to her. I rode back the entire time, trying to figure out what just to say. Practiced it a few times even, but all the words left me when she opened the door for me, her lashes thick and clumped with a constellation of tears on them.

I felt my shoulders drop and a defeated sigh escape me as I figured the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions was true. So instead of saying anything. I just pulled her tight against me and hugged her and I think it was what she needed because she completely fell apart sobbing against me.

I felt like such an asshole, afraid I’d carked it before it could even get started.

Fuck me.