The worst part about sleeping with your boss was the aftermath.
Well, maybe that wasn’t always true. I was sure there were plenty of unfortunate situations out there where the sex was actually the worst part. At least I’d had the good stuff before things started going to hell.
So, with the understanding that I could have had it worse, I would say the worst part of going to bed with Daz was definitely the aftermath.
Specifically, it was the fact that I hadn’t been alone with him before it happened.
Aside from the whole freaking club, there were also five other dancers working the party, and it was kind of hard to miss when the guest of honor and one of your coworkers up and disappeared before the night was over.
Luckily, the girls who had been there were still keeping their mouths shut about the party as a whole, as they’d been told to. Unluckily, that didn’t stop them from knocking on my dressing room under the guise of actual work issues just to try to convince me to spill all the dirty secrets.
“Come on,” Candy, the latest to come in, insisted. Yes, there was actually a Candy at Candy Shop. It wasn’t named after her. The universe was just funny that way. “Just tell me if he’s good. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been curious?”
I swear, you would think I’d slept with a celebrity, or a porn star—not that Daz was all that far removed from the second option. The fascination went so far beyond the ordinary. After days of it, whenever I was at Candy Shop with any of the girls who worked the party, I was tempted to just start spilling.
Of course, if it got back to Daz that I was telling them he’d all but rocked my world, that would be worse. He wouldn’t care if I talked about his skill. No, he would probably be thrilled I was touting his horn. There was no way I could take how smug the asshole would be.
“Do you actually have a problem with the schedule?” I forced her back to the excuse she’d used to get me alone.
“Yeah. Can’t do Thursday. Ma has to get cataract surgery, and I need to be home with her that night.”
Since I knew Norma, her mother, I didn’t question this further. It wasn’t uncommon for the girls to make up all sorts of ailments and surgeries for real and fake relatives alike. Norma, I knew for a fact, had bad vision.
“I’ll rework the schedule. Do you want me to see if someone will switch nights with you?” Finding someone to cover a shift was always easy. Plenty of the girls would take an extra night and the added income it meant. Getting someone to just switch was trickier, but it was part of my job.
“Nah. If someone offers, I’ll take it. But I just need to get off that night regardless.”
I might have actually sighed. This was part of why Candy had been put on the private party list. She didn’t make my life hard.
“You’ve got it. I’ll let you know if I schedule you in somewhere else.”
She read the dismissal for what it was. It was obvious when her bright red bottom lip puffed out in a ridiculous pout. I was the one going to end up needing eye surgery from how often I’d been rolling them.
“You really aren’t going to tell me anything?” she pressed.
“I’m really not going to tell you anything.”
There was a solid knock at the door, louder than any of the girls usually did unless they were having a freak out of some kind—in which case the knocks were faster and accompanied by yelling or whining.
“Come in,” I called, and Candy recognized the fight was pointless. As the door swung open and Gauge filled the entryway, she stood to go.
After looking him over, she asked, “You’re one of the married ones, aren’t you?”
“Happily,” he returned.
She looked over her shoulder at me as she walked out. “Why is it the taken ones always come around?”
I chuckled at her, but that lightness dissipated when I noticed Gauge didn’t look amused—at all. It wasn’t like I had spent much time around the guy, but I’d seen him at Daz’s party. He hadn’t been getting into the show, as he wouldn’t since he was—by his own declaration—happily married, but he hadn’t seemed uptight. Standing there right then, he was radiating something intense I couldn’t put my finger on.
Subconsciously, I got to my feet. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re gonna need you and Roy to hold down the fort here for a while,” he said.
There was something in the way he said it, a gravity in his voice that underlined the tension in his body, that had my reply of, “Of course,” coming out hesitantly. My confirmation that I would handle it didn’t seem to settle him at all.
“All the brothers will be out of town for a few days. Maybe a week. Daz might be gone longer. Whenever some of the guys start getting back, we’ll check in. Spoke to Rick before I came here. He said he’d be on call in case you and Roy need backup for anything, but we think the two of you can handle things,” he went on.
“Okay,” I responded, because I wasn’t sure what else there was to say. Obviously there was something big going on, something way more important than the day-to-day Roy and I absolutely could cover on our own. “We’ll take care of things here.”
“Great. Thanks, Avery,” he said, and suddenly he seemed all about getting out of there.
It was probably crossing a line, it was almost certainly not even a little bit my business, but the fact that he’d said Daz might be gone longer had me curious. As he walked away, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “Can I ask what’s going on?”
Gauge stopped, and it took a moment before he turned back to face me. In the time since he’d turned away, the mask he’d been wearing had slipped. There, on his face, was grief, plain as day.
“Daz’s brother and his family were in an accident. He didn’t make it.”
Bile burned the back of my throat.
Doc talking about knowing Daz since he was a kid came back to me, about how his parents had been assholes, about how his brother had planned to stick around despite that to watch out for Daz until Doc took him in. There was no way they’d shared that without a strong bond. His brother was probably the only blood family that meant something to Daz—at least until his nephew came along.
And now he was gone.
Unbidden, the memories of the devastation from losing Gran came bubbling up. It had felt like a part of my soul had been ripped from me. I hadn’t been able to eat and had barely been able to sleep for days. All I could do was cry until the tears stopped coming because I was too dehydrated.
I would never wish that kind of pain on anyone.
“I’m so sorry,” I choked out, as if the words mattered, as if they could help, like I was giving them to Daz himself instead of his club brother.
Gauge nodded. “We’re riding out with him for the funeral. The whole club is going, so we need to know we can rely on you and Roy.”
“We’ve got it,” I promised.
“Thank you.”
Gauge didn’t waste any more time, and I wouldn’t have asked him to. Undoubtedly, the Disciples were trying to get on the road as soon as possible with Daz, or to catch up with him if he’d already left. Them being there for him was what was important.
For a long time even after he left, I stood in the same spot in my dressing room. I didn’t see the burgundy walls, the mess of costumes on the rolling rack that needed to be sorted, or the stack of papers and schedules I needed to finish. My world shrank down to that familiar grief that had never left me, that crushing sadness I kept stored away most days. Even after all this time, just peeking inside that place where it had been hidden could erase the years and make it feel like I’d just lost her all over again.
Daz was feeling all of that right now. It was still fresh. Hell, it might not have even truly sunken in yet.
The moment when that initial denial faded away was the hardest part.
I wanted to help. I wanted to offer something that might make any kind of difference.
After long moments of standing there blankly, I found my phone where I’d left it on the desk. More time passed while I stared at the screen, as if words that could magically erase any of this tragedy might come.
They didn’t.
I simply wrote the best thing I could come up with, even though I knew it could never scratch the surface.
Me: I am so sorry.
It felt almost painfully underwhelming. Like it couldn’t even begin to say what I wanted to, but it also said it all. It was the only thing I could offer outside of taking care of business here so he could return to a club that was running smoothly in his absence.
So, after taking a moment to collect myself, I got busy doing just that.