Chapter 7

The lights were still burning on my skin when I walked off the stage. My hands were shaking, not from nerves this time but from something else like adrenaline or the way those old men looked at me like I was a piece of meat, so I grabbed the cash off the edge of the stage — maybe fifty dollars this time — and stuffed it in the waistband of the boxer briefs because I didn't have anywhere else to put it. The red room felt smaller on the way out or maybe I was just done pretending I was okay with any of this.

I pulled on my jeans and hoodie in the dressing room and the other guys were already gone so it was just me and the smell of sweat and that floor cleaner that doesn't clean anything. I didn't look at myself in the mirror again because I already knew what I'd see, a nineteen-year-old kid with bruises on his ribs and a split lip that kept opening up and a face that looked like it hadn't slept in a year.

I walked upstairs, and Archer was leaning against the bar, nursing a whiskey. He saw me and nodded toward his office. "Come here."

I followed him in and he closed the door behind us and sat on the edge of his desk with his arms crossed, looking at me the way he always looks at me like he's trying to figure out if I'm worth the trouble.

"Shut the door," he said.

"It's already shut."

"Then sit down."

I sat.

Archer took a slow sip of his drink and then set the glass down and looked at me. "You did better tonight."

"Thanks."

"That's not me being nice. You actually moved better. Less stiff."

"I'll take it."

He was quiet for a second and then his face got harder. "We need to talk about Sebastian."

My stomach dropped and I didn't even know why, it just did. "What about him?"

"Listen to me carefully." He leaned forward and his voice dropped lower. "Sebastian cannot find out about this. Not the club. Not the dancing. None of it. If he finds out he'll try to stop it, he'll get in my face and make a scene and then he'll figure out a way to shut this whole thing down because that's what he does when something pisses him off."

"So don't piss him off."

"I'm not joking, Jae."

"Neither am I."

Archer stared at me for a long second. "You need to keep your mouth shut. You tell anyone — anyone — about this job and it's gone, you understand? You won't get another chance. I won't have some family drama messing up my business."

"I get it."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, Archer, I fucking get it. Don't tell Sebastian. Don't tell anyone. I'm not an idiot."

He kept looking at me and then he nodded slowly. "Good. Now get out of here. Same time tomorrow. Don't be late."

I stood up and walked out without saying anything else and my head was already spinning because every time someone says Sebastian's name I feel like I'm going to throw up or pass out or both.

♡♡♡

The streets were cold and empty and it was almost one in the morning, the city lights reflecting off the wet pavement from rain earlier, so I pulled my hoodie tighter and walked fast with my sneakers slapping against the sidewalk.

My head was a mess.

Sebastian's face kept popping into my brain, the way he looked at me in that closet and his hand on my jaw and his fingers in my hair and his mouth on mine and the way he said my name like it meant something, like I was something. But then he said it didn't mean anything and he just wanted to see what it was like like I was some kind of test drive, like I was just there for him to try out and then throw away, and I kept asking myself why I let him do that and why I didn't push him away and why I kissed him back and ground against him and came in his hand like some desperate fucking slut.

Because I am desperate, that's why.

I thought about Sophie too because I couldn't help it, her on top of Jason with her hair everywhere and her mouth open and the way she looked at me when she saw me standing there, not sorry or embarrassed just annoyed like I'd interrupted her fun, like I was the one in the wrong. Two years, two fucking years of me working double shifts and getting my face punched and eating expired food so I could save up for a bag she didn't even want, because she didn't want the bag she wanted Jason and someone with money, someone who wasn't a broke-ass college student with bruises on his ribs. I get it, I'm nobody, my own girlfriend was laughing at me behind my back and posting my picture in group chats so people could make fun of me.

Embarrassing, right?

I kicked a can on the sidewalk and it bounced off a parked car and skittered into the gutter but that didn't make me feel better.

What kept coming back over and over was Sebastian, not Sophie or the cheating or the humiliation, just him with his dark eyes and his wet lips and the way his thumb moved on my jaw and the way his hand felt inside my pants, warm and steady and sure. I wanted to hate him for what he said after, for making me feel like nothing, but I couldn't because when he was touching me I didn't feel like nothing, I felt like I was the only thing in the world.

That's fucked up, that's really fucking fucked up.