Caught

"You're on in ten."

Vince knocked twice on the dressing room door and didn't wait for an answer. I sat in front of the mirror, my hands steadier than they had any right to be, going through everything one more time. Stay in the back section. Two songs, no more. Keep my eyes on the crowd, not on any one face in it.

"Big group tonight," Priya said, leaning past me to check her own reflection. "Corporate types. Suits everywhere. They booked the whole back room."

"I know."

"You okay? You've been weird all week."

"Tired."

She didn't push, which was one of the things I liked about her. I finished my hair, checked the clasp on my earring, and told myself the same thing I'd been telling myself since Wednesday. Downtown was full of private rooms. This was just one more night, one more shift, and Adrian Doyle had no reason to know my face outside an office.

I was wrong about that in the first ten seconds.

The lights came up and I stepped out, and the back room was exactly the crowd Priya had described, dark suits, low voices, glasses already half empty. I found my mark and started moving the way I'd trained myself to move, present but not really there, a version of myself I kept separate from the one who answered his emails and reorganized his calendar.

Then I saw him.

Adrian sat near the back wall, a glass in front of him he hadn't touched, and for one full second neither of us moved. The room kept going around us, the music kept playing, and his mouth opened slightly before he caught himself and closed it again. Not surprise exactly. Recognition landing somewhere it had no business landing.

I finished the song. I don't know how. My feet knew the steps even when the rest of me had gone somewhere very far away, running the same sentence over and over: he wasn't supposed to see this, he wasn't supposed to see this, he wasn't supposed to see this.

The second the set ended I went straight for the hallway instead of the tip rail, and I heard his chair scrape back behind me.

"Claire."

I didn't stop walking. He caught up anyway, his hand closing around my arm just outside the dressing room door, gentler than I expected. My throat went tight anyway.

"Let go of me."

He did, immediately, and stepped back like he'd surprised himself. My arm still held the shape of his grip after he let go. "What is this?"

"It's a job." My voice came out flatter than I felt. "The same as the one I have with you."

"You work for me during the day and you work here at night." He said it slow, like he was building something in his head and didn't like the shape it was taking. "Rachel got you the job. Rachel picked this venue for tonight. Did you know that when you took the interview? Did you plan this?"

"Plan what?"

"This." His hand cut through the air between us, taking in the hallway, the music still leaking through the door, all of it. "My sister feels sorry for you, hires you into my office out of the goodness of her heart, and it turns out you've been dancing in a club she happened to book for my dinner. That's not a coincidence, Claire. That's not something that just happens."

"You think I arranged this."

"I think it's a very convenient set of accidents." His jaw was set hard, the same hard line I'd seen outside the Wingate, except this time it was aimed straight at me. "Close to my office by day. Dancing in front of my clients by night. Maybe that's how it works. Get close during the day so nobody asks questions, then get closer at night where it actually pays off. I don't know if it's money or something else you're after, but I know what it looks like from where I'm standing."

"You don't know anything." My voice had gone tight in my throat, hard to push past. "I took this job because it pays cash and I don't have to wait two weeks for a check to clear. I have a kid with medical bills that don't care about my schedule. I don't touch anyone in there. I don't take private offers. I dance, I get paid, I go home. That's the whole story."

"Then explain the venue."

"I didn't pick the venue. Your sister did. I found out the same way you did, off a piece of paper Marcus handed me." My voice cracked and I hated it. "I tried to get out of tonight. My manager wouldn't let me. You want to believe I planned this, that's your choice, but you're wrong."

His shoulders dropped half an inch, and for a second I thought he might actually hear me. Then a man in a gray suit stepped into the hallway behind him, one of the clients, calling his name with the easy confidence of someone used to being answered.

"Adrian. We're ready for you back inside."

He looked at the man, then back at me, and the door that had cracked open between us a moment ago shut as fast as it opened.

"We'll talk about this Monday," he said, and his voice had gone cold in a way it had never been with me before. "In my office. Not here."

"Adrian."

"Monday." He was already turning away. "I need to think about whether I still want you in my building at all."

He walked back into the room full of suits and music and left me standing in the hallway with my hands still shaking, three days from Monday and no idea how I was supposed to survive them.