Seeing her again and seeing she wasn’t what I had built up in my head would help me deal with forgetting her. She was still sitting on a damn pedestal in my head, and the girl on the phone who had told me she’d slept with Krit didn’t match the girl who had told me she loved me. The only way to prove to myself what she really was, was to see her.

I walked into Live Bay, and the jackass she was sleeping with was singing into the microphone. She’d be here. I scanned the crowd for someone I knew, but I didn’t see anyone familiar and I didn’t see Jess. I stepped through the crowd and looked back at the stage just as the eyeliner-wearing douche looked at me. He stopped singing and squinted his eyes against the stage lights as he stared at me.

I was ready for this. I wanted him to say something to me. I needed one good reason to knock the shit out of him. I took a step forward, and his eyes focused enough to realize it was me he was seeing. I saw one of the band members nudge him, trying to get his attention. He shook his head, not breaking his angry glare he had leveled at me.

He pointed at me. “You!” he roared, jumping off the stage and stalking toward me. I heard the rest of the band behind him as they started moving, but I couldn’t look away. What was this guy’s problem? He looked ready to murder me. I was the one who had the fucking right to be angry. Not him.

When he reached me, he drew back his fist, and it connected with my jaw in a vision-blurring punch. I staggered backward, unprepared for his swing, but managed to get myself together in time to duck his next swing and take one myself. My fist hit his face with a solid hit.

Two band members grabbed him from behind and the other one stood in front of me, holding up his hands. “Easy,” he told me, and I cautiously dropped the fist I had drawn back to take another satisfactory punch. The blood on his lip wasn’t enough. I wanted to see him on the fucking floor, unconscious. He’d taken her from me.

“I’m gonna kill him! He’s a sorry motherfucker, and I want him dead!” Krit yelled as he fought against the hold the other guys had on him.

“Calm your ass down, Krit. Fighting with Jason ain’t helping her. It ain’t about him and you know it, so stop putting blame there and go calm the fuck off,” Rock said as he stepped beside Krit. “Walk this off,” Rock told him.

Krit swung his angry glare back to me. “He left her. Like the spoiled, arrogant piece of shit he is. Didn’t even try to help her. She loves that sorry sonuvabitch!”

Rock stepped in front of Krit and said something low enough that I couldn’t hear him. I wanted to know what he thought I had done to Jess, because he sure as hell didn’t have his facts straight.

“Let him talk,” I said. “I want to know what it is I did exactly, ’cause the way I’m looking at it, I was the one who got screwed over,” I said to Rock’s back, and everyone around us went quiet.

Rock slowly turned around, and his attention was completely focused on me now. “Excuse me?” he said. The warning edge to his voice just added to my confusion. What had Jess told them I had done?

“I didn’t do anything to Jess. She slept with him and broke things off with me,” I said, pointing at Krit.

“She didn’t fucking sleep with me!” Krit roared, fighting to get loose again as they held him back. “She just wanted you! Trust me, I tried like hell, but she only wanted you and you ran, leaving her at the first sign of trouble. What’s the deal? A stripper not good enough for you? Being forced to fucking strip to pay her momma’s hospital bills too low for your uppity ass?”

“Enough!” Rock said, stopping Krit. “Get him the hell outta here before I shut him up myself.”

I no longer cared that Rock was the size and build of a brick wall. I needed to know what the hell Krit was yelling about. “No!” I said, moving toward him. “I want to know what he’s saying,” I told no one in particular. “Who is stripping to pay her mother’s hospital bills?” I stopped as the words coming out of my mouth clicked. “No,” I said, shaking my head. They didn’t mean . . . “No!” He was lying.

Krit looked at me incredulously. “You don’t know,” he said, almost too quietly. “She didn’t fucking tell you.” He shook his head and slung off the guys holding him. “Motherfucker!” he roared. “You don’t even fucking know!”

I turned to look at Rock, still feeling the horror of what he was saying register in my brain. “What hospital bills?” I managed to ask through the gripping tightness in my throat.

“Her momma’s. She’s got cancer. They don’t have insurance, and she’s got to have a mastectomy. They had to move to a cheaper place, and Jess had to get a job that paid the bills and paid the large monthly payment she has to make to the hospital for her mother so she can get the surgery and get chemo.”

My chest felt like someone had just dropped a load of fucking bricks on it. “When did she find out?”

“About four weeks ago.”

“He doesn’t even fucking know,” Krit was still ranting. “She told me it wasn’t his problem. I thought she was fucking protecting him, but she hadn’t even told him.”

I looked at him and her story all started to make sense. “She never slept with you four weeks ago.” It wasn’t a question. I knew the answer.

“Fuck, she wasn’t even talking to me four weeks ago. She was too busy escaping town without telling anyone. I ain’t had Jess since you took her away from me.”

My blood pounded in my head, and I knew I was heaving, as my breathing was difficult. “Where is she?” I asked Rock.

“She’s in Mobile at Delilah’s,” Krit answered instead. “Rock don’t know shit. I’m the one who goes there and pays for all the damn lap dances so she doesn’t have to give them to those horny-ass men.”

The image of Jess’s body being on display to a bunch of men was all it took. I turned and took off running.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

JESS

Krit hadn’t been back since I had yelled at him outside. I needed to call him and apologize. He hadn’t deserved that. And without him here deflecting all the lap dances, I was having to stomach my way through them more and more often.

It was almost my time for the stage. This was the easiest time of night. The lights blinded me, so I couldn’t see the men watching. I was all alone up there and dancing for fun. I adjusted the top of the red velvet. My nipple was almost showing, it was cut so low. I would be taking it off soon anyway, but Dee liked us covered when we walked out onstage.

“You’re up,” the stage manager called, and I checked my lipstick to make sure it was on correctly before heading up the stairs and to the curtains. The first night I had done this I had been so sick I was afraid I would throw up onstage. But then I’d walked out there and realized I couldn’t see them.

The beat started, and I knew it was my cue. I pulled back the curtain and lifted my leg before slowly setting it outside, then let the rest fall back until I was standing there in my costume and stilettos. I heard the usual catcalls and cheers, but I tuned them out. The cool metal of the pole touched my hand as I started my routine and focused on the music.

A loud shout startled me, and then some other noise. I stopped dancing and squinted into the dark room. I could see a man moving through the crowd to the stage, but it was so dark all I could tell was that he shoving people out of his way. I glanced around, looking for one of the bouncers before he made it to the stage. I had heard horror stories about men climbing onto the stage to get to a dancer. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get back up here again after that kind of experience.

I backed up, ready to run offstage, when the stage lights hit the man’s face.

Jason.

That wasn’t right. Why was Jason here? I watched as he jumped up onto the stage and stalked toward me with a determined look on his face.

He wrapped a coat around me.

“Off the stage, Jess. If you don’t want me to take on every damn man in this club, you’ll get off this stage for me.” His voice was urgent. T.J., one of the club’s bouncers, jumped up onstage and started toward Jason. I had to act fast. I pushed him behind me and shook my head at T.J.

“No. He’s with me. It’s okay. I’ll deal with it,” I told him, pushing Jason back as I walked backward.

“Garrison wants him out of here,” T.J. informed me. I was sure Garrison did, but that wasn’t happening. At least, not the way they thought it was.

“If Garrison wants me here, then he’ll let me handle this,” I replied.

T.J. flicked his gaze back over my shoulder toward Jason, then back at me. “I’ll tell him. Hurry,” he said.

I nodded and turned to Jason and pushed him backstage with me.

When we were out of view, I stared up at him, trying not to think about how clean he smelled. How unlike me. I started to back away, realizing he was touching me. I was dirty. He didn’t need to touch me. His hands tightened on my arms. “You’re getting your clothes and we’re leaving.”

I didn’t know why he was here or how he knew where to find me, but I couldn’t leave. I would lose my job. I wanted to leave with him. I wanted to look at him and hear him talk. But I couldn’t. “I can’t. They’ll fire me.”

“Good, because you’re done here,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Where is your dressing room?”

“I need this job. You don’t understand. This isn’t something I’m doing because I want to.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he interrupted me. “The only reason you’re stripping in front of those men is because you’re desperate. I’ve talked to Krit and Rock. I know everything that you should have told me.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you lied to me. You . . .” He stopped and closed his eyes, then muttered a curse. “I’m gonna beat the shit outta Jax when I see him. He knew.”

Jax? What the hell did Jax have to do with this?

“This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. I had a way to fix it, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle me stripping, so I did what I had to,” I explained.

“Because you were protecting me,” he said, staring at me like I had done something noble instead of something degrading.

“If you weren’t such a crowd-pleaser, I’d fire you,” Dee said from behind me. “We finally get rid of the tattooed guy, and now this? Really? Can’t you tell your boyfriends to stay the hell away when you’re working?”

I started to explain, but Jason took me and pulled me behind him as if he was protecting me from Dee. “You won’t have to deal with it anymore, because she won’t be coming back,” he said.

Dee cocked an eyebrow and a hip, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Is that so?”

I opened my mouth to say no.

“Yes, it is. Jess is done here,” Jason said.

I had to do something. “No, Jason, stop,” I said, struggling to get around him. “You can’t come in here and do this. I have bills to pay, and this pays them. You can’t just—”