Do I use this place as an escape from my life? Almost always.
I don’t need the money—though if I did, let me tell you, there’s a pretty penny in exotic dancing if you take it seriously and put the work in. But I live for the freedom, the expression, the creativity.
Finally shaking too hard to maintain my grip on the pole, I dismount and make my way to the bar. I’m not concerned about bare feet on the floor—this isn’t that kind of place.
When Protocol Cedar Rapids opened a few months ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Former Minnesota Snow Pirate, Austin Morgan, one ofthebillionaire Morgans, helped his best friend grow his business into Iowa from Minnesota.
There is a BDSM club that lives in the basement downstairs, a bar next door, and this club. I’d love to say it’s some skeevy strip joint, but it’s the cleanest and most upmarket dance establishment I’ve ever seen—which doesn’t say much considering I’m only eighteen. But, then again, I’ve seen my fair share of skeevy even in my short life.
It’s top level. Everything from the equipment and the staff to the clientele. It’s not the place you go to for glory holes and a baggie of coke.
I slide onto the barstool with a grunt. I’m not on the schedule to dance tonight, so I jerk my chin at the fridge behind Ryker.
“Nice try, kid. But we both know you’re not twenty-one.”
“Old enough to take my clothes off for money but not to consume alcohol in a bar.” I accept the root beer and take a long pull from the cold glass bottle. “There’s something fucked up about that.” Also about the fact that I spent most of the past two years of my life either high or drunk, but I keep that to myself, too.
“Wanna talk about it?” Ryker nods toward the stage.
Nope. No, sir, I do not. I shake my head in response, but a million words hurtle around the inside of my brain.
I come to Protocol to throw myself around on stage or wrap myself around the pole so I don’t have to talk or think. And I sure as shit don’t want to talk about the fact a stranger stopped me in the street earlier and told me he was my brother.
Nor do I want to talk about the tiny voice, way in the back of my brain, screaming that I should believe him.
In retrospect, I didn’t exactly handle things well. I kinda blew my stack. I told the kid to take a long walk off a short pier and to leave me the fuck alone. Then I got in my car and left a few hundred bucks of rubber on the road as I tore away, tires squealing, like someone was chasing me.
It’s not an unheard-of thing. Wealthy men from the Dominican Republic having affairs, illegitimate children, other lives entirely. But I refuse to accept that my father, my childhood hero, has stepped out on Mamá.
I can’t. I just… can’t.
And yet, the boy is familiar— his features, his mannerisms. I shake my head and attempt to drown my thoughts with root beer. It’s not enough, though. The dancing barely took the edge off the fizzing energy coursing through my veins, and I wish this wasexactlythe kind of establishment with glory holes and baggies ofperico.
Hell, I’d settle for a hit from a joint at this point. Something. Anything.
But I can’t.
When I got clean, I made a choice. A choice to be an athlete. Then when I made the decision to come to UCR to play hockey it was at the expense of my former life as a playboy.
I can’t remember much of my years between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, and that was the point. The more Papá worked, the more I partied in a bid to claw at his attention, and the more he and Mamá fought over getting me “in line.”
The bubbly root beer sours in my throat. I haven’t craved a hit in months, maybe even a year, but it’s here, tugging at my entire being, tempting, teasing. I should hit up a meeting. How long has it been?
People find it strange how you can know at eighteen years old that you’re an addict or an alcoholic, but I can guarantee I knew.
I know every fucking day.
I have the ninety-day rehab under my belt to prove it. Times two. Because the first one didn’t really stick. The only thing I wanted more than getting high was to play hockey.
And the love of my father, but I think that ship has sailed.
I couldn’t keep getting high and play and keep my family. As much as I sometimes feel like I’m Mamá’s favorite, even her patience had a limit, and she was fast approaching it.
My stomach gurgles again, and I drop my forehead to the bar with a groan.
The boss man chuckles. “Woman trouble?”
I wish. Or even man trouble. I’d take any form of relationship woes over this. What the fuck even is this? Between the addiction clawing under my skin and my brain going a mile a minute about the potential half-brother out in the wild... And what the fuck am I supposed to do with it? Sit on it and hope it goes away? Tell my siblings?
