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The End
Sneak Peek: Carter & Quinn
SIX MONTHS AGO
Quinn
They think they know me.
By the way I sway my hips. The way I blow them kisses, wink at them, laugh at their jokes.
They think I’m happy.
Why wouldn’t they? I giggled with the other bartenders all the time. I hang out with the girls after work. I have a dog, a Yorkshire terrier, Gia, who I take with me everywhere in a Louis Vuitton I got from one of my ex-boyfriends. An original, thank you very much.
But I’m like that Queen song. My makeup is faking up my smile. And behind that smile…devastation. No one can know. No one should know. It’s my baggage to carry. My secret to bury.
I wear the right clothes and the right perfume. I date men. Handsome men. Rich men. I have sex with them. I use them and they use me. That’s okay.
I think.
But then there’s Carter. Always watching me. Unsmiling. I want to ask him what he’s thinking. I want to ask him why his eyes keep wandering back to me in Hot N’ Bothered where I’m bar tendering and he works as a bouncer. Sometimes.
I’m not stupid. I know it’s not his real job.
He’s a mobster, like all of them. He may not be as cocky and aggressive as Cole Savage-though he is cocky and aggressive-or formidable and scary as Graham Savage-though I know that Carter is a very dangerous man, but he’s a Savage nonetheless.
Like right now, he is staring at me wordlessly, his eyes roaming all over my face, never leaving me, never gliding down to check my body. I appear to be laughing whole-heartedly, but it’s a fake laugh that the man who just tipped me twenty bucks. The man will never believe it’s a lie. I lightly bat at another man’s shoulder, who sits at the bar. Then I turn around to get him another bottle of Heineken and feel him smack my ass. Hard.
I turn around and bat my eyelashes. “Was that really necessary, honey?” I ask. Though really, I feel nothing. So what if he smacked my butt? It didn’t even hurt all that much. The pain, humiliation and shock other women must feel in this situation is vacant from my body. From my soul. All I feel is the emptiness I felt before, when I laughed.
Because that’s what I feel all the time.
Whether I’m being used or abused or when he nice guy flirts with me at the mall or buys me flowers.
I tear my eyes from the idiot who touched me and look back to Carter who is standing at the other end of the packed club. I see through the crowd, through the lights and the darkness, through the music and the dancing figures. I see how his jaw tenses and his eyes narrow, how his fists curl beside his body, but he does absolutely nothing but glare at the back of the head of this man.
Nothing.
Just like all of them.
“Babe, I’ll be honest with you. Your ass is a little big for my taste, but I’d still fuck you. When’s your next break? Meet me at the bathroom?”
Ugh. My ass is perfect, if not a little big, and my waist is small. Guys like him feel like they need to knock women down a few notches in order to actually have a chance with them. My soul is too tired to hate this guy, though. That’s how much I’ve been broken before. I just want this night to be over with so I can crawl into bed, put some music on and chill with my dog.
“Thanks, but I don’t date customers,” I smile politely.
“Who said anything about dating? Does it look like I’m asking your ass to go to dinner with me?” the man laughs crudely, pounding his fist over the counter to make sure his friends, who surround him, got the joke. It’s the first time I look at him-really look at him-and I guess he is around thirty. Maybe a little less. Chubby, but not in an unattractive way. But he’s a little too hairy and a little too short, and a lot too much of an asshole to be considered a catch.
I turn around and smack Selene’s ass, because I’m allowed to, unlike him. She’s another girl who bartends with me here.
“Can you take care of Mr. Green Dress shirt?” I elbow her on a wink. She smiles at me. That’s me. Quinn, the happy-go-lucky girl.
“Sure thing. He giving you trouble, girl?” she asks in her southern twang. I’m not asking where she’s from because a lot of the girls Graham picks up to work at his joints don’t want to talk about their pasts. It’s one thing if you decide to bring your past up yourself in a conversation and tell others your story, but here, we never ask.
I never told anyone.
I was never asked by anyone.
