AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sorry.” I ducked my head at Blaze. “I’m done.”
“No, you’re not.” Blaze’s shoulders shook with laughter.
“Probably not.” I shoved the empty container at Gray. “Be a dear and take care of this for me.”
“Okay,” Knox said loudly. “You guys want to try the ending while the twins freestyle? See how we feel about that? Then we can work out new marks and adjust the ending for event nights.”
Everyone nodded and made various noises of agreement as we moved into position.
“Ever notice how we’re here practicing routines for nights when Stone is making all the money and he isn’t?” Dash asked, his tone petulant.
“What crawled up your butt and died?” River asked.
“More like what didn’t go up my butt,” Dash grumbled. “Men are trash. I said what I said. And no, I will not be taking questions.”
“It is a bit strange that Stone is never here for rehearsals,” Knox said.
“Did anyone think to invite him?” I asked.
The silence was all the answer I needed.
“He’s not the bad guy Corey and Ray made him out to be. And he had no idea what was going on. He thought everyone hated him because he’s in porn.”
“Really?” Kai asked. “He thought a bunch of strippers would have issues with him doing porn?”
“What else was he supposed to think when no one would talk to him?” I asked. “I’ve gotten to know him and he’s a nice guy. Really sweet and thoughtful, and he’s not even mad that we treated him like hot garbage because of the lies Corey fed us about him.”
“Way to make us feel like a bunch of assholes,” Blaze said.
“Well, to be fair, you are a bunch of assholes.” I smirked. “I’m just saying that pretty much everything we were told about him is a big lie and he’s not the bad guy in this story.”
“Did you know he paid our severance packages when Biggs took over?” Gray threw in. “And he pays out the house on feature nights to offset our tips. We might not have seen that money because Corey and Ray stole it from us, but that doesn’t take away from the fact he put that in his contractforus. Like Nick said, he’s not the villain here.”
“That’s true,” Kai said. “Corey and Ray are the bad guys. They stole from us, nearly ran the club into the ground, and orchestrated this whole Stone villain story to keep us in the dark about the shit they were doing.”
“I heard they’ve had some bad luck recently,” Zane said casually.
We all swung our heads to look at him.
“So much bad luck,” he continued. “An electrical fire at their vacation home, flooding in their rental properties. Such a shame.”
I knew better than to ask Zane how he’d found out about this, or if it really was a coincidence. Gray had taught me about plausible deniability, and with the twins, that was usually the smartest approach.
“On that little bit of happy news, everyone get into position before we get distracted again,” Kai said.
Rehearsals were always chaotic, but I loved them. We didn’t get paid or anything, but hanging out with my friends and fucking around while making up choreo was some of the most fun I’d had in years.
We all had different backgrounds and abilities, but somehow, we always found a way to play to everyone’s strengths and give everyone a way to shine during group routines.
Most people don’t realize how much work goes into stripping. Sure, we had to physically do the routines during our sets, but we also had to choreograph and perfect them, and we were constantly tweaking them so they didn’t get stale.
I liked that process as much as performing, but it was hard to keep my mouth shut when people went off about how stripping was easy money and how the only thing you needed to make bank was having abs and good rhythm. The number of hours we put into each and every set to make it look easy would astound non-performers, and as male strippers, we weren’t raking it in like our female counterparts could.
Our audience was smaller, and while women tended to tip more, there were far fewer of them, so we made less over the course of the night. That meant we all had other jobs because no one was getting rich shaking our junk on stage twice a week.
It was a job, and the money could be good, but you didn’t stay in this industry unless you enjoyed it. Before Biggs took over, the turnover rate for dancers at the club was high. Most guys would only last a few months, or even weeks, before moving on to something else. We hadn’t had someone quit in almost five months, and Gray, Kai, the twins, and I were all coming up on our one-year anniversaries.
It was amazing how much of a difference having a healthy work environment made.
