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I’d predicted he’d nod and pretend he was, so I was surprised when he shook his head in the negative. “I can’t sit with them.” He grimaced and shuffled from foot to foot. “I just want some quiet, you know?”
“I get it,” I told him and glanced around the darkened club. The woman was still dancing to the same track as I spotted an empty table in the corner. “Let’s go sit over there and chill.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying the right thing, but I knew from experience that sometimes you simply wanted to be around people who understood and didn’t want to talk.
Al didn’t answer me. Instead, he made a beeline for the table, and Jax and I followed after him. “Fuck, man.” Jax took another pull of his beer. “It’s like he went away as my little brother and came back a complete stranger.”
“How long has he been back?” I asked, my gaze carefully zoned in on Al. It’d take months for him to adjust, but the first couple of weeks were always the worst.
“Couple days.”
I shook my head and clenched, then unclenched my fists. My hands were restless, and I craved to have a pencil gripped between my fingers. “Not enough time. He needs to work through the images in his head.” I gave Jax a pointed look. “Remember what it was like when we came back. I know that I lost parts of me over there. We’re never the same.”
Jax didn’t answer as we got to the table and sat in the chair next to Al. I sat on the other side, preferring not to be in the middle so I could make a quick getaway if I needed to, and from the expression on Al’s face, and the way he was sizing up everyone in the club, he was thinking the same thing. The club wanted to celebrate him being home, and their intentions were good, but it wasn’t helping him. The answer was never clear, not in a situation like this.
More beers were brought to the table, and we all sat in silence as the woman on the stage finished up, and another took her place. The longer we sat there, the more relaxed Al became. His shoulders drooped, and finally, he leaned back. And as if we took our cues from him, both Jax and I leaned back too. I hadn’t come here to have fun and watch the women dance. I’d come here to support a fellow Marine, but as soon as the first beats to the music played over the system, and the woman slinked onto the stage, I found myself forgetting why I was here.
I couldn’t stop staring as she took each step closer to the edge of the main stage. She didn’t have clear stripper heels on like everyone else. She was barefoot as she moved toward the runway part of the stage. I couldn’t stop watching her. She was sexy but also addictive. Her long hair was curled and flowed down her back, and even though I wasn’t close enough, I was sure her face wasn’t caked with makeup like the other women.
“Might wanna close your mouth before you catch a fly, bro,” Jax jeered, laughing, and I slammed my mouth closed, but still, I couldn’t look away. She came farther down the runway, right to the edge, and did the splits, sticking her chest out and slowly undoing the straps on her bra. For some reason, it was the thought of seeing her mostly naked that had me looking away.
“Seriously?” Jax asked, raising his brows. “This is the best part of her routine.”
I shrugged, acting unaffected. “You know strippers aren’t my thing.”
“Exotic dancers,” Al joined in, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table. “The correct term is exotic dancers.”
I held my hands in the air in surrender and laughed. “I’m calling it as I see it. They take their clothes off, so therefore, they are strippers.”
“And they dance,” Al continued. “Exotically.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I told him, taking another swig of my beer and trying to keep my gaze off the stage for as long as I could. It wasn’t until the lights went down, and the song stopped playing, that I finally moved my attention back there. She was sitting on the edge of the stage, her hand covering her chest as the other one slipped the straps of her bra back on. I was mesmerized by the way each move was slow and methodical. She wasn’t putting on a show now. In fact, she probably thought no one was watching, but a quick glance around the room told me that everyone else was staring at her too.
“Lotus!” Jax shouted, and the table wobbled as he stood. My head whipped around to face him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was waving his arm at the woman on the stage. “Come 'ere.”
My nostrils flared, and I refused to turn when his lips quirked at the corner. The fucker knew what he was doing. “Dick,” I grunted, but all Jax did was laugh.
“Hey,” a soft voice said, and I swore to fuckin’ god, my entire body broke out in goose bumps. I needed to turn and face her, but I couldn’t get my body to follow my brain’s instructions.
“Wanted to introduce you to my pal Asher,” Jax said, and Al snorted.
“Oh,” she said, and it was that that had me turning and facing her. She was so much closer now, and I could make out all of her features. Her straight button nose covered with a splattering of freckles and her navy-blue eyes, which were focused entirely on me, but as soon as our gazes met, she abruptly turned her head to face Al.
“I didn’t know you were back,” she said, and this time her voice had an edge of excitement to it.
At her words, Al stood and wrapped his arms around her, and my gut churned. I couldn’t place my emotions as I watched him embrace her and then fling his arm around her shoulders, but I knew it wasn’t anything I’d felt before. And right then, I didn’t want or need to think about it.
I stood, took the last pull of my beer, and slammed the bottle down on the table. “I gotta head out,” I told them all, but I didn’t wait for an answer as I spun around and walked out of the club and back to my car. I didn’t think about the way my body had reacted to her from far away or up close. She was a stripper, which meant she had that effect on a lot of men. I was just another unsuspecting soul caught in her trap, but at least I hadn’t thrown any dollar bills at her.
And with that final thought and my engine roaring to life, I headed home, intent on losing myself in my drawings until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
Chapter Three
ELODIE
My eyes felt like sandpaper as I walked to the edge of the trailer park where Knox was waiting for me in his shiny black SUV. He refused to come into the trailer park because he said they’d rob him and his car. I didn’t know who they were, but it was a testament to the limits Knox would push. He talked trash about most people who lived here, and although he was mostly spot on with the things he said, he didn’t truly know them. He didn’t understand that people took drugs to forget about things. He didn’t understand the struggle of trying to pay rent each month and almost always being short. In his perfect life, no one had any problems, but in reality, the world was full of them, and I wasn’t sure if he was unaware or didn’t care. We all had our demons. We just dealt with them in different ways.
I lifted my arm in a wave to Tony, the park owner, but his hand beckoning me had me halting. “Your mom missed rent again,” he grunted, his lips in a straight line. Tony had been running this trailer park for over twenty years, and I had no doubt he’d seen everything and anything. There was almost always a party happening in one of the trailers, and a daycare in another. Each section of the trailer park had its own community, and ours was right in the middle of the last row, also known as drug row.
He slammed his hands down onto his hips, and my gaze tracked his work jeans and stained T-shirt. He was always fixing something to sell or refurbishi
