Indigo Sky

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Saul was back at Midnight Lotus one week after Tyson Murphy had sprained his wrist. He showed up wearing a brace beneath the sleeve of his suit jacket, and when I asked if he was sure he could handle the job, he only glared at me and said, “Don’t piss me off, Rev. It’s been one helluva week.”

I wanted to scoff and tell him he had no idea what a bad week was, considering my lack of sleep, but then he followed it up by showing me his bandaged left hand and said, “Burned my hand trying to cook on Tuesday, so I have been completely fuckin’ useless these past few days. Do you know how demoralizing it is to ask your wife to help you wipe your ass when you know damn well you’d be perfectly capable if you didn’t have two busted hands?”

I cleared my throat and shook my head. “Nope. Can’t say that I do.”

“Yeah, well …” He readjusted the lapels of his jacket and released a loud huff. “Hope you never do. I never wanna go through that shit again, unless I’m old and I don’t give a fuck.”

Wendy wandered over to the bar, wearing a pair of leggings and a sequined bra. She looked at Saul pointedly and planted her hands on her hips. “Are you sure you’re all right to work tonight? Because if you’re not—"

“Oh my God, Wend,” he grumbled, raising his bandaged hand to his forehead.

“I want you to say something before I get ready to work,” she concluded. “Because if you’re in pain and you’re not saying anything, Saul, I swear to God …”

She wore a look on her face that said he should choose his next words carefully. I could imagine the way she was with their kids—to the best of my knowledge, they had three. I would bet anything that Wendy didn’t take shit from anyone and that anyone who tried was quick to regret it.

“If I need someone to wipe my ass, Rev will do it,” he replied in a similar don’t fuck with me tone.

Wendy’s glare bounced from his to mine. “You’ll watch over him?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

She sucked at her teeth as she considered me with a skeptical scowl, then nodded slowly. “All right. If he looks like he’s in pain, come get me.”

“Will do.”

Now, in the time I’d been working at Midnight Lotus, I had never seen any signs of affection passed between Saul and Wendy, not even before or after working hours—hence why I’d had no clue they were even an item until Scott filled me in. But tonight, Wendy stepped up to Saul and ran her hands over the front of his jacket. Her gaze dropped to the buttons running up his shirt as she took a deep breath and sighed.

“I mean it, Boo Bear,” she whispered. I guessed she thought I couldn’t hear her, but I did. “Don’t hurt yourself more than you already are. I hate when you hurt.”

His stone-like facade lowered just a bit, and his eyes softened. “Sweetheart, I’m fine . If I wasn’t, you would be the first to know.”

She blew out another breath and nodded. Then, she lifted her hands, put her palms to his cheeks, and pulled him down for a quick kiss.

“If someone needs to be the hero, let it be Rev. He can handle it. You just watch his back.” She patted his cheek, then stepped away to glance in my direction with a wink. “Right, Rev?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, lifting my chin higher.

She wagged her pointer finger at me as she began to walk backward toward the stage door. “Indie has had quite a few things to say about you.”

“Good things, I hope,” I said with a laugh, knowing my face was now the color of a fucking tomato.

“Oh, yeah,” she teased. “ Very good things.”

Then, with another wink, she turned around and jogged back toward the backstage dressing rooms, while Saul shot a warning glare in my direction.

“Something's going on with you and Indie?"

I turned to head to the bar, pretending I hadn't heard his question. I liked Saul. He was a good guy and a friend. But there was understandably a protective quality to him in regard to the ladies at the club, and I wouldn't put it past him to threaten me with my life at the very least.

He followed close behind. "What happened with Indie while I was out?"

I rounded the bar to grab a couple of bottles of water from the fridge as I said, "Don't worry about it."

His damaged hands rested tentatively against the bar, both curled into fists. He watched me with a scowl deepening the lines on his face. "What did I say the day I hired you?"

"I remember what you said," I answered, pulling the bottles out and nudging the fridge door shut with my foot.

He cocked his head. "Do you?"

"Yes, Saul, I do."

"We protect the girls, Revan. We don't hurt them."

He used my full name the way my father would, scolding me after doing something I shouldn't have, like the time he had caught Nate and me sneaking beers from his fridge in the garage. I looked up to smirk at Saul, to remind him that he wasn't, in fact, my dad and that he had nothing to worry about. But the threat in his eyes stopped my smirk from forming, and I could only swallow.

"I know," I replied, lowering my voice to match the tone of his.

"Then, what the fuck are you doing with Indie?" He ignored the bottle I'd placed in front of him as he leaned into the bar, bringing his face closer. "If you're just seeing her as a quick fuck, someone who can make your dick wet and—"

"It's not like that. It would never be like that," I interrupted, offended now that he'd think that way about me.

I understood he hadn't known me for a long time, but I’d thought he at least knew my character well enough to recognize that I wasn't an asshole.

"It’d better not be," he said, swiping the water bottle from off the bar and twisting the cap off. "I like you, but don't think for a second that means I won't fuckin' kill you."

I stared him down, rolling my lips between my teeth and fighting the urge to jump over the bar to wrestle him to the ground. Maybe I'd gotten too comfortable here. Maybe I'd thought too quickly that I'd earned a place of respect by handling that asshole. My pride was wounded; what I’d thought was a solid friendship with Saul was too. So, after a moment of seething and battling my decision to make another comment or not, I grabbed my water from off the bar and made my way around to the door. It was almost time for the club to open, and I had a job to do.

"Don't you worry about me, Boo Bear," I grumbled in his direction, unsure if he heard or not. Completely oblivious to just how right he was to be worried after all.

***

Kate met me outside that night. It was the first time I'd had any moment alone with her since our date at the diner, and she wasted no time wrapping her arms around one of mine as I escorted her through the parking lot to her car.

"You didn't come in," she noted, looking up at me, her eyes glistening in the light from above.

"Yeah, sorry," I said.

Truth was, Saul had wounded my pride so much that I hadn't found the strength to face him again. I guessed I was worried he would say something else. Or maybe I was just worried he'd seen something in me I didn't.

"You okay?"

I sucked in a deep breath and wiped my hand over my mouth, determined not to be annoyed in her presence. It wasn't her fault, and the last thing I wanted was for her to believe it was.

"Yeah," I said, releasing the air from my lungs. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just tired."

Her gaze fell to the asphalt beneath our feet as we walked. She'd parked farther from the door than usual. She had come in late, after the club already opened, and walking through the parking lot felt too vast, leaving us open and exposed. The feeling of being watched itched along my skin, not unlike the feeling I'd had the other night, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

"Did Saul say something to you?"

The unexpected question tore a laugh from my chest. The sound rang through the open air, the rumbling of cars from the highway off in the distance.

"Yeah, actually," I said, the tension in my shoulders relaxing just a little. "He didn't seem too happy with something happening between us."

We neared her car as she shook her head and released my arm from her hold.

She fished her keys from her duffel bag as she began to speak in a rush of anger. "Saul needs to mind his own fucking business.”

"He's just looking out for you," I replied, defending the guy even though I'd spent the better part of my night annoyed with him myself.

"Yeah, well, where the hell was he when the last guy failed to tell me he was married before fucking me?"

A memory of Saul asking if I was single flashed across my mind. He had said the last guy they’d hired had an affair with one of the girls and his old lady came in to make a scene. I hadn't expected Kate to be that girl, nor had I expected the news to feel equivalent to a slap across the face despite knowing that it shouldn't have. I hadn’t known her then. I wasn’t allowed to be bothered by the past, as if I’d laid some kind of claim over her.

I guessed I was quiet for too long, too stuck in my own head, and she turned to look up at me.

"He had worked here for about six months before we started dating," she explained, answering questions that had never been asked. "We went out for a few weeks before anything really happened. I had no idea he was married; he never wore a ring or anything. His wife came in a couple of weeks after and raised hell. She’d had no idea he was even working here at all, which …" She released an incredulous huff of a laugh. "I don't know. I have a hard time understanding how you can be married to someone and have no idea that your spouse is gone every fucking night until two, three in the morning. But … whatever. Anyway, that's what happened. We were never a serious thing, and I don't want you now thinking that I make a habit of sleeping with the bouncers because he was the only one."

I forced out a choked laugh as I glanced over my shoulder at the darkened front of Midnight Lotus. "Well, I would hope so. Wendy would do more than just raise hell."

"Oh God," Kate groaned. "First of all, I can't even think of Saul like that."

"Yeah, I bet he—"

From behind me, the sound of metal clattering against metal rang through the silent night, echoing across the parking lot. The racket had come from the direction of the club, and I whirled around on my heel, stretching my arms behind me, caging Kate in against her car. I looked from one side to another and ahead. No movement could be found. There was nobody around; not a thing looked out of place. But I had heard it, and judging from the frantic thrum of her breath against my back, Kate had too.

"I-it was probably a raccoon or something," she whispered from behind me, her hands gripping my jacket.

"Yeah," I whispered back, still surveying the area around us. "Probably."

Yet I didn’t move a muscle. I watched Midnight Lotus instead, keeping my one eye trained on the building, too afraid to look away. My jacket felt uncomfortable; the air around us seemed to slither over my skin. I was on edge, unnerved, certain someone was out there, watching us from a secluded, shadowed corner. Certain that it wasn’t a fucking raccoon, but a person.

“Rev, you—"

“Hold on,” I whispered, lifting my hand from her car and raising one finger.

I focused on the hushed symphony of sounds around us. Engines in the distance from the highway. The whir of a nearby air conditioner. A plane somewhere far overhead. I waited for footsteps or a skittering across a garbage-can lid or something, but nothing came. I gasped, exasperated, and lifted a hand to my forehead.

She has to think I’m crazy.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess it was nothing.”

Fuck, I was so embarrassed, getting stupid over what was probably a feral cat or raccoon behind one of the businesses. This was twice in a couple of weeks I’d gotten spooked over nothing, and I thought there was little chance Kate wasn’t thinking I was an absolute moron by this point.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Kate said as I reluctantly turned to face her. “Honestly, you never know what kinda creeps are hanging around here this late at night.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better for acting like a paranoid jackass,” I teased, even as I suppressed a self-deprecating eye roll.

I expected her to laugh, but she shook her head, a serious look blanketing her face.

“We’ve had our share of crazies,” she said, keeping her voice low, her eyes never leaving mine.

I tipped my head curiously. “What do you mean?”

Her eyes looked beyond me toward the club. Now, she appeared just as freaked out as I felt, her gaze round and worried. She chewed at her bottom lip, no longer looking split and angry, as she fidgeted with her keys.

“Will you talk to me while I drive home?” she asked. “Like we did last time?”

“Of course.”

She nodded and turned to get into the car. “I’ll call you in a second. And then I’ll … well, I guess I’ll tell you a story.”

***

“I started working at the club shortly after it opened,” she said as we drove.

I remembered when it’d opened. It had been big news for a while. None of the uppity assholes wanted a strip joint to bring an undesirable crowd closer to the neighborhoods. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t a valid concern or anything—if the club had been near a neighborhood. But the place was situated in such an industrial part of Long Island’s northern shore that it was far enough away from where anyone lived that the point was moot. Not to mention, the clientele was typically of a classier persuasion … with the exception of the occasional college-aged losers, of course.

“I was really young back then, like … maybe nineteen or so. I knew nothing about stripping or—"

“So, why did you start?” I rudely interrupted as I turned in the direction of my parents’ house, the question begging to be asked.

“Stripping?”

“Yeah.”

She was quiet for a moment. I considered apologizing for overstepping and asking questions that were ultimately none of my damn business, but it didn’t change the fact that I was actually curious.

“You’re probably expecting some kind of sob story, huh?”

I smiled at the teasing tone of her voice. “Everybody’s got one, right?”

“Well, my tragic tale doesn’t begin until later—sorry to disappoint. I started stripping because I wanted to.”

I lifted my chin and narrowed my glare on the road. “Really? Why?”

“Are you asking because you really want to know or because you’re being a jerk?” She was teasing again. I liked it.

“No, I want to know,” I said, chuckling.

“Because I think it’s hot,” she replied confidently. “Because I like the power I hold when I’m on the stage. I didn’t grow up feeling very good about myself, and when I learned to dance and take off my clothes while doing it, it made me feel good to know people liked watching me.”

A small, contemplative sound rumbled up from my chest. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it. But what about the guys who act like dicks? Or the ones who just wanna use you?”

“Oh, there are plenty of them, yeah,” she replied. I knew she was right; I’d seen them myself. “And they’re taken care of. But, no, I just love knowing that, during my time onstage, I am the reason they’re turned on. I am the reason they’re rendered stupid and crazed. I made them that way. I hold that power. I have that control. And I’m good at it.”

Fucking hell. I was hard. It had come on fast, and now, my erection was straining painfully against the zipper of my pants as I imagined her onstage. Seeing her bare tits in my mind, the curve of her ass. That was Indigo Sky, the girl who had given me my first kiss years ago. But this woman on the phone … that was Kate. The woman I had been on a date with. The one who’d inhaled a burger faster than anyone I’d ever known. She was reality, the woman I wanted in my life. But Indigo …

She was fantasy.

She was power.

“Yeah,” I said, willing my dick to calm the hell down, “I can see that.”

She snickered a little. “I mean, look at what happened the first time we met.”

“Hard to forget.”

“And that’s the kind of power I have.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the pride injected so heavily into her voice. And I couldn’t help but feel a pulse of my own pride, remembering just how much she had remembered me. I guessed that meant I held a bit of power myself, but I didn’t say as much, only to allow her to continue talking.

“I expect that, sometimes, I—or any of us really—leave a lasting impression. Like, I get that a lot of guys store me away in their memory to jerk off to later or whatever. It’s flattering. But …”

Her voice trailed off with a hushed quaver. Like speaking about this alone was enough to leave her unsettled and shaken up.

“What?” I asked, my gut rolling with discomfort and nerves.

Kate blew out a breath, but remained quiet for a couple of moments. Enough time to make my knuckles turn white from gripping the wheel too tightly.

“Kate—"

“There was one guy. And he … he was, um …” She let out a jittery laugh, nervous and almost shy. “God, why am I being so stupid? It was so long ago. This guy, he kinda, um … he stalked me.” She said those last three words with an air of relief, like she’d been wanting to say it for years, but never found the courage or the words to do it.

“You had a stalker ?” I asked, sitting up a little taller in my seat and gripping the wheel tighter as I remembered the figure across the street from Midnight Lotus.

The empty, dark road ahead of me and the blackened windows of houses to my left and right did nothing to calm the eerie tone that had settled over this conversation. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be driving this late at night. I wanted to be home, secure in my bed. But also, more than anything else, I wanted to be with her. To protect her from whatever danger lurked in the shadows outside her door.

“I did,” she said. “But he’s long gone. He went to prison—"

“Because he was stalking you?” I asked, hardly believing what I was hearing.

“Yeah. He went to prison for five years, and then, last time I checked, he’d moved down to Florida to live with his mom. He was fucked up.”

I blinked, stupefied, looking out the windshield as I turned onto my parents’ street.

“What did he do?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh God, um …” Kate cleared her throat, and I listened as her car door opened.

She must be home. I wondered if she lived with anyone else, and I wondered if I should ask. But that would distract from the topic at hand, and that felt more important than asking about her home life.

There was rustling—she must be climbing out of the car—and then I heard her slam the door shut behind her.

“Hold on,” she whispered. “I’m running inside real quick.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

More rustling and the sound of sneakers hitting pavement flooded the interior of my car, then the opening of a door before being quickly shut and secured.

“Okay,” she breathed out with relief. “I’m in, and the door is dead-bolted.”

The telltale meow of a cat trailed behind her voice, and she sighed. “Oh God, okay. Come on. Let’s get you some food.”

Warmth seeped into my chest as she talked her way through feeding her pet. I loved that she had one. I loved that she had that kind of simple, pure companionship. It said a lot about a person to care for another living thing without the obligation to do so, and I smiled when the cat uttered a single, soft mew before going silent.

“Sorry,” Kate finally said.

“It’s okay,” I replied, turning into the driveway behind my dad’s station wagon. “Cat comes first.”

“She thinks so,” she muttered, followed by a laugh. “Anyway, uh … so back to that guy. He came into the club this one time. Spent a lot of money while I was onstage, then hired me for a private dance. He, um …”

Her voice was tight. She sniffed into the phone, and I wondered if she was crying. I hated that she might be, and I shut the car off a little too aggressively.

I hurriedly pulled the phone from my breast pocket, tucked it between my ear and shoulder, and said, “You don’t have to tell me. It’s—"

“He went too far,” she said, rushed. “He didn’t … you know … rape me or anything, but … yeah, he went too far. I screamed and ran out of there. Saul got rid of him. But he never really went away. He followed me. He—he broke into my house a couple of times, robbed me, a-and, um, that’s, uh, that’s basically the gist of it.”

She had spoken so quickly, too fast for me to get a word in until she was finished, and I stood there on the porch, stunned as I stared into my reflection in the front-door window.

“Holy fuck, Kate.”

“I-I was home the last time he broke in. I hid in my closet and called the cops. He ran away, but I knew who it was. So, they arrested him, and that was that.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

God, what a stupid fucking thing to say. I shook my head at my insensitivity, jamming the key into the lock, but what the hell else was there to say? That I wished I could’ve been there to tear the motherfucker apart, limb from limb? That, if it had been up to me, he’d have been serving time six feet underground and not in a state prison, getting his three square meals a day?

She ignored the flimsy sentiment anyway. “Saul and Sam got a little, um … crazy after that. They didn’t want anything like that to happen again, so they doubled down. Saul made sure there were always at least two bouncers on-site. They became stricter about the intoxication rules. Of course, they haven’t always been able to stop everything. There are still assholes out there. But … they do what they can.”

“And you’re saying this is why Saul gave me the third degree?”

I walked through the living room and to the stairs, making sure to remain quiet as I made my ascent.

“I’m saying Saul is very cautious when it comes to us, and he has this fatherly protective thing about him. But that being said, he wouldn’t trust you to be alone with me at all if he truly thought you were a threat.”

It was a confusing way of putting it, and I wasn’t sure I completely understood. But before I could ask, Kate was fast to clarify.

“What I mean is, he might get all over you about, you know, dating me or whatever, but if he really thought you were a problem outside of … typical relationship drama, you wouldn’t even have a job.”

I quietly closed my bedroom door before huffing out a chuckle. “Well, that makes me feel better.”

“It should.”

I put her on speakerphone as I slid my suit jacket off and laid it over my bed. Exhaustion dropped heavily onto my shoulders as I stared at the rumpled blanket and the indentation on my pillow from where my head lay night after night. The adrenaline of getting home safely had kept me going for a while longer, but now that I was home, I suddenly felt like my eyelids were made of sandpaper, and keeping them open long enough to unbutton my shirt was becoming a more and more painful ordeal.

“I guess I should go,” Kate said after a few moments of silence. “I need to sleep, and you do too.”

I nodded, my head feeling like a fifty-pound ball of lead. “I really do.”

“But I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked, so full of hope, like there was a chance I wouldn’t be at work.

“Of course.”

“Okay.”

I could picture her smile. Bright. Perfect. I closed my eye as I slid my arms from the shirtsleeves, imagining the way she looked right now. I missed her. How the hell could I miss her when I’d just seen her?

“Hey, Revan?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“I really like you a lot.”

My heart pulsed, and warmth spread through my limbs as I replied, “I really like you a lot too.”

Neither of us spoke for a second. My lips were pulled into a big, shit-eating grin as I undid my belt and wished I were with her instead. Fuck this lonely bed. Fuck taking shit slow. I wanted to be in her house, in her room, leaving my scent all over everything she owned. Marking my territory, ensuring no other man thought for a second that he stood a chance. It was possessive, animalistic, yet it felt amazing in ways that had me holding my head higher and stretching my smile out until my cheeks ached.

Kate sighed into the phone, accompanied by a satisfied little sound. Then, she replied in a sleepy voice that only made me wish I were with her more. “I feel like I waited a really long time for you to say that.”

And that was when I vowed to never let her go so long without hearing it again.