Even Better (Stripped 2.50)

He steps out of the passenger side and leans on the car frame. I follow suit, my ballet flats crunching the gravel beneath me. It smells like gasoline and smoke and a faint sweetness that must be the anemic honeysuckle plant along the gate. No one ever waters it, but it refuses to die.

“It’s stark,” he finally says. “And still somehow elegant. I’m trying to imagine Blue coming back from deployment to this and deciding to make it his home.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

He chuckles. “Sure enough. Though in this case I have you and Blue to ease the way.”

My gut twists, knowing how uncertain he must be feeling. He looks confident on the outside, his stance sure, his gaze assessing. But I’ve seen him vulnerable and worried. It’s a kind of intimacy. I was the one with my nipples bared. I was the one who climaxed in front of him. But he let his guard down for me, and in some ways that must have been harder.

“I’ll help you any way I can,” I tell him, and that’s a promise I intend to keep. Not just because he’ll be working at the Grand, which still holds a piece of my loyalty. But because there is an invisible string between us, tied to our vulnerability, strung taut through the man we both care about. Blue.

Chapter Six

“He’s hot,” Candy says.

We’re sitting on the bar of the Grand, watching Oscar, the new head of security, show West the ropes. There are key cards and procedures. There are cameras, both hidden and in sight—though they’re only on the floor and the lobby. And there’s a shit ton of paperwork.

I shrug, hoping I sound casual. “It’s the military walk. Confidence mixed with strength.”

“That’s part of it. And the way he’s quick to smile. There’s not enough smiling around here.”

There’s almost no smiling around here, at least not the real kind. Girls flash fake smiles, and the customers are too busy humping our legs to notice. Their legs, not mine. I have to remember I don’t work here anymore.

And as for our fair leader, Ivan is severe. Harsh. I’ve definitely never seen him crack a smile. I’m not even sure he knows how.

“You didn’t used to care about that,” I tell her.

“I used to get high more,” she says, sounding wistful.

“Well, I’m proud of you. It’s not easy to kick the habit.”

That earns me a smirk. “I figured I’d try out the good girl angle for a little while. Like you.”

I have to laugh. “Like me? You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Really,” she says, drawing out the word. “So you were out with me every night, drinking and shooting up and—”

“You know I wasn’t.”

“Proved my point. People may have taken one look at us and judged—believing my white lace and your red lipstick, but that was never the truth.”

I’m blushing now, for reasons I can’t explain. “But it was the truth, at least about me. The things I’ve done—”

“Putting out so you didn’t get raped?”

My eyebrows go up. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t sugar coat. Not with me. That’s what happened. You did what you have to do to survive, just like Blue did while he was overseas. There’s no shame in that.”

Shame has weighed me down my entire life, so heavy it threatens to break apart the only thing I’ve ever valued. “You had your reasons,” I say, turning the tables.

Her smile is dark, knowing. “Sure, I did.”

“Reasons like…Ivan?” I ask, though it isn’t quite a shot in the dark. We’ve never discussed it, not in detail, but those two have been circling each other since I first got here.

“He’s part of it,” she admits.

I slant her a look. “Only part?”