Pagan (The Henchmen MC 8)

"Didn't interrupt you," he said, and I figured that meant he wanted me to go on.

It felt weird to talk about your whole life. It wasn't something you usually did all at once. It was something that came out in drips and drabs over a long period of time.

"Ah, well, by eighteen, I was working at a salon around here something like fifty hours a week. I had my own apartment all by myself. And a car," I added with a smile. "And I decided that while I was making good money, the only way I could really have a stable future was to open my own business."

"So you started saving."

"Yep," I agreed, picking at my green beans, mostly just moving them around my plate.

Those were better days.

True, it was a lot of work. But I was eighteen; I had boundless energy and a thirst to know the sort of financial freedom I had never known before. That was always the worst part of growing up for me, knowing I had no power. I was too young to work, to bring money in so my belly didn't have to go empty. So when I finally had that power, I took it by the balls. I didn't care about the blisters on my feet, my sore arm muscles from holding up blow dryers and such all day, every day.

But my bills were paid on time. I had money building in my bank account. And I had a plan.

Then, at twenty-four, I had the money to put that plan into action.

It was probably the best feeling I had ever experienced at that point to be able to get a real estate agent and look at places that could actually be my own salon someday. It was almost surreal, like a part of me, the part of me that was the hungry twelve-year-old, didn't think that it was even possible.

In fact, I don't think it ever actually felt real to me until I signed the paperwork and was given the keys.

I had chosen the most prudent of the spaces I was shown, the smallest, with a store next door to grow one day maybe. So I cut down at my old salon to about thirty hours a week, and I spent every last waking minute working on my new one, doing every possible thing I could do myself, so I didn't have to hire anyone and eat through my budget.

Me, I had done everything, literally everything right.

I met Ethan my first month in the shop when I caught him in the space next door. And, to be perfectly honest, I had found him somewhat charming at the time. Though, I was convinced now that it was merely the paint and glue fumes getting to my head.

A couple months after my grand opening, I put an ad online for a new hairstylist, my demand too high for me to keep up with myself, even killing myself with long hours. Because we did all the cool things- the unique colors, the funky cuts, the new things that the other shops in town didn't.

And one day, after four disappointing interviews with women my own age who didn't have my hunger, didn't have the 'do what it takes' drive, didn't, in fact, want to even work weekends, the door chimed... and in walked Benny.

"Don't bother checking your schedule, girl. I didn't make an appointment. I don't want an interview. I want an audition."

"An audition for what?"

"The opening you have. Here, I even brought my own hair model," he supplied, leaning back outside and calling in a woman with somewhat dry-looking processed blonde hair. "I am going to take this big ol' mess," he said, indicating her head, "and make it into something wonderful."

Then he did.

The girl who left that chair with a pale blonde hair with baby pink undertones, damage cut off, hair styled to suit her features better, looked absolutely as wonderful as he said she would.

"And that was how Benny started working for me," I supplied, realizing I was smiling at the memory. It felt like forever ago, but it had only been less than a year.

"So what happened?" Pagan asked, seeming not to have lost his interest even though I had prattled on for long enough that my food was cold and his was somehow all gone suddenly. "Had everything going for you- good apartment, good business, good friend. You should be flying high, but instead, you are weighed down as fuck."

He wasn't wrong, and I was maybe a bit surprised that it was something he had noticed about me.

"So one day, I was buying drinks at the convenience store for work... and my card got declined. It was a debit so I couldn't have gone over my limit since it was just attached to my checking account. And that had never happened to me before. It was humiliating. I went from there to my bank, figuring maybe something was just wrong with the card. And they called me over to the official area; you know where all the desks are and whatnot. Then they showed me my account."