“Oh hell. Yeah, no worries. Call me later. Meanwhile, I’ll get on it.”
“Thanks, Winn. I owe you.”
Hitting End, I looked around for the little fucker. If he walked up to me I’d bash his fucking head in.
Before I had a chance to head back into the restaurant, Meagan and her father came walking out. Meagan was clearly pissed off and Brad didn’t look any happier.
“My father is being an asshole.”
“Meagan!” Brad and I both said at once.
Brad glared as Meagan stepped between us. “Dad, you promised me you would wait until we got back to the apartment.”
“You were a stripper? A male fucking stripper?”
My hands clenched and unclenched as my anger grew.
“Dad!”
“Yes, I was. I worked my way through college being a male stripper. That says nothing about who I am, though.”
Brad let out a contempt laugh. “The hell it doesn’t.” Turning to Meagan he pointed to me. “You really want to marry a guy who’s slept with lord knows how many women? Seriously, Meagan, where is your head at?”
Now it was Meagan’s turn to get angry. “How dare you judge him, Dad! You don’t know anything about Gray, except for spending a few hours with him talking and shooting guns. So he worked at a strip club; why do you think that automatically makes him a manwhore? Tell me, Dad, how many women have you slept with? Have you ever looked twice at a woman after you married Mom?”
Brad immediately looked away as Meagan took a step back and covered her mouth. Turning back to Meagan, Brad shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Meagan.”
“Oh my God. Is that why she left you before I was born? Because you cheated on her?”
Shit. This was turning south and fast.
“Can we all just go ahead and get back into the car and head back to your apartment? It feels like the temperature is dropping out here and this is not the place to have this conversation,” I said while trying to prompt Meagan back to the car.
Meagan glared at her father as she made her way over to her car. I was taken aback when she handed me the keys and got in on the passenger side. No one said a word as I drove us back to Meagan’s apartment. I could see she was trying hard to keep her tears at bay.
Damn it all to hell. I should have suggested another restaurant.
Not even letting me get the car fully parked, Meagan jumped out of the car and slammed the door shut.
I slowly got out of the car and followed her while Brad followed behind me.
“Meagan,” I started to say when she held her hand up to stop me. When she opened the door to her apartment, she rushed in and went straight to her room where she slammed the door so hard a picture came off the wall.
Spinning around, I looked at Brad. I was done being nice. “Listen, whatever you may or may not think I was like at one point in my life, you know nothing about me. I did what I had to do so that my mother didn’t have to worry about how in the hell she was going to afford for me to go to college.”
“And stripping was the best you could come up with?”
“No, I worked plenty of other places. It was when I finally opened my eyes to see the struggles my mother was going through that I decided I needed to do something else. A friend of mine was working at the club and told me about it. I checked it and decided it was worth it.”
Brad drew his mouth into a straight line, stopping himself from saying anything.
“It’s not like what you’re thinking. I didn’t sleep around with women. I went in, I did my job and I left. I never did anything illegal and I certainly didn’t fuck a different girl every night. I did a few private parties and yeah, I messed around with a girl or two that caught my eye. When you can stand here and tell me you led a perfect life, I’ll let you judge mine.”
Brad looked away for a brief second as the reality of my words sunk in before turning back to look at me.
“I was able to pay for all of my college, no loans needed. I paid off the debt my mother had, bought her a car and a house. I’ve got a pretty large nest egg in the bank as well. All with the money I earned stripping.”
“Does your mother know what you did?”