Atonement (Angel's Halo MC 5)

Whatever Quinn was saying had the softness that had entered my brother’s eyes turning harder.

“You don’t sound well. Are you okay?”

The green of his eyes darkened as his brows furrowed and he stared sightlessly toward the back of the bar.

My body tensed as I waited for the inevitable explosion that would follow Quinn confessing what we had done the night before. But as the seconds ticked by, Colt stayed where he was.

“You’re so stubborn sometimes,” he grumbled. “I wish you would just let me take care of those bitches once and for all, Quinn.”

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when Colt just sat there, continuing his conversation with Quinn. She was obviously not going to share our night together with her best friend.

While I didn’t really want to kick my brother’s ass if he did find out and tried to start something, I did want Quinn to acknowledge that something had happened between us.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and pushed back from the table, pissed at my own self for the unreasonable irritation I felt over the whole thing. Great, one fuck with Quinn and I was suddenly turning into a damn pussy with prissy feelings and shit.

I needed to put distance between me and that female. This run couldn’t have come at a better time.

Chapter 11

Quinn

Deciding I was going to pack up and leave Creswell Springs was the easy part. Actually doing it … not so much. My savings would not be enough to cover the cost of moving, let alone everything else.

Before my mother had gotten sick, I’d had a nice little nest egg from all the years of scrimping and saving. I had started working at Aggie’s when I was sixteen, and the tips had been decent enough—and I’d had no large bills to worry about—so I had been able to put most of my money into a savings account.

After my mother had gotten sick, that nest egg had completely disappeared. Cancer was an expensive disease, and I had dipped into my savings repeatedly just to help her pay for her medications. By the time she had passed away, I had been down to my last hundred dollars in that account. Not long after that, my old clunker of a car had joined her in the hereafter, and I’d had to buy a new one. Between a car payment and all the other bills adulting required, I hadn’t been able to start replacing the money that had once been in there.

I was determined to leave as soon as possible, before I could talk myself out of it. That meant saving every penny I could get my hands on and working every free minute I could. But if working at Aggie’s was the key to making me rich—or at least putting a little extra in my bank account—then I was doing it all wrong.

A second job was going to have to happen.

Considering I had only ever waited tables, I wasn’t sure what other kind of job I was qualified to do, and the “help wanted” ads in the morning paper weren’t exactly begging for anyone of my limited skills. Most of them asked for at least some college as an education background. I had been happy just to graduate high school. My computer skills were about as good as the average person who checked their email and looked at the occasional YouTube videos.

I did have good people skills, however, and I could balance up to eight plates on a tray while refilling customers’ water glasses. I doubted that would get me a job in anything but the circus or another waitressing job. Other than Aggie’s, waitresses didn’t have many options, except the coffee shop on the college campus and a steak house outside of town where the ritzier citizens of our small town ate.

There was another option. Paradise City was always ready to hire new girls willing to take their clothes off for the college boys who were all too happy to keep Bash and Spider in business for years to come. It was the closest strip club in over fifty miles, so the place was above average popular.

I knew all I had to do was show up and ask for a job. Even without Kelli working there, I wasn’t worried about getting rejected. I had a decent body, even if I was about as tall as one of Santa’s elves. There was just one teensy, little problem.

Make that a huge one, in the guise of the six-foot-plus hulking biker who was also my best friend and self-appointed protector.

Colt would flip his lid if he saw me taking my clothes off for a crowd.

Getting the call that he was going to be out of town on a run for an indefinite period, however, had me deciding I would cross that bridge when I got to it.

If I had to.

With a plan firmly in mind, I clocked out at the end of my shift at Aggie’s the next afternoon and drove straight over to Paradise City. There were only a few cars in the parking lot since it was too early for the place to be open for business yet.

As I walked into the club, my nerves tried to get the better of me, but I refused to chicken out. If I was going to get out of this one-horse town and as far away from Raider Fucking Hannigan as I possibly could, then this was the only solution.

The dimness inside took a moment for my eyes to adjust to after the brightness of the afternoon sunshine. I slowly looked around the interior, noticing the big stage with three stripper poles. A dozen or more round tables were placed close to it.

I tried to imagine myself up there, dancing for the men and maybe even women who wanted to watch me take my clothes off for them.

Fuck.

Maybe this was a bad idea, after all.