That was fine with me. We didn’t need to discuss anything. She was nothing to me anymore. She hadn’t been for a long time. She shrugged off the jacket, and her body was bare again. Problem with my damn head was, if she was nothing to me, then why was my need to get her covered up and out of this place so fucking strong?
She was right. I hadn’t spoken to or seen her in six months. Which was hard to do in a small town like The Shores. But the two weeks she had worked with me, I had barely spoken to her then either. She reminded me of a life I wanted to forget. I’d wanted to help her when she needed a job, but I had also wanted to keep her at a distance. But that didn’t mean I wanted to see her working at a place like this. Yes, she had the face of a fucking angel, and seeing her topless, serving men drinks for money, broke the halo that I had once assumed hovered invisibly over her head.
“If I get you another job, one in town, will you quit?” I asked her as she started for the door.
She stopped walking but didn’t look back at me. “I want n-n-n-nothing from you.” Then, she went to the door and opened it, stepping back to wait for me to leave before her.
I stood there and looked at her. She was in there somewhere. The girl I’d once known. The girl I had put on a damn pedestal for years. No matter what life had done to her and how she had changed because of the damage, this was not okay.
But who was I to stop her?
The girl two trailers over that I had wanted to protect and save was in the past. Just like my life back then was not something I thought about. This woman in front of me was what had become of a child who had been abused and neglected. It was too late for me to save her now. The damage had been done. Bryn hadn’t been taken from that world like I had. She was broken in ways that couldn’t be fixed.
Life had changed her, and I needed to accept it.
Chapter Six
Bryn
“You okay?” Saint asked me as I stopped at the bar to get the tray of beers one of my new tables had ordered.
“Yes,” I lied.
My stuttering hadn’t been that out of control in a while. Rio had triggered it. I hadn’t been okay since I’d walked in tonight to see Rio sitting there. The way he had looked at me in Saint’s office, as if I had become my aunt, was going to haunt me. I wanted to hate him, and maybe I did a little, but not enough.
“Pretty boy keeps watching you, but I’m watching him,” Saint said, as if to reassure me that I was safe.
I knew I was safe. Rio wasn’t here to hurt me. Not physically anyway. Emotionally, he had done plenty, but then in his defense, he believed a lie. One I had told him.
“Rio is harmless. A friend from the past. He doesn’t like that I work here. That’s all. I’m not at their table anymore, and they’ll leave soon enough. It’s fine.” I said all that without stuttering once.
Rio was the only one who could make me stutter anymore, it seemed.
Saint cocked a pierced eyebrow at me. “You’re so fucking naive.”
“Rio doesn’t like me. He might hate me. But he’s not going to hurt me,” I said.
Saint’s gaze shifted back in Rio’s direction, and a scowl darkened his face. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not hate, sweetheart,” he replied. “Not even close.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He had no idea what Rio thought of me, and I wasn’t about to explain that to him. “He has reasons,” I assured him and took the tray, then headed to the Prince table.
It was the second most-sought-after table in the club. There was a bachelor party seated at it tonight, and the groom did not want to be here. I liked him for it too.
I was thankful they were here for selfish reasons. It kept me busy, and I had no time to think about the pair of eyes following me around the room. I hadn’t needed Saint to tell me I was being watched by Rio. I could feel it. If he wanted me to look back at him, then he was going to be disappointed. Our interaction was done.
“Hey, Angel. It’s Angel, right?” one of the groom’s friends called out too loudly since I was putting drinks down almost directly in front of him.
I turned to look at him, and he gave me a drunken grin.
“Damn, baby, what I got to do to take you home?” he asked.