She glanced to the curtain. “There are a lot of people out there. A lot of guys from the club, though I hear they’re all under strict orders to look at their feet the moment you strut your ass out there.” She grinned. “It may or may not have to do with a certain biker sitting front and center who just asked me what our history was with people tripping on loose floorboards.”
I rolled my eyes.
She went serious. “You don’t want to do this, no one’s gonna judge you.”
I straightened my back. “I can do this,” I declared. “People are gonna judge me either way.”
And as if on cue, my music sounded.
I was fine the entire walk done the T-shaped stage. The music was pulsing in my ears, the lights obscuring most of the audience. Then I got to the end. To the pole. And the lights were bright. There was no hiding under makeup or costumes—they showed it all. The dirt, the filth, the spots where fire had eaten away the wood I was standing on. The blood. His blood. His life nearly draining away on that exact spot.
The spot where I was going to shake my fuckin’ ass and strip.
I tasted bile.
People were watching. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel their stares and I knew they saw.
The music faded away. The lights. The cavernous room.
Everything was colder, darker, smaller. More painful.
I was there, with them, and I couldn’t escape.
I blinked awake in a second. Everything was there in a rush, jarring and slightly unnerving.
Gabriel stood immediately once he saw me push myself up from the bed.
He rushed forward, moving like he was going to cup my face, but he stopped at the last minute.
“You’re awake.” The two words were drenched in relief.
I frowned at my surroundings, understanding where I was due to the motorcycle paraphernalia and the musky scent of the sheets.
I was at his place.
In his bed.
The knowledge was both comforting and disconcerting.
“I wasn’t aware I went to sleep,” I said, my voice thick with confusion, my head foggy.
His face turned blank and the cords in his neck pulsed. “You didn’t exactly… go to sleep. Babe, you just kind of left the building. Terrified the absolute shit outta me.”
I remembered. The club. The stage. The lights. It all melting away and the room replacing it. “Shit,” I whispered.
He nodded tightly. “Yeah.”
I put my hand to my head. “I’m such an idiot,” I groaned.
He went still. “What?”
“I pretty much went cationic in front of a room full of people. That’s it, my job is toast.”
And my paycheck. And any chance I had for earning enough money to give me a chance to stand on my own two feet. Or, as it seemed, collapse on my own two feet.
“Who gives a fuck about the job? About the people? I’m worried about you,” he growled, stepping even closer to the bed. “Becky, I saw it. You were there, beautiful, magnificent, hot-as-fuck Becky. Then it all drained away, like someone pulled your plug and you were just… gone.” He shuddered, actually fucking shuddered. “I thought it was bad seeing the pain, the brokenness in your eyes, but I’ll take it over not seeing anything.”
“I don’t even know what happened,” I whispered.
“Flashback,” he clipped. “Never seen one happen like that, but that’s what it was. Something triggered it when you were up there, sucked you outta that room and back… there.”
The silence that bathed us was uncomfortable and prickly, both of us knowing where ‘there’ was.
“So I guess I was wrong,” I said finally. “I don’t even have control over my body, what I do with it. My body has control over me.” The thought was exhausting and rather depressing.
Gabriel gritted his teeth. “It’s killin’ me not to touch you right now, babe.”
I stiffened at the prospect. I wanted him to. Wanted some illusion of safety that his tattooed arms offered. But my skin felt like it was made of tissue paper. If his callused hands touched me, it might just tear.
“I won’t,” he reassured me, noting my reaction. “But you’ve got control over that. Over me. Hold onto that, if nothing else. You may not be able to control how your body deals what you went through, but you control me. I breathe because you breathe, babe. You ask me to walk through the streets wearin’ nothing but one of those Borat suits, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it. Plus, we both know I’d wear the shit outta that thing.”
I let out a choked laugh, despite the situation.
His eyes twinkled. “There she is,” he murmured. “You’re not lost, or gone, Becky. You’re still there, in your cocoon, waiting for the time that you’ve evolved enough to come out. Patience, my dear grasshopper. Patience is all you need.”