Page 22 of Rolling Thunder

Considering where she had to go tonight, she could only be dead inside. She couldn’t let him make her feel any more alive. She would never say it, she would never let him know, but right at that moment, he felt more like home than anything she’d ever known.

“I gotta go,” she said softly, then extricated herself from his embrace. Leaving it was actually painful, the longing to stay was so strong.

“No, you don’t,” he replied, but he didn’t physically stop her. She broke contact with him as the turmoil raged inside her. A craving for something other than him lit up inside her. She could drink this away.

“Sorry. I can’t leave the horses alone.” She briefly went into his bathroom to clean up, and then walked back out along the trail of discarded clothes, dressing as she went. Now she was a dog on a scent, and she wouldn’t be stopped. Now, he was an obstacle to the one thing she could depend on. He followed her to the door, but she didn’t pause for him to kiss her.

“I’ll walk you to your truck,” he said.

She shook her head. “It’s okay. See you around.” Slipping out the door, she closed it quickly behind her, taking comfort in the darkness of his driveway. Her hands were jerky as she pulled open the driver’s door of her truck and hopped onto the seat. She peeled out faster than she needed to, grateful it was only a short straight stretch of road back to her place. There was only one thing in her mind now—how many steps to the freezer.

She left the side door of her house standing open as she marched the last few steps and grabbed the bottle. The burn of liquid pain down her throat drowned the feelings she couldn’t stand. Her heart pounded and her mind cleared as the comfort of the booze relaxed the vise grip on her soul and relaxation followed. She lit a cigarette and closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t smoke all the time, but today, she needed all the chemicals she could get.

She hated to waste her precious money on a rideshare app, but she had to get to Fort Myers, and she didn’t dare drive under the circumstances. She pounded booze while she waited for the car to arrive and was able to drink herself partly senseless before she was dropped off at the Dancing Palm.

The thump of the club music seeped out onto the sidewalk. It wasn’t an upscale establishment. She went into a dirty alley to enter by the side door. It was locked to protect the dancers from creeps who would sneak into the dressing room. Unfortunately, it did nothing to protect them from the creeps already inside the club. She let herself in with a key.

“You’re late,” she heard Trent bark before she even saw him. He emerged as if he’d been waiting for her, grabbing her by the arm and propelling her into the dressing room. “Get ready. You’re up next.” Mercifully, she barely felt his grip on her arm. She went to the mirror to apply more makeup and shimmied into the skimpy costume she would wear on stage. The dressing room was just a small bare room with cinderblock walls still stained with tar from the thousands of cigarettes that had been smoked in here before indoor smoking was banned. It still happened, of course. Just like everything else that wasn’t supposed to.

Nearly nine years in this club, and she still wasn’t used to it. especially not when she’d come straight here from the farm. She’d give anything to be in the barn right now, breathing the sweet smell of fresh hay, touching Clyde’s velveteen nose and looking at his kind, liquid brown eyes. The memory of Evan’s arms around her was a longing she almost couldn’t bear. The contrast reminded her of when she’d first arrived in Fort Myers with her mother. Leanne had come here to buy drugs, and once Trent had gotten a look at Kayla, there’d been no going back.

Trent was circling back through now, stalking among the girls. She’d first met him when she was fourteen, fresh off the farm and desperate for the love of a father she’d never known. Trent had eyes only for her, it seemed. He told her she was more beautiful than any girl he’d ever seen. She’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. It hadn’t taken him long to get her into his bed. That experience had colored nearly everything afterward. The sex had been unpleasant in almost every way, and she had learned that sex was a thing to be tolerated in order to win the affection or protection of a man. Trent had even made a show of running a guy off her in the club one night when the stranger had tried to literally drag her out the door. The sad fact was, in those days, it was safer to be Trent’s girl than not. He wanted her to dance. Fourteen years old, embarrassed and shy, she’d refused. But he would feed her alcohol after hours and convince her to do it just for him. The saddest part of her longed for his praise and infatuation, and the most frightened part of her didn’t dare disobey for fear of what might happen the next time someone more dangerous came along. She was trapped then, and she was trapped now.

Their twisted little world became a runaway train in no time. She became increasingly more ashamed of what he’d convinced her to do and drank to drown it out. He swooped in like a predator for the kill and sent her out onstage during an amateur night. Nothing was the same after that. She could never take it back. She could never again be a normal girl. She couldn’t face her Gram knowing she’d dropped out of school and was working in a strip club.

With the perspective of years, she recognized now that Trent was basically a pimp, except that he worked the girls primarily as strippers and not all of them turned tricks in the VIP room. Kayla didn’t, but most of them did. Trent took a cut from everything. She was pretty sure Trent had harbored some fantasy of her being his highest-earning girl and his own personal whore. Instead, she’d plotted her escape, and inheriting the farm had been her big break.

She watched him slip something to another dancer. Some of the girls were his best customers. Kayla had heard of these mythical empowered women who danced because they wanted to, but this establishment didn’t attract that type of woman. Trent’s specialty was desperate, damaged girls who were easy to manipulate and get hooked on his drugs.

He veered back toward her, and she braced herself for his proximity. The smell of menthol cigarettes and cheap cologne assaulted her as he loomed over her. That smell brought back every bit of pain he’d inflicted on her. She didn’t move from the chair, slouched beneath his leering gaze. It was hard to imagine now that when he’d told her she was pretty she’d been so flattered. Trent encouraged her to do anything she wanted, and her mother had just shrugged and allowed it. It had been a teenage thrill for a minute, before she’d walked in on him with another girl, and woken up to the harsh reality of what Trent really wanted with her. The betrayal of that revelation had been overwhelming at fifteen. He didn’t really think that she was so special after all. Any girl who came through the door would do. Especially when she had disobeyed him in some way. Then he would openly lavish his affections on any other girl in order to hurt her more. And then she drank more to cope with the rejection. Later, he’d beaten her, belittled her, and made sure she knew she was unfit for anything other than whatever meager attention he deigned to offer her. He had systematically ruined her for any type of regular life.

“I don’t like this one,” Trent said, gesturing to her costume. “Wear the school girl one. Everyone loves that.” She nodded. “I’ll put Ashley on before you so you can change.” He went to tell the girls the order had been changed, and Kayla sagged against the plastic chair that looked as if it had come from some school basement. Ashley glanced at her as she applied the finishing touches to her face. Ashley was one of the more sensible girls here.

“He’s in a mood,” she commented. “Be careful, okay? I guess the cops got wind of the underaged girls dancing here, and they’re looking at him. He’s circling the wagons. Just be careful.” So that explained why he’d come all the way out to her place to strongarm her back to the club. He was afraid he was losing his control over her and she might talk.

“Yeah. Thanks,” Kayla replied as Ashley brushed past her, headed for the stage. Kayla looked at the door leading to the alley, wanting so badly to just run out of there and never come back. That was exactly what she’d tried to do when she’d found out the farm was hers. But after a time, even the worst of situations became comfortable in their familiarity. She felt like the object everyone treated her like. It was predictable.

The announcement of her stage name over the loudspeaker was a sharp jab bringing on the anesthesia. With every step she took toward the stage, she felt less and less. She knew exactly how to work it to make top tips. She was drunk, but she’d done this performance so many times, she could practically do it in her sleep.

She had another bottle stashed for when her set was over, and she drank it while she waited for the car service to pick her up. When the notification came that the car was waiting, she slipped out the side door, wrapped in a heavy sweatshirt despite the warm evening. She collapsed in the back seat and glanced up, seeing the eyes of her driver in the rearview mirror. She knew that look. Excitement. The dangerous kind.

“You work here?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb. She was drunk, stuck in the car with a creep. This was the response that a significant portion of the male population had when they realized she was a stripper. The other response was disgust. "You do any work on the side?” the driver asked her. Those eyes still on her, not the road. That dangerous light still gleamed. She was in trouble.

“No,” she bit out, scanning the road. There was a red light approaching. A drugstore glowed to the side.

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to suck my dick,” he went on as he slowed to stop at the red light. Her hand was already on the door handle. The moment the car came to a standstill, she bolted. It wasn’t her first rodeo on any level, and she knew exactly where this was headed. If she continued to refuse, this pervert would either get angry and acquiesce, or he would presume it was his right to rape her as long as he paid her afterward.

“Hey!” she heard him yell behind her as she ran hard into the parking lot of the well-lit drugstore. She made it through the glass doors, gasping for air, and spun around to see what he was going to do. He briefly stood outside the driver’s door until a car behind him honked, and then he retreated and drove away. She let out a sigh of relief.

“You gonna buy something?” a woman’s scratchy voice interrupted her. It was the voice of twenty years of cigarettes and rough life. She turned to face the disapproving stare of a middle-aged woman at the cash register. Kayla realized she was still clutching the bottle of whiskey she’d smuggled into the back of the car. The cashier’s gaze traveled from Kayla’s huge false eyelashes to the bottle and then shook her head.

“You better move along, or I’m calling the cops,” the woman said, phone in hand. Who the hell was she to judge Kayla? Nonetheless, they could probably arrest her for drinking in public, and they would, once they figured out she’d just left the Palm.

“No— I’ll go—” Kayla stammered and went back out the door, face burning. This was a replay of so many scenes from her youth. There was a different category in society’s eyes for a girl who’d gone down this path. She was just another drunken whore who’d made her choices and now had to sleep in the figurative bed she’d made. It had shocked her at first. She hadn’t made these choices! But society didn’t care. There were a certain number of disposable girls required to be sacrificed to the gods of perverted men in power.

On the sidewalk, she pulled out her phone to call for another car. If a respectable-looking girl without false eyelashes, body glitter, and an open bottle of whiskey had run into the drugstore, they might have offered her help. But looking the way Kayla did, there was an automatic assumption that she’d brought whatever misfortune on herself and should take her trouble elsewhere. The injustice made girls bitter, and it made them stay in the life. At every turn, society told them they were branded. There was a line in the sand past which girls like her must not cross. When she had first gotten back to the farm, a young, handsome guy from the feed store had asked her out almost immediately. She’d dated him a few times, till she had mindlessly pulled out a matchbook from the Dancing Palm to light a cigarette. He was a church going good ole boy and the judgment in his eyes was immediate and irrevocable. Her only hope had been to go back to the farm and pretend this part of her life had never happened.

Like everything else that had happened between her and Trent, it would be her dirty little secret. She could so easily imagine Evan’s reaction to this part of her life. Neither God nor good men had any use for a woman like her. She would keep the memory of him safe and sound, and she would not see him again. She couldn’t stand the possibility of seeing either of the two inevitable reactions when he found out. Either the disdain and judgment like the cashier, or the sick excitement of her nasty driver. Surely, losing him now was simpler, and less painful.

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