Page 149 of The Pucking Wrong Man

This was...this was insane.

I’d never heard Alena complain about money before, so for her to be making note about it—I knew it was ridiculous on every level.

“That old hag. It’s like she wants all of us to quit.” Alena continued scowling at the board with her hands fisted at her sides, like if she stared hard enough, the figures on the paper would magically change.

Finally, she sighed and stepped away, shaking her head before she glanced at me. “Well, at least you won’t have to worry about it. Not with that fancy pants hockey player you’re dating.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not like that,” I quickly said. “I would never ask him to pay for me.”

She raised an eyebrow, like she thought I was crazy. “Why the hell not? If I got myself a rich guy, I’d be getting everything I could out of him.”

And that’s why you aren’t with a rich guy, I thought to myself. They can probably sense you a mile away and go running...

I realized she was waiting for some kind of answer, so I made a non-committal humming sound—which strangely seemed to work for her.

“So what are you going to do to pay for it?” she asked.

I sighed.

It was the question for the ages at the moment. Between the money I needed to pay Michael…and now this…it was all I could think about.

“I’m not sure what I can do. I can dance. That’s it. Our schedule doesn’t allow us to really do anything else.” The desperation I’d felt last night was inching up my throat just talking about it again.

Alena glanced up and down the hallway, like she was checking to make sure we were alone, and then she leaned in close. “I know a job that would work. It pays really well too. I’m doing it until I make the senior company...and even then it will be hard to let it go. The money’s too good.”

I eyed her curiously. “What kind of job is it?”

“A Gentlemen’s Club,” she said, a challenge in her voice like she expected me to judge her...or run away screaming because she thought I was such a goodie-two-shoes.

“You…strip?” I asked hesitantly.

She rolled her eyes. “I dance. It’s not so different from what we do here, ya know? Just with a little...less clothes. And if you remember that costume we wore last fall...it covers about the same amount.”

I remembered that costume. She’d had a point. I’d felt like I was dancing naked on stage the entire time. None of us had understood what Madame Leclerc had been thinking.

“I made two thousand dollars last night in tips alone,” Alena said proudly, wiggling her eyebrows up and down.

My mouth dropped. “Are you…are you serious?”

She nodded with a smirk. “I could get you a job, you know. They’d eat you up. You have that whole angelic thing going on.”

I’d mentioned it to Camden because I had thought about it before. I thought about the easy money. How fast I could give Michael the money he wanted.

I couldn’t do it though.

I couldn’t become a cliché. My time to strip would have been when I was homeless. But not now.

Where I’d come from, every girl either died of an overdose, got pregnant, or started stripping.

There wasn’t really an in between.

My mother had done the first two.

I wasn’t going to do the last.

I also hadn’t spent years being upset and sick about Michael’s pictures and videos of me, just to throw it all to hell and have a bunch of men see all of my body anyway.

“Do they have any other jobs there?” I asked. I guess it was stupid of me, but I’d always just stayed away from those clubs, determined not to give in. It made sense that there would be other jobs there that could actually fit with my schedule.

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