Page 56 of Creed

I nod because, shit, he’s right. I open my mouth to voice as such but he blurts out, “and I think Collins should go with us.”

His eyes go wide and mirror my own expression because even though I know he took a quick liking to Collins based on their interaction this morning, I didn’t expect wanting her to come along to become his idea.

“I agree, with all of that, actually.” I reply softly, the corner of my mouth quirking up.

“You do? I mean, I know she’s like your family and I don’t want to overstep, but I don’t think she should be alone. I don’t know why she’d want to willingly go back to that shithole of a club, other than the fact that she’s straight up talented and actually likes doing that aerial dancing stuff. But I can almost guarantee we can find her a studio to dance to her heart's content in every city we stop in. So, I think we should ask her to come with us, u-until we can figure out the next step.” He rambles at a rapid fire speed.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, Ri. I was going to say the same thing to you, actually. I won’t be letting her out of my sight anytime soon. We’ll talk to her after we wrap up with Steve here.” He nods and I smile wide at him, my grin nearly feral with excitement, the plan taking form before my eyes. I nod toward the computer. “You ready?”

He nods, his own smile taking over his face so devilish and wild that it makes sense of why Riley was dubbed the Sinful Saint. One magazine had snapped a photo of Riley smiling similarly behind his drum set during a show and they said that Riley’s smile is one that could convince a nun to do sinful things.

Even I can appreciate the beauty of a man’s body, and based on what I witnessed this morning, Collins knows how to appreciate it, too. I didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on his chest while he was too distracted flipping pancakes.

Then it hits me. Collins won’t have a choice but to go with us. She’ll be in close proximity to not only me, but Riley, too. Riley with the sinful smile.

I know it’s not a competition and she’s not the consolation prize, but that doesn’t mean I won’t play the game better to win her over if it comes down to it. Who says there can’t be more than one winner, anyway? This line I’ve drawn between us is only temporary, after all.

We just need to tell the feisty little minx that she’ll be tagging along, first. Right after I apologize for being an ass.

We wrap up the call and leave the recording studio and head toward the back where Collins is hanging out by the pool.

Fuck. Here we go.

Chapter 22

Collins

Fuck him.

The absolute nerve of that asshole. I am so unbelievably mad right now, but more than that, I’m hurt. He has no clue, not a single goddamned clue as to what I’ve been through to survive the last two years. Hell, the last ten years of my life.

But maybe that’s why he doesn’t understand, because you ghosted his ass when he begged to help you, Collins.

I huff, completely annoyed with myself and the warring thoughts in my brain. Riley checked on me a few minutes ago, and he promised me he’d take me to ‘get my things’ after they had some emergency meeting with their band manager. Get my things. Not take me home.

Kicking my feet through the water, I watch the droplets fly through the air before plopping softly in a trail across the surface of the pool. The water feels good against my legs and the sound of the fountain stream cascading into the far side of the pool soothes my turbulent mind.

I tip my head back, my arms braced against the ground behind me and I stare at the sky. I start recounting everything that’s happened in the last twelve hours and try to understand where Creed’s actions and reactions come from. I want to be angry at him, but can I really?

While I’m mad and upset at the words he threw in my face, I’m the one who shut him out because of my broken heart and broken spirit. I blocked him and I avoided his PI like the plague so that he couldn’t find me. Through that stubbornness to make it on my own, I’d accepted the job at Viper out of desperation. But it was there that I learned the art of aerial dancing. The girl who taught me, also showed me how to use aerial as an escape while I performed. And it did. Those few minutes were my own, where no one could touch me. No one could hurt me.

But it didn’t stop the private dances that were paid for afterward. I tried to get lost in going over the choreography in my mind as men held me and violated my body in those private rooms. Jett tried to save me anytime he was on security, but on the nights he was assigned as a bouncer, or that he wasn’t working… those nights were the worst. I was never taken by the men that way. In fact, sex was nonexistent in my life. But the stolen touches were soul-stripping nonetheless. Strangers used me to get their ‘happily ever afters’—as Tank and his VIP members so graciously called them—but by way of forcing me to touch them or holding me down while they came all over my body. Never through fucking me against my will, though.

Apparently that’s the line of morality they wouldn’t cross. How chivalrous.

I’d had enough of the violating and degradation, but by the time I grew a backbone and enough savings to leave the club and find a job doing exponentially anything else, Tank had approached me. He told me I was indebted to him because of his loss in clients when I started to fight back against the men more violently. He told me such a debt had no quantity to repay, nor an end date. He’d threatened to let men do more than just touch me if I didn’t comply. I was fucking devastated and felt so hollow because I was once again stuck. How could I fight it? With no money, and nowhere to go, I was indefinitely indebted to him with no end in sight. No way out.

To make a shitty situation worse, for two years I’ve been receiving dirty, disturbing, and even threatening texts from Guy, the last man who had the role as my foster father. He never explicitly says its him, but I fucking know it’s that piece of shit. I can’t say how many times I’ve blocked the numbers he’s used over the years, but he always comes back. He’s like a goddamned disease that I can’t shake. But lately he’s been sending texts like I can’t wait to see you again, and I’m so close I can taste you.

Sick and twisted as it is, it’s because of those texts that I had started to actually find security at the club, of all places. Well, not so much the club itself, as it was Jett who has protected me and watched over me the best that he could. I know it breaks him to know the shit that goes on behind closed doors at the club, and I know he couldn’t be there to save me every time, but I knew on the nights that he was assigned to me and the other specialty exotic dancers, I would be safe not only from the members of the club, but I would be safe from Guy, should he ever act on his delusional obsession.

Then there’s last night. When Creed practically crashed back into my life. I’ve never felt so many emotions as I did seeing him with my own eyes and feeling his familiar embrace for the first time in a decade. But seeing him was as painful as it was relieving. It brought back memories of me, Asher, and Creed spending time together, happy and laughing, and care-free. At least they made sure I was care-free.

But it also forced the memories of the days, years, I was apart from my two most favorite people. Of nights I’d spent alone, locked in my closet after they left for college. Of going to bed hungry after my first foster family denied me food. Of my foster brother convincing me to give up our virginity to one another at sixteen because he said it was nothing special to cling to nowadays, anyway.

He wasn’t a bad guy per se; we were just two dumb teenagers who thought it’d be a good idea to get something so trivial out of the way. It wasn’t really painful, because he, too was inexperienced, and had fucked me with his small, semi-flaccid dick, had no knowledge of what he was doing, and the whole moment had ended approximately fifteen seconds after it started. Anticlimactic in so many ways. The thing that made him a shitty person, though, was that he blamed me for his premature ejaculation. He also told his parents that it was my idea and they got so pissed that I was gone the next day and landed in the care of Guy and his wife who ditched him not long after.

A bead of sweat rolls down my back from the heat of the sun. I don’t have any clothes to change into but, fuck it. I lift up and push the rest of my body down into the water. The coolness of the pool is like a balm to my overheated skin. Floating on my back, my mind drifts back to Creed.

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