Page 35 of Hired Help

The crush of patrons isn’t as bad as it looked. When I get nearer the counter, most of the bodies are waiting beyond the queue, thinning down to just a few between me and the bartender.

My eyes move back to the circle around the dance floor. Most of them are girls and they all look like they’re having a great time.

You don’t want to know.

No, I don’t.

Not any more than I wanted to know what Brooke looked like being fucked by her stepmother’s employee or how her face twisted when he made her come.

I push away from the bar, all pretence I’m here to have a good time, gone. Brooke has a habit of punching out when she’s hurt, and I know I hurt her. Whatever is going on tonight will be designed to hurt me just as badly.

That’s not ego, just a thorough understanding of her psyche. A familiarity that took me two and a half years to build and about two seconds to destroy.

“Hey, Harrison,” Kaden says, deliberately blocking my path. “You want to come back to the bar, and I’ll shout you a drink?”

“I barely know who the fuck you are, mate,” I growl as I try to shove him aside. “I sure as hell don’t want to drink with you.”

And it’s a low blow. I know he’s looking out for me, the same way I’ve seen him in action looking out for Floss.

I should take him up on his offer and spare my already wounded pride another stab in the guts.

But the list of things I should do is long and varied and gathering a thick layer of dust. When I move until our noses are almost touching, he accedes to my unspoken demand and shifts to the side while I push my way into the line of dance voyeurs.

There’s a male stripper doing one of those sexy dance routines and my breathing comes a little easier. Brooke is in a chair, or out of it now, being laid down on the stage while he writhes and gyrates on top of her.

From the appreciative calls and glances, I understand the females in the audience think he’s giving her a good time. It just looks uncomfortable to me. Like something she’ll soon regret.

Especially with the pale cream of her dress. It must be picking up every piece of dirt from the floor.

I stand still for a second, pain wringing my heart in its massive fists.

She’d been so excited when she returned from shopping, having ordered her dress for the ball. Not showing me, except for a swatch of its colour so I could get a matching cummerbund.

It’s beautiful.

She’s beautiful.

I press the heel of my hand hard into my chest, struggling to breathe through the pain.

The idea flashes in my head. Talk to her. Get her side.Forgiveher.

It seemed an impossibility from the moment I laid eyes on the video but now it’s all I want. To forgive her and move past this, reconnect. Pick up whatever the tattered remnants are of our previous relationship and try to forge them into something new.

And spend the rest of your life waiting for her to betray you again.

I turn away, not wanting to see. My stumbling footsteps carry me past the bar and out to the rear hallway. A corridor leads to the bathrooms at one end and a sign marked staff only at the other.

Everything is too far away. I sag against the wall, struggling to catch my breath.

This is insane.

Even in the moments where I’d played what-if, I never realised there could be pain like this. What-if she finds someone more attractive. What-if you can never satisfy her in bed. Back before she first said yes there was what-if she’s a lesbian or asexual or just not into you.

None of those scenarios had prepared me for this.

“Harrison?”

Everett pops his head through the door and I wave to him. “Just needed a break,” I say, though it’s ridiculous. I’ve only been here for ten minutes. “I’ll be back in a few.”

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