Page 77 of Demo

Keys went to leave, hesitated, and then turned to Paige. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Paige. I’ll try to make it right.”

Paige hiccuped against Demo’s chest but didn’t respond. Keys looked up worriedly at Demo, who waved him off. It was understandable that Paige would not want to talk to Keys. Demo tightened his hold on her.

“We’ll leave too.” Harper stood up. She waved her parents onward. “Paige, I’m so sorry. We’ll keep the boys tonight if you need us to. Just take care of you. This is a lot, and today of all days. Just let me know what you need.”

Demo felt Paige’s mouth move against his pec but couldn’t hear what she said. Harper ushered her parents out of the clubhouse. Jenna followed after a quick goodbye to Steel. They all paused at the double doors to don their jackets, hats, and gloves before heading outside.

Lucky and Carlos stayed. With a jerk of his chin from Steel, Ivy left too.

Demo lowered his ear down to try and catch what Paige was muttering over and over again against his chest.

“…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

“The fuck!” he roared when he finally heard. He released his hold around her, took her by her shoulders, and moved around so they were face to face. She still leaned heavily against him, like her bones had turned to rubber. “What the fuck are you sorry for, Paige? You havenothingto be sorry for!”

Her cheeks and shirt were saturated with her tears and snot was running freely from her nose. Her chocolate eyes bore such despair that it nearly broke Demo’s own heart. She couldn’t even look at him.

“I didn’t…” Her chin was shaking so hard, her teeth were chattering together. “I wasn’t…”

Demo leaned forward and pressed his lips against her forehead. “I know, beautiful, I know. You did it for your boys.”

Paige’s breath caught. His words seemed to knock her free of her shock. Slowly, she turned her body more to face him and met his eyes. “You know?”

Ignoring the slight accusation that reminded him of that day in the diner, Demo nodded easily. “That you became a foot fetish model to help keep a roof over your head and food in your sons’ bellies? Yeah, I know. Or I guessed. Everything you do is for them, Paige. It’s one of the things I love about you.” When she gasped, he chuckled humorlessly. “I’ll admit, my first reaction was wondering why you didn’t tell me you had a foot fetish. We haven’t been sleeping together that long, but I was still shocked it wasn’t something you had told me. I even briefly considered whether it was something I would be interested in sharing with you.”

At her disgusted face, Demo assured her, “It’s not.”

Now that she was sitting up more fully and under her own weight, Demo moved his hands from her shoulders to cup her face. “Paige, you are an amazing mom. Everything you do is for those boys. There’s not a selfish bone in your body. Once the initial shock wore off and I saw your reaction, I knew that your involvement was monetary, not sexual.”

She let out a pathetic little sob that was entirely unsexy but somehow completely endearing. Demo used the sleeve of his sweater to start wiping up her face.

“I didn’t think I’d actually get any money from it, but I started to get all these personal requests. That’s what the site calls it when someone has a private request. If you accept, you have to do as they ask. The money was too good to turn down. I owed so much to so many people and I couldn’t risk being homeless or that my stepfamily would take away my boys.”

“Did you…” Demo hesitated. He really had no right to ask, but he also wanted to know. “Did you post anything since we started dating?” At her quick intake of breath, Demo hastened to add, “I don’t blame you if you did, Paige. I’m just curious.”

Stiffly, she nodded. “Once. Last week. It was for two thousand dollars, Demo! I could pay off my back rent with it! I don’t even understand why it was still there. For two thousand dollars, it should have been snatched up by someone else.”

Demo leaned in and kissed her on the lips. “We’ll figure out who did this, Paige. Keys is the best there is. The Navy were fools the day they lost him.”

“What am I supposed to do until then?”

“Go on as normal,” Demo encouraged. “There’s nothing else for you to do.”

“Go on like I wasn’t just outed on national television for being a foot fetish model?” Paige scoffed.

“People have enough of their own shit to worry about,” Steel interjected from behind Demo. “If they truly have an issue with you then they have an issue with us. And believe me,” his tone turned dark, “they won’t like having an issue with us.”

Paige satat the reception desk at her acupuncture clinic with her elbows on the table, her hands gripping the hair at her temples, and tears falling down onto the piece of paper in front of her. It had nearly been a week since the hack on the foot fetish site. To say that it had been a good week would be a flat out lie.

It had been an awful week.

The fact that she’d discovered she was a widow at the beginning of the week wasn’t even the worst part of it. The worst part wasn’t even seeing all the cancellations on her appointment calendar or the spray painted foot on her clinic’s front door. It wasn’t even when she’d been in the grocery store and the cashier put a Closed sign on her lane when Paige had approached. Having the wordfoot whoretexted to her anonymously didn’t even reach the top ten.

No, the worst part—the absolutelyworstpart—was seeing the notice from her landlord, whom she’d paid in full, deliver her an eviction notice. He didn’t care how many times Paige tried to explain that she was not using her clinic torapeher client’s feet. The man wanted her out and was giving her two weeks to do it.

The bell above her door chimed. Paige looked up, hoping to see Demo, but wasn’t entirely disappointed to see Abby. It seemed the only people in this town who hadn’t turned on her had ties to the club. Kelly, the waitress, had been just as sweet as ever but her mom had refused to bring her products over to the clinic on Monday like they’d planned. Kelly apologized profusely, but Paige wasn’t about to blame her for her mom’s actions or behavior.

As it turned out, it would have been pointless for Jody to bring over her candles and soaps anyway since Paige had no clients and soon she wouldn’t even have a clinic.

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