Page 47 of Beauty and Kaos

Mia turns her phone around, and images of a strappy purple dress fill the screen. It’s all buckles and silky belts and cinches, crisscrossing in intricate patterns across the bodice, all the way to a short skirt that flares around the hips with built-in garters. My mouth goes dry just thinking about Ivy inside it.

“That’s not a dress. That’s bondage lingerie.” I pause, then curse. “I want tickets.”

She leans in close. “It’s been sold out for weeks, but Jamal is working the door. I’ll slide him a text.”

“She’s in the back on the deck,” I say, nodding my head toward the door. Mia skips away toward the employee break area, and I turn back to Katrina. She shakes her head.

“I’ve never seen you chase after a girl.”

I shrug. “They don’t usually run.”

I can’t let Ivy get to me. She’s already proven that she can’t be trusted. She came home late, showered, and in another man’s clothes. She proved that whatever we may have started, it means nothing to her. All the red flags. And yet, here I am. Still chasing her. Knitting all those red flags together to make a blanket for the bed I’ll lie in later.

Fuck it. “How long you got on that Scampi?”

“Three minutes. But I’ll make it seven if you keep pining away for the servers instead of grilling those skewers for 72. My shit is getting cold, and you’re making me look bad.” She sloshes the sauce into the air over the fire and catches it in the pan.

“I’ll grab your sides,” I say, amused, and make my way down the line.

Chapter 15

Ivy

Friday flies right on by before I can stop to breathe. With a shopping trip in the morning and only working the second shift, I feel like I’ve barely been at the Sandbar at all by the time Evan walks to the front and turns off the open sign.

As the chaos in the dining room begins to wind down, I lean back against the wall in the server station, feeling the tick of the clock like a hammer against my skull. My nerves are on red alert tonight, the weight of the impending club job baring down on me like Atlas’s Earth. Will I find out what Paige was doing there? Will it be a complete waste of time? Is it a strip club? Was that her secret?

Maybe I don’t want to know.

“You still have a table?” Zaden asks from behind me, catching me off guard as I fill a drink from the machine.

I nod. “I can’t seem to get that woman to shut up and payher ticket.” I set the glass down on table and turn around to face him.

The kitchen is almost clean, and he shed his Sandbar shirt in favor of the black tank he wears beneath. The blue neon from the bar catches the highlights in his tattoos, lines wound intricately around hard muscle glistening with sweat within the dim interior of the tiny server station. I want to read his art like a book, in Braille. Slowly, and without interruption.

“That’s surprising,” he says, his gaze falling on my mouth.

I angle my head to peer up at him. “Why?”

He steps closer, nearly touching, and I retreat until I feel the cool steel of the table in my back. He reaches toward the shelf above the machine, his head falling to the side of mine until I feel the warmth of his breath against my ear.

“Because I know those lips can silence all thought and reason. You don’t even have to speak.” His words run like an electrical current across my skin as he grabs a styrofoam cup off the shelf and steps back, his eyes meeting mine as he presents the cup to me. “Put her drink in a to-go cup. She’ll get the idea.”

Mia walks around the corner with a cleaning rag, and Zaden takes another step back.

“Do you have any tea drinkers? I’m about to break down the tea urns.”

I shake my head. “No. My last table is about to leave.”

“Good grief. Kick them out already. I’m ready to go to the party,” she exclaims, tossing her towel in the sanitizer bucket and grabbing the lid off the urn. She glances over at Zaden, realizing we aren’t alone in the space.

“Oh good, you’re still here. Take this into the kitchen forme, will you?” She asks sweetly, nodding toward the empty metal urn.

Zaden smiles, his eyes never leaving mine. Then he grabs the urn and disappears back into the kitchen.

I take a breath, and make the to-go drink.

“Last call,” I hear Nick yell from the bar, and I see Evan walk out of the cash office. I wander over to meet him.

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