Criminal(5)

She obeys, but I’m already humiliated, and tears sting my eyes.

“I told you — you aren’t cut out for this,” he whispers in my ear, his words dark and low so that she couldn’t hear him.

I want to punch him. The nerve!

Instead, I tug on the door again, and it blissfully opens as I pull myself away from him.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I remind him as I step inside.

I have to blink as my eyes adjust to the dim light, but the bigger adjustment is the smell of stale beer and vomit.

This is not a place for someone like me. I know that. Honestly, if Kaiden weren’t standing right outside the door believing that I couldn’t do it, I’d turn around right now. I’m terrified, and it’s gross in here.

I look at the few rickety chairs and booths, the fabric torn and some of the chairs looking as if they’d been broken and haphazardly put back together. It’s a place where more than a few bar fights happened.

A place an eighteen-year-old has no business being.

I push myself forward, trying to look confident as I teeter in my heels over to the bar. The floor is sticky and makes a sickly sound that I can feel as well as hear over the noise of loud rock music playing out of a jukebox past its prime.

There are a few guys at the bar, hard and mean looking with grizzled faces and beer bellies, but their expressions soften as they look me over in the lewdest way.

I guess “soften” isn’t the right word.

I look behind the bar at the greasy-looking man with the thin mustache and the long, black hair and give him what I hope to be a glowing smile. I don’t want to look apprehensive or terrified, or to give away any of my impressions of him, about his patrons, or about his job.

“Hi! I’m looking for Ryder?”

I guess Ryder was looking out for me, or maybe just has cameras in his little dive, because the words are barely out of my mouth when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see a towering, blond man.

“You’re looking for me, hun,” he says, his words patronizing, but his deep voice making it seem natural. Just like how Kaiden speaks to women.

He’s broad and built more like a bodyguard than an owner, but I guess they sometimes double up.

I stare up at him, and I can’t help but be a little shocked. He’s not like the slimy patrons or the greasy bartender. He is probably thirty-five if I was to guess, and if it weren't for the scar that nipped the top of his lip, he’d be flawless. Like, model-flawless.

“Oh! Right, yes, hi,” I say with a bright smile, offering him my hand. “I’m Abigail; we talked on the phone?”

“Yeah, I remember. Shot-girl,” he says as his steely eyes wander up and down my body, inspecting me like I’m a piece of meat. It made my stomach turn when the others did it, but when he does, it’s something different.

I like it a little bit. It’s flattering.

I don’t want to think about what that says about me, and I don’t get a chance to. Kaiden pushes his way into the bar, without the brunette he’d been so recently sucking face with.

He looks at me with his green eyes, his tall and broad body so imposing in the small space. But I shift my gaze back to Ryder, forcing a confident grin on my made-up lips.

I’m an imposter. I’m not a twenty-one-year-old girl, and I don’t go around in dark eyeshadow, low-cut tops, short skirts and towering heels.

But I’m going to act like I am.

“You said I could start tonight?”

“Yeah,” Ryder says in that deep voice of his. “Yeah, you can start tonight.”

He doesn’t ask for my ID, my references, nothing. Just like that.

I feel so relieved, almost smug, until I look at Kaiden’s face and see the anger brewing beneath the surface.

I guess he’s going to have to find another place to pick up chicks if his little sister is going to be around all the time.

That gives me a little bit of joy too.

***

My legs are killing me. All night was spent standing, walking around from one table of middle-aged men to another, the bar littered with younger men who’re trying to suck up to Ryder, from the looks of things.

And to my surprise, the place is packed with women.

Women who call me sugar-tits and spank my ass as I walked by, just like the men. As if they’re one in the same.

Women who wear too much perfume and chew gum with their mouth open, and men who leer at everything and smoke pot wherever they please.

It’s like working in the Wild West. No law, no order, no nothing.

I’d have been out of there a dozen times over if it wasn’t for the fact that my tip purse is risking overflowing.

I haven’t seen Ryder or Kaiden in a while, but time is passing so fast.