"I know you are."
She nods toward the front of the house. "Go on, then."
"Thank you." I take a few steps toward the gate and stop to turn back to her. I know what it's like to be isolated, to suddenly find yourself in a world where you don't belong, and I feel like I should say something, like I should let her know she's not alone.
She speaks first. "Please don't tell Mr. Woodison I was crying. I was just having a moment. Hormones. You know."
"Of course." Again, I want to speak up, tell her there's no shame in getting help.
She stands, her eyes glittering in the low light from the lamps lining the pool deck. "A piece of advice, Mia?" she says. "Tempting as he might be, you'd do best to keep your legs closed."
I open my mouth but have no idea what to say. I'm not sure if I'm more surprised that she's offering this piece of wisdom, or insulted that she thinks that's the kind of advice I'd need. Who is it she thinks I need to be warned away from? Arrow, or her husband?
Not trusting myself to reply, I press my lips together and rush to my car.
I don't let myself think about what Gwen must think of me or why, and I definitely don't let myself think about how much I hate driving the curvy roads into Blackhawk Valley at night. I'm going to do the same as I've done for the last four months-whatever is necessary. Just because Arrow is home doesn't mean anything has changed.
When I open the door to the strip club, the smoke and pounding music hit me in the face. Nobody cards me or cares that I'm underage. In this kind of place, boobs are more likely to get you through the door than a valid ID.
The place is packed with college guys tonight. They all look the same to me-white boys in jeans and fitted T-shirts trying to act the part of grown men by gawking at bare tits and drinking too much overpriced beer. Once, I told my brother, Nic, that I just didn't get strip clubs. Here are all these good-looking guys, many of whom already have a girl at home, paying to see what they could have for free.
Nic just laughed and told me getting into a girl's bed might be easy, but getting out is another matter. "Strip clubs mean boobs without expectations."
My brother was such a sexist asshole. I'd give anything to have him back.
I scan the faces at the tables and by the stage, but I don't see my father. "Fuck," I mutter, pushing my way through the crowd.
A guy at the bar shoots his hand out and grabs my arm. "Hey, beautiful. You work here?" His thumb strokes the bare skin above my elbow, and the touch makes my skin crawl.
"No."
"You should," he says, his words slurring together. "You're prettier'n the rest of 'em."
"Hands off, dirty." Bailey appears at my side and pulls the guy's hand off my arm. "You touch another girl tonight-stripper or not-and I'll have your ass thrown out of here."
She pulls me away from him, and I mutter a weak, "Thank you."
"I swear, Mia, the creeps see you coming from a mile away. It's a special gift."
"I'll be sure to add it to my résumé," I say. "Where's Dad?"
"I stuck him in the GM's office. Found him in the ladies' room asking the girls to go home with him."
"Seriously?"
She rolls her eyes. "Says he wants to save them. Take them to church. Show them there's a better way to live."
My father. World's biggest hypocrite.
She gives me a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder, and I follow her through a set of doors and into the back hallway that runs behind the stage. The doors swing closed behind us, and the music drops to a dull roar.
She opens an office door and says, "He's all yours."
Dad's slumped in the chair beside the desk, eyes closed, spittle dangling from his bottom lip. Way to be a cliché, Dad.
"I convinced my manager not to call the cops, but you've gotta get him out of here."
I sigh, nodding. "Of course. Thank you." I turn to her and force a smile. "For everything."
She wraps me in a hug and squeezes tight. "Anything for you, chica." When she pulls back, she offers a half-smile. "You good? Everything okay at Palace Woodison?"
I shrug. "It's a little tense since Arrow came home." Tense. Considering I slapped him less than an hour ago, that's probably an understatement. I need to talk to him and soon. But what is there to say?
"You know what fixes tension, don't you?" She cocks her head, waiting for my guess, then grins when I stay silent. "Fucking, Mia. A well-fucked man is rarely a pissy one."
I roll my eyes. "Bailey!"
"Give it a try and tell me if I'm wrong." Her grin rockets up a notch. "Scratch that. You had your chance with Arrow and decided he wasn't worth the trouble, so I'll take care of it for you. I'm a saint like that, making sacrifices for my friends."
I know she's joking. She's never been interested in Arrow.
She tilts her face to the ceiling and sighs. "And with Arrow's body, I might just sacrifice again and again. And again."
I can't help it. I burst into giggles, and my dad stirs in his sleep, grunting something. Back to reality. "Come on, Dad." I slide my hands under his arms and help him up.
He's unsteady on his feet and blinks at me. "You're working here now, too? I won't have a daughter of mine working in a strip club!"
"I don't work here, Dad. I'm here to take you home." I duck under one of his arms. The weight across my shoulders feels like a thousand pounds, but I take a deep breath and lead him forward.
"Got him?" Bailey asks, following us out of the office.
"Yeah. He's fine."
As we head back through the club toward the front doors, I immediately feel eyes on me-people staring as I lead my drunk father to the door. I'm not embarrassed anymore. Someone needs to take care of Dad, and with Nic gone, that falls to me.
"Have a good night," I tell Bailey.
"Oh, I will," she says. "There's a table of BHU guys over there who are going to pay for my fall tuition if they keep it up with the tips." She winks at me and saunters away.
Dad jerks his head up and stops walking. "Where's Nic? I need Nic to take me home. I need my son."
I'm waiting for the day that hurts less, but the words slice through me every time. "Nicholas is gone, Dad. Remember? We lost him."
"Good riddance," says a man a couple of tables away. His eyes are on the tits of the shirtless girl grinding on his lap, but I know he's talking about my brother.
"Too bad he had to take one of the good ones down with him," another man says in a low rumble. The night my brother died, he'd been clean for months. Not using. Not selling. But nobody cares. If your last name is Mendez, you don't get a second chance. Not in this town.
Ignoring them, and the ache in my chest their words threaten to wake, I say a quick prayer that my dad's too drunk to process their words.
"Come on, Dad." I urge him forward, knowing we have an audience and determined to keep my chin up.
"Why'd God have to take my only son?" my father whispers. I hear the tears in his voice and move my feet faster. I need to get him home before he breaks down.
No one here is going to have any sympathy for him if he starts wailing about losing Nicholas. All they see is how the accident hurt one of their own, Brogan Barrett. And in my brother's death, all they see is a scapegoat, an easy way to answer the unsolved mystery of the hit-and-run. Even the local paper was happy to report the accident as "likely gang violence" without any real evidence to support such an assertion.
The second I ease Dad into the passenger seat, he closes his eyes and his head lolls to the side. I buckle him in and take the short drive in silence.
A dark SUV passes me and makes me do a double take. It was a dark SUV that flew over Deadman's Curve and hit my brother and Brogan on New Year's Eve, and every time I see one, my gut twists with too many emotions.
I don't bother with the radio. I wouldn't be able to hear it over the clamor of my heartache anyway.
I slam a third cabinet door shut and open another, looking for the fucking skillets.
Mia left.
Did I piss her off that much, or did something else call her away? I stood in my room and watched her car roll down the drive and cautiously through the gate. I'm going to have to make my peace with her working here. And I can. I will. Fuck. It just took me by surprise. I came home from rehab mentally prepared to serve my house-arrest sentence. The judge acted like he was doing me a favor by letting me serve time here. He obviously doesn't know what it's like to be Uriah Woodison's fuck-up son.