And one could argue (and even I would argue it, after saying it, pissed as all hell), I shouldn’t have broached it when I was pissed as all hell.

But…seriously?

Me time?

He had it?

What the fuck?

Eventually, he spoke.

But when he did, I wished he didn’t.

“Fuck you, Ryn,” he said softly.

“We need to talk,” I said softly back.

“No, we absolutely do not.”

“I miss my brother,” I whispered. “You’re an amazing guy, Brian. Funny. Smart. Loyal. The best brother ever, and I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true, that’s when you’re not drinking. And I miss you.”

“I can’t even tell you how few fucks I give about that.”

I sucked in breath at the meanness of his words.

“You’re out, Ryn,” he declared. “More out than you were before.”

“If you take those kids away from me because Ang can’t grow up and face responsibility. And you’re in denial that you have a problem when you’ve already lost everything, it’s just that everyone around you is going through the motions to shield you from that fact because we love you, but the way we do that is enabling you. If you do that, you are going to shatter an already broken heart.”

“And I can’t tell you how few fucks I give about that either.”

After that, I heard the beeps to share he’d disconnected.

I lifted my knees up to my chest and dropped my forehead to them.

“Me time,” I whispered, started laughing softly, this right before the pain racked my body as I held back a sob.

It took a second, but I got the emotion under control.

I didn’t seem to be able to keep a handle on my life.

But I was hell on wheels with keeping my emotions locked down.

Once I succeeded in this endeavor, I lifted my head.

I’d had little sleep.

But it was time to find a kickboxing class.

* * *

I’d managed to avoid any more dramas between Brian’s call that morning and showing at Smithie’s that night.

So I was not all that thrilled to see Dorian standing outside the dancers’ dressing room, his eyes fixed on me.

I mean, really.

Somebody save me.

Dorian had that Michael B. Johnson thing going on.

I was no poet, but I imagined I could write entire sonnets just about his neck.

Forget it with that mouth. Those lips. Those strong, straight, white teeth.

That would be a Shakespearean soliloquy.

But his deep-set eyes. Both sharply astute and warmly gentle.

Yeesh.

I wouldn’t even get into his dimples.

I was surrounded by hotties.

And none of them were mine.

I tried for cocky casual, throwing out a “Yo,” when I got close and stopped.

“I see you’re still goin’ with that ‘it’s all good’ bullshit,” he remarked.

That’d be the sharply astute part of Dorian.

“What bullshit? Life’s free and breezy for me, Ian.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what those blue shadows under your eyes are tellin’ me.”

I glared at him.

My glare deflected off him, pinged around the backstage hallway and bit me in the ass.

When he sensed my glare had successfully landed astray, he shared, “Smithie wants a word.”

Great.

“Are you telling tales out of school?” I asked.

“Sue me, I give a shit,” he replied. “But no. I figure if I don’t tell my uncle you got something screwin’ with your head or fuckin’ up your life, I got some modicum of chance you’ll lay that on me so I can either listen while you get it out or help you do something about it.”

Color me chastised.

But still.

“Stop being nice when I’m trying to be tough,” I retorted.

“Stop being tough when you’re among friends and you don’t gotta do that shit,” he shot back.

We went into staredown.

Unsurprisingly, I lost.

And my capitulation included me saying, “Is Smithie in his office?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded, went to round him, but he fell in step at my side.

I looked to that side and up.

“Do I need an escort?” I asked.

“I’m in on this convo,” he answered.

Oh no.

Did Smithie and/or Dorian get the word I’d been kinda-semi-kidnapped last night?

“I’m really all right,” I told him as we made it to the door that led from the back hall to the club. “Or I will be. Just a rough patch.”

Rough, jagged, bumpy, with twists and turns and an almost-guaranteed cliff at the end.

I felt like Thelma and Louise, and I didn’t get the fun of shooting a lowdown, rotten rapist or sleeping with Brad Pitt.

“My uncle has been thinkin’ about the direction of the club and he wants to talk to you about it.”

Well, that was definitely a thing that made me go hmm.

Considering Smithie was not old, but he was also not young, and he’d been in the game a fair few years, it was generally thought from the minute Dorian showed that Smithie was grooming him to take over.

And since Dorian showed, his bouncer title mostly reflected his inability to put up with even an iota of shit from a creepy customer and his superpower of removing them from the club quietly, but with ease, and if necessary, force.

Also, since Dorian showed, lap dances were vetted by him and Smithie, and only him and Smithie. Girls no longer wandered the floor or came when beckoned.

Those dances further didn’t happen on the floor.

They happened in one of the two private rooms Smithie had where he’d previously allowed paid-for private dances, or he sometimes hired out for poker games or the like, and they always happened with a bouncer in the room, watching.

Payment was provided prior, to said bouncer, who immediately after the dance gave it to the dancer. The only money that exchanged hands between client and stripper were tips.

Now a lap dance was skeevy.

I was good at them, but they were skeevy.

And one who had never done them couldn’t know, but the difference between straddling a guy’s lap and giving him the good stuff with hundreds of onlookers getting a free show and doing it in private with a guard right there was massive.

In other words, with Dorian around, I was actually looking forward to hearing what Smithie was considering for the direction the club was going.

We snaked through the tables and around the stage to the stairs, up them, and after Dorian reached over my head to knock on the door to Smithie’s office, and we heard a “Yeah!” we went in.

I saw my boss behind his messy desk.

He was darker than Dorian, stouter, no dimples, but they had the same mouth, and height, and Smithie totally had that sharp-astuteness and warm-gentleness thing going on, though his he had down to an art.

I picked stripping because I had a decent body, I could move, I knew it’d make me loads of cash, especially if I danced at a class establishment like Smithie’s, and I had a high school education and a dream, and I needed the seed money to start it.

It was just dumb luck, some of the little of it I’d ever had, I landed in a joint like Smithie’s where our insurance was better than a government worker’s, he had a 401(k) plan and the infinite, albeit frustrated, patience to put up with a staff that consisted almost entirely of attractive people who were in their twenties.