Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The Cellar was packed. It was a Saturday night, so Whip expected things to be busy, but there were more people than he’d seen in a good while.
Which was awesome. More people meant more money.
The only issue was the weird undercurrent in the air.
He’d experienced that before. As if everyone was waiting for an opportunity to be stupid.
Normally, he didn’t mind when fights broke out.
It allowed Whip to get out some of his own aggression.
He loved taking on assholes who thought they were Mike fucking Tyson or something.
Some badass fighter who couldn’t be taken down.
But he took them down, every time—and delighted in literally throwing their asses out the fucking door.
Tonight wouldn’t be the best night for it. Not with so many people packed in like they were. He was making money hand over fist, since the alcohol was flowing. If a ton of shit got broken during a huge brawl, that would eat into his profits.
Mentally shrugging, Whip did his best to push down his unease. If a fight broke out, a fight broke out. He couldn’t stop the inevitable, and at least if he knocked some heads together, it might take the edge off that persistent uneasy feeling that something big was coming.
He was standing behind the bar, having just come back from the storage area with more Moonshine.
Clyde, a local who disliked people almost as much as Whip, kept him stocked with the best of the homemade liquor the area had to offer.
And it was the hard stuff, not the frou-frou flavored shit the younger crowd seemed to enjoy.
No, this stuff burned going down and probably ate a hole in the drinker’s gut.
Which made it extremely popular, and Whip up-charged the shit out of it.
He made a tidy little profit off of Clyde’s moonshine, for sure.
The door opened, and by habit, Whip looked up to see who’d entered his bar—and immediately stiffened. The man who walked in seemed just like the other hundred or so men currently drinking and being rowdy all around him, except for one thing.
The woman at his side.
Whip couldn’t take his eyes off her.
She was petite. But not young. He could tell that at a glance. She had a look about her that screamed she’d had a tough life. Something he could recognize from a mile away. Her gaze was on the floor, not looking up even as she was jostled roughly by someone nearby.
Whip had the fantastical thought that the woman looked like a fucking fairy.
She had hair so blonde, it almost looked white.
It was loose around her shoulders and hid part of her face as she kept her head down.
She was tiny, probably only a few inches above five feet.
And slender. Almost to the point of being too skinny.
She wore a miniskirt that, even as Whip stared, she did her best to tug downward, as if she wasn’t comfortable with how much leg it displayed.
Her shirt was low cut as well, not that she had much up top to show off.
The woman also had on heels…shoes it seemed she wasn’t used to wearing, as she kind of wobbled as she walked.
But the asshole with her didn’t bother to steady her, even after she was jostled, as he made his way through the bar toward one of the pool tables. She trailed behind him without glancing around even once.
The odd feeling Whip had experienced all day increased tenfold.
The Cellar didn’t get a ton of women coming through its doors, and none who looked as out of place and uncomfortable as this one. He’d never seen the man with her before, wondered if they were passing through or new to town.
Now the man—he fit the look of Whip’s clientele to a T.
A redneck down to his very bones. Stained jeans with a distinctive worn circle on the back pocket, indicating an addiction to the cans of snuff tobacco he probably had stuffed between his cheek and gum even now.
A black T-shirt with words that Whip couldn’t read from where he was standing, but probably saying something offensive.
An unzipped camouflage jacket and, to top it all off, a dirty trucker baseball cap.
The newcomer used his chin to indicate a seat at a circular high-top table against the wall, near one of the pool tables, and the woman immediately walked over and pulled out one of the stools.
She climbed onto it and kept her gaze trained on the dirty tabletop in front of her.
There were several empty beer bottles on the surface that his servers hadn’t had time to clean up yet, and for some reason, that irritated Whip more than usual.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to turn his attention away from the newcomers. He had a bar to run and no time to stare at a woman…no matter how much she intrigued him.
Over the next hour, she didn’t move. She sat at that table as stiff as a board. The guy she’d come with drank nonstop and hadn’t once gone over to check on her. Didn’t make sure she had anything to drink. It pissed Whip off—but again, it wasn’t his business.
She looked as out of place in the bar as he would look if he decided to go to fucking Disney World.
She didn’t belong here, of that Whip was sure, but wasn’t as if he’d kick her out for not fitting the usual customer mold.
It also wasn’t as if she was being held prisoner; she could get up and leave anytime she wanted.
Except a part of him suspected he was wrong.
Sometimes the heaviest chains were invisible.
He knew that better than most. His own mother hadn’t left her abusive husband, had stayed even when her own flesh and blood was beaten to within an inch of his life in front of her.
Once an abuser got his claws into a partner, once he’d gotten into their head, it was extremely difficult for that person to leave.
Another thirty minutes went by, and it was more than obvious the man and his group of friends were hammered.
They were loud and obnoxious, and getting rowdier and rowdier by the second.
Whip looked at his watch. Damn. He still had another hour before it was time to close.
Fallport didn’t like that he stayed open until two in the morning, but the longer he was open, the more money he made.
The local cops had begun to hang out around his pool hall at closing time, trying to catch anyone stupid enough to drink and drive.
They’d nabbed plenty of people too, which Whip was just fine with.
He might be an antisocial asshole, but he didn’t want anyone to be killed because someone made a stupid-ass decision.
The next time he had a break and glanced over at the fairy woman, it seemed as if she was having a hard time staying awake.
His lips twitched at that. It was a first. Someone falling asleep in the middle of the noise, smoke, and general chaos that went on at his pool hall.
It wasn’t an atmosphere that was conducive to napping.
The smile on his face faded as a man who’d been drinking with the woman’s companion sauntered over to where she was sitting at the table. He sidled up next to her and put his hand on her upper thigh, leaning in close.
The woman immediately stiffened and tried to move her leg away, but the man’s fingers curled around the pale flesh of her leg and squeezed.
Whip was moving before he knew what he was doing. But the place was still crowded, and he knew he wasn’t going to make it to the corner before the shit hit the fan.
The trouble he’d sensed had arrived—and he was more than ready for it.
After watching the fairy all night, he somehow felt a connection with her. Even though she hadn’t once looked at him. Didn’t matter. The need to protect her was unshakable.
As Whip shoved his way toward the corner, he watched helplessly, furious at what went down at the table.
The man she’d arrived with looked over and saw his buddy standing in her personal space. He thrust his pool stick at one of the other men he’d been laughing and drinking with all night and rushed to the table.
At first, Whip assumed he’d start the fight he’d been expecting all night—but to his shock and outrage, instead of decking the asshole touching his woman, who obviously didn’t want to be touched, he reached around the guy and grabbed the fairy’s arm.
He yanked her off the chair and shook her. Hard.
He was yelling, but Whip couldn’t hear what he was saying. All he saw was the fear on the fairy’s face. Then he sealed his fate.
He threw the woman to the floor and kicked her.
She curled into a ball, trying to protect herself from his assault.
The friends who’d been drinking with the asshole didn’t do a goddamn thing. They just stood there, watching. Some with grins on their faces and, to their credit, others looking uncomfortable. But not one made a move to intervene.
That was fine. Because Whip was there.
“You’re a slut, Angelica! I’m right here, and you thought it was okay to seduce this fucker right in front of me?”
When her companion’s leg swung backward once more in preparation of kicking her again, Whip was there.
The man might’ve kicked her once, but he wouldn’t manage a second one.
His fist took the man by surprise, knocking him off his feet, and he went down hard.
Whip followed, straddling the guy and proceeding to beat the shit out of him. He kind of expected the man’s buddies to jump him at this point, but they continued to do nothing. Just watching as the man they’d been hanging with all night got his ass kicked.
When he was bloody and moaning on the floor, Whip stopped and stood, looking around for the man who’d touched the fairy. He was nowhere to be seen.
Huh. At least one of these fuckers had a brain cell.
Finally, Whip turned to the fairy, not knowing what to expect. Sometimes in situations like these, women tried to defend their abusers. Got upset when men got a little taste of what they liked to dish out.
Thankfully, the fairy wasn’t one of those women.