Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
D AKOTA
It’s a busy Friday night at the bar, and as happy as I am about it, the crush of college students pouring in to get Sinner’s Showers is starting to make the locals get antsy. I watch as some of my regulars scoot farther into the corner of the bar, scowling as another group of girls stumbles to one side of the dance floor.
I make a slicing motion across my throat at Hayley and Gemma from across the bar, nodding to the group of girls. We’ve got to start cutting people off sooner if they’re going to cause problems for my usual crowd. I want more business, but not at the expense of what’s always made this place a great little dive bar.
I look up, and another guy is hoisting his girlfriend in the air next to my red neon sign, the one that reads Bad Decisions/Good Nights on the wall, so they can take photos. I raise a brow at that still life before I’m taking another fifty dollars to prep a Sinner’s Shower.
“Waiver. Read it. Sign it.” I pass it across the table and check his eyes to make sure he’s sober enough to understand what he’s signing.
“Got it.” He nods.
He takes his time reading it and then signs it, snapping a photo with his phone when he thinks I’m not looking. I don’t like the looks of that. But maybe he’s just a record keeper. Someone who wants to make sure he has a copy of everything digitally somewhere. But in my experience, those types are usually litigious.
When I walk back over with the shot and the water, I line them up beside the paper he signed.
“ID?” I ask because two can play this game.
He frowns at me and hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “They ID’d me at the door.”
“I need to see if the signatures match,” I shout over the music and tap on the paper. I don’t usually check. I assume people are being forthcoming, and technically, people can sign a giant X instead of their name if they want to. But I just want extra information on this guy in case he turns out to be as slimy as I think he is.
He gives me an irritated look but reaches for his back pocket anyway. Instead of a wallet, he pulls out a police badge. I raise a brow at him.
“That’s not an ID,” I state the obvious.
“Your patrons can’t sign a waiver allowing you to hit them when they’re inebriated.”
“You’re not inebriated.”
“You assume, but you have no way of knowing for sure without testing.”
“Does anyone have that ability when they sign a document? Do you think all those doctor’s offices and government agencies do a sobriety check before people agree to sign on the line?” I argue.
“You serve alcohol. The burden is higher for you.”
“So what are you suggesting I do?” I don’t think this guy has answers. I think he just has a lot of bullshit complaints.
“That you stop serving these shots.”
“I’ll send that suggestion on to my lawyer.” I flash him a bright smile, one he doesn’t like, judging by the way his brows drop like a hammer.
“Ma’am, you could be credibly accused of assault.”
“Based on what? I haven’t heard a single person in here complain.” I feel my temper rising. “Should we ask them?”
“You’ll cease selling the shots immediately, or I’ll be forced to arrest you.”
“Again, based on what? I haven’t heard a single person in here object.” I jump up on the table of the bar and look around. “Anyone in here want to complain about their Sinner’s Shower? Worried that I gave them a love pat that was a little too much for their liking?” I yell out, and patrons start to turn around.
“Ma’am, get down off the bar,” the plainclothes cop yells to me from my knee level.
Hoots and hollers start to echo across the bar.
“It’s my bar. I’ve given myself permission to do so, and don’t worry, I’ve concluded I’m sufficiently sober.”
“You’re breaking health codes by standing on the bar.”
“I’ll wipe it down.”
“All right, ma’am.” He grabs my leg and jerks, nearly toppling me, and the crowd starts to surge toward us.
“Let her fucking go!” One guy shouts.
“Hey, man! Not cool.” Another admonishes .
“You heard her! It’s her bar!” They all start bellowing at him, but it doesn’t stop him from pulling on my leg.
“You’re under arrest, and if you don’t come down, I’ll add resisting arrest to your list of charges.”
“Let go of me!” I swat at his hand. “You’re hurting me! I’ll get down on my own.”
“Get off of her, you fucking asshole!” Hayley shoots down to my end of the bar and starts pointing at the cop.
Suddenly, the room is filled with them. Three more cops emerge out of nowhere and start threatening the crowd that’s getting rowdy on my behalf.
“Get down here, or you’re going to get more people arrested. I don’t think that’s what you want.”
“Everybody get the fuck out! Drinks down! Let’s go!” one of the other cops yells.
I start to slowly climb down from the top of the bar, but he grabs my ankle and yanks, which has me tumbling off the edge to the floor. The corner of the bar and the stool hit my leg, scraping me down my thigh, and my knees hit the hard wood of the floor.
“Holy shit!” I curse at the pain, rubbing each knee as I try to stand.
“Hey! Don’t treat her like that!” Gemma calls from behind the bar and gives me a sympathetic look.
“This is insane. You’re hurting her. I’m calling 911!” Hayley joins in the reprimand.
“I am 911,” The officer laughs at her.
“Don’t be a fucking pig! She didn’t do anything!” one of the guys the cop is ushering out yells just as he takes an open-palm shove to the chest and starts to trip backward.
I don’t have time to see if he falls because my own personal problem yanks me to my feet by jerking my upper arm and shoulder with zero care for the fact that I’ve just fallen. He won’t stop shoving me around either, and he pushes me into the bar as he twists my arms behind me. My yelps of pain don’t even slow him down.
The way the cops quickly usher everyone out has me suspicious. Like they were all just sitting around lying in wait to close me down. If it wasn’t the cops or recent history, I’d assume it was Grant trying to teach me a lesson. But he’d never involve the police, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let a strange man handle me like this.
So now I’m stuck wondering who would be harassing me like this. Morton’s and Cowboy’s, two other bars down the street, were jealous of the crowds I pulled some nights, but certainly not enough to go after me like this. I don’t have a lot of enemies. At least ones who would go to these lengths. At most, they’d sign me up for some catalogs and newsletters I didn’t want.
“Does it need to be so tight?” I grouch when my wrists feel like they’ve been crunched between the cuffs.
“Shut up, and let’s get out to the car so I can read you your rights.” He tugs on my arm and drags me toward him, shuffling us both across to the door.
I look back at Hayley, who has a helpless look on her face.
“What can I do?” she calls after me.
“Call Grant. Or Hazel if he doesn’t answer. Whoever you can get a hold of,” I call back to her.
As he walks me to the car and I watch the crowd flood out onto the streets, dispersing to other bars and back to their cars, I curse my luck. It would be the first night I start doing well again that creates a problem like this for me.
Two hours later, once I’ve been read my rights, driven across town, and booked into the local jail, I see a familiar face. Grant.
He’s furious. It’s written all over his face, and I’m not sure if I even want to get up and walk over to him. I’m not ready for a lecture about how I never should have done those shots, how he warned me, how he told me exactly what he knew the cops would tell me if I kept it up, or how I’ve made my bed and now I’ve got to lie in it. Mostly because I’ve already spent the last one hundred and twenty minutes doing just that, then trying not to cry over it, then lamenting that I’m dressed in shorts and a lace corset when the entire room is a freezing cold concrete box, and then restarting the cycle of self-loathing. I’m going to need to talk to my doctor about upping my antidepressant and anxiety meds whenever I manage to get out of here. Maybe find a new therapist. Because clearly, I’m fucking up left and right.
Tears start to form in my eyes when they buzz the door open for me, but Grant doesn’t say a word. He just stoically escorts me through the corridors and out the double doors to the parking lot where my truck is waiting. That’s when they nearly fall. I’m grateful to see Jesse’s old pickup. I just wish he was here.
If it wasn’t the middle of the night, I’d take it tearing down a backroad with the music turned up to a hundred while I screamed the words at the top of my lungs. I could use the escape. But I’m pretty sure that would just lead me right back here, and I’m in enough trouble already.
Grant opens the door when we get there and holds his hand out to help me climb into the passenger seat. The silence is killing me by the time he rounds the front of the car and gets in.
“Aren’t you going to say anything? Say I told you so?” I ask as I run my fingers along the edge of the worn door panel.
“The only thing I’m planning to do is put my lawyers on every single one of those fucking cops for the way they handled you. The way that fucker grabbed you off the bar; he’ll be lucky if I don’t fucking tear his throat out tonight myself.” His tone is low and lethal as he pulls out of the parking lot.
“Wait. Who told you what he did? Hayley?” I sniffle, trying not to let any tears fall. “I’m sorry she called you. I didn’t know who else to call besides you or Hazel.”
“She didn’t call me. My brother did.”
“Ramsey?”
“Levi.”
“Levi?” I feel like we’re beating around a bush here.
“Levi saw what happened and called me. I came as soon as I could, but they insisted on drawing every last damn step of your release out like it was a fucking ceremony.”
“How? He wasn’t at the bar. Are there videos? Did someone post them?” I’m so confused, and now I’m worried the bar will be at the center of a notorious social media scandal.
“I have cameras in the bar.” He says it nonchalantly, but it hits me like a ton of bricks.
“You have cameras in the bar?” I swivel myself to face him, and my jaw drops. I knew he took his role a little too seriously, but literally keeping an eye on me remotely was a bridge too far. Even as upset as I am about everything else, maybe worse for it.
“Yes, I have cameras in the bar.” He glances over at me like he’s clocking my reaction. “Don’t look at me like that. You wouldn’t get security, so I had to make sure someone was covering things.”
“Who is someone?”
“They’re wired to the main security room at the Avarice. My staff watches them.”
“Your staff watches me every day?”
“Every night, technically.”
“Oh my god! It is not the time for exacting language.” I huff in irritation.
“Before you get too far into your self-righteous indignation there, think for a moment about the fact that that footage is probably exactly what’s going to save you in this scenario. They can toss the body cam footage, take him at his word. But they can’t get rid of the recording we have.”
The man has a point. Not to mention I might still be sitting in the jail cell right now if it wasn’t for the footage. But I still wish he’d been transparent about it.
“You still could have told me.”
“So you could tamper with them or take them down? No, thank you.”
“I can run my business how I see fit.”
“When it’s well and truly yours, and I don’t own the building, then yes, you can. I’ll gladly step out of the way.”
“Fat chance of that happening when I can barely stay in the black and these fucking cops are running out my clientele on one of the busiest nights of the year so far. I’m going to have a reputation for bullshit cop raids, and everyone will go to Cowboy’s or the Avarice instead.” I stare out the window, watching the world roll past as he starts down the main road.
“I’ll take care of the cops.”
“They want me to drop the Sinner’s Showers. He basically said all the things you did. So, you can tell me you told me so. I’d like to get that part out of the way.”
“Seems like you’ve got those bases covered on your own. We’ll run everything by my lawyers and see what they say. And before you argue, I know you had a lawyer look at it, but mine are a different brand of lawyer, and they can help refine it until it’s impenetrable. They can also help us figure out how to tell these cops to go fuck themselves for the harassment. ”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you? That was no reason to arrest you. The whole thing—that many cops. Feels like a stunt. You have anyone pissed at you?”
“Not besides you, no.”
He half grunts and half laughs at that. Tilting his head as he takes the corner.
“Well, I didn’t raid your bar.”
“I know.”
“But it might be about me.” The words are as much a realization for him as they are a statement to me. “Fuck.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just some things are going on behind the scenes with the business. I’ll need to talk to some people.”
“If it involves me, shouldn’t I know about it?”
“If it does, yes. I’ll have to see what I can find out.”
“Where are we headed anyways?” My brows knit together as he takes another turn that doesn’t seem like we’re headed back to my apartment.
“Does Vendetta have enough food and water for the night?”
“Yes…” I trail off. I gave her extra before I started my shift since I figured it would be a later night than usual.
“Good. We’re heading to my place then.”
My heart and brain go to war with each other over that information. My heart is doing tumbles over itself with excitement that I finally get to see where this man lives. That he trusts me enough to let me in. But my brain is reminding me that I’m on the verge of a crash out, and I don’t want to have it in front of him. We’re still in the whole need-to-be-sexy phase of this. Well, it’s not even a relationship. It’s an agreement that’s on shaky ground since I didn’t even deliver on my side of the bargain today. But no matter the circumstances on that front, I definitely can’t be falling apart in front of this man.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m tired, and I’ll probably fall asleep the second I walk inside the door.”
He flashes me a sideways glance. “I’m not expecting anything if that’s what you’re worried about. You can go straight to bed if you want, and I have an extra bedroom if that would make you more comfortable.”
Maybe I could make that work. Hide from him long enough that he can’t see… but I doubt that. He’ll have eyes on me like a hawk. There’s probably a camera in every room of his apartment so he can make sure nothing he doesn’t know about is happening under his watch.
I think I need the crash out—the long self-pitying cry that I’ll now have an arrest on my record and possibly charges I’ll need to fight. My eyes start to well up again at the prospect of jail time or a large fine that will bankrupt me. As if I’m not nearly there already.
“No. I know you can be a gentleman. It’s just that…” My voice wavers, and I have to pause to continue. His eyes flash over to me again, and I can feel them like a heavy weight as he watches my reaction. He can hear it in my voice and see it in the way I rock back into the seat. “Honestly, I’ve been on the verge of tears for hours. I just didn’t want any of those assholes to see me cry. But I was planning to curl up at the bottom of my shower when I got home and cry until I was tired enough to sleep. I need to let it out, or I’m going to combust. I’m sure that sounds pathetic—”
“It doesn’t sound pathetic. If it makes you feel better, you can cry anywhere you want for as long as you want at my place. I just want to know you’re somewhere safe tonight. Make sure that they can’t give you a hard time again in the morning. Know you have someone to protect you. Give me that?” He glances over at me.
“You think they’ll come back?” Panic rises in my throat. One night I could handle, if this was going to be a multi-day event, well, I don’t know if I can hold tight that long.
“I don’t know. But I don’t want to risk it. Give me a chance to look into some things first, and then we’ll get you home, okay?”
“I’m sorry for dragging you out here in the middle of the night.” The tears start to roll down my cheeks, half relief and half exhaustion.
“You know as well as I do that we’re both up at these hours. It’s fine. More than fine. I’m just happy I could be there to get you.” He reaches over and gently places his hand on my thigh.
“Thank you.” I run my palm over the backs of his knuckles.
He pulls my hand up to his mouth and kisses it softly, keeping his eyes on the road, and then lets it fall to the center console, still squeezing tight. He drives the rest of the way like that, in the quiet of the night. Letting me have my peace while still making sure I know he’s there. Things like this are what are going to break me. The man might not be the best with words or with saying all the things I’d like to hear. But he does all the right things to show that he cares and always shows up when I need him the most.