Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Sabrina pulled the bottom sheet from the massage table with an exaggerated swoosh.
Only a few days into joining this group, and she had a growing roster of clients coming to see her.
As her reputation for medical massage rose, her bank account would too.
Her living expenses were minimal, and she could bank the majority of her pay and tips.
The commute wasn’t bad either, as Cicely allowed her to park her rig in the scrappy lot behind the storefront.
All she had to do was unlock the back door of the spa to get to the bathroom and mudroom, which was equipped with a shower—all the amenities she really needed for now.
The weather was getting colder, and even though she could still ride her bike, soon she would have to park it in the trailer and take the public transit system to wherever she needed to go besides work.
She clicked on the table warmer and stepped out to the front to wait for her next client. He was a new one, another older steel worker complaining of back, shoulder, and arm pain. Not uncommon for someone who makes a living working with their hands and body.
“Have fun with this one,” Stephan remarked with a snarky smile. “He’s real special.”
Stephan’s clients came to see him for relaxing Swedish massages, body wraps, facials, and gossip.
People who needed targeted deep tissue came to Sabrina’s table.
Not the same style or clientele, and yet the tiny man resented her presence all the same.
Still, it didn’t help her to aggravate a senior employee.
She could get her digs back in other ways.
“Thanks for the tip, Steph,” she said with an overly sweet smile. She knew the man hated having his name shortened and preferred to be called Stephan. Oh well!
His upper lip curled, and he gave her “the look” before turning to sashay away. All he needed was a finger snap to complete the act. Sabrina suppressed her amusement but stuck out her tongue at his receding back.
Her phone dinged with a new text. She slipped the device from her back pocket, intent on muting it for the upcoming session, but the sender caught her eye.
Dread bloomed in her stomach, and her heartbeat increased.
She debated ignoring the message until after work, but experience had taught her that he would just keep texting over and over again until she responded.
Her client hadn’t arrived yet, so she had some time.
Sabrina inhaled as deeply as she could through her nose and slowly blew out through pursed lips. She repeated the act twice, opening her diaphragm and keeping each cycle even. The relaxed breathing exercise helped, and she tapped open the message.
Rodrigo: I need you to sign some papers.
Her chest tightened back up, and she tried the exercise again. Didn’t help this time.
Sabrina: Why?
Rodrigo: Aunt Rosa is making noises about the inheritance shit.
She huffed at the words on the screen. Funerals could bring out the worst in families, and apparently, hers was no exception. The day of Ernie’s funeral, she and her brother had gotten into a huge fight. He ended up with the family behind him, and she was out on her own.
Sabrina: What does that have to do with me? You said to get the fuck out and not come back.
Rodrigo: I made a mistake.
Made a mistake, eh? Must have been a big one for you to break down and contact me.
Her stomach churned with several emotions. Mostly anxiety with a bit of righteousness, as she’d stated many times before she left Florida that there was more to be done for their father’s estate, but no one wanted to listen.
Sabrina: Send them to me via Google Docs and I’ll read them when I get a chance.
Rodrigo: I’m not sending shit over the internet. You gotta come here to do it.
Anger replaced her anxiety as her thumbs flew over the screen.
Sabrina: I don’t have to do squat for you. You need papers signed, you can bring them to me.
Rodrigo: You always were a fucking cunt.
Sabrina: And you were always a fucking asshole. I guess things haven’t changed much.
She closed the messaging app before she could read another text from him and powered down the phone.
Her hands shook from excess adrenaline, as they always did when dealing with her stepbrother.
The decades-long rivalry had ramped up to epic proportions after their father’s death. Apparently, that was still going on.
“Hey, Sabrina! Your client is here,” Stephan called back.
She took several more deep, healing breaths to regulate herself and get her focus back. It was damn near impossible, but she had a workday to get through.
The man lumbered in, tall and burly. He was slightly larger than a dad bod, but that didn’t matter, as he was clearly as strong as an ox. And he had a healthy ego to match if the smirk on his face was any indication. “Hello, little lady. I’m Frank. You think you can take me on?”
Sabrina ignored the innuendo. This wasn’t her first rodeo with ambitious men. “No prob. What are we working on today? Back and shoulders, right?”
“I’ll let you work on anything you want.”
Obvious much? She faked a big smile while cussing him under her breath. “You listed your back on the intake form, so let’s start there. I’ll step out for a minute while you get changed. Face down on the table. I’ll be right back.”
Sabrina exited, closed the door, and leaned back against the wall outside the room. Some female massage therapists only wanted to work on women. She understood why, as it was exhausting to deal with these types of men, but she was new in the area and needed to take whoever came to her room.
It’s temporary, girl. If you can handle those redneck dock workers in Sarasota, you can handle this guy.
But how temporary would it be? She was here to find answers, but so far, Scrap refused to do anything.
She had no family or friends, but then again, she had no one back in Florida either, except for Amelia.
Her limbo state had been annoying at first, but it was taking a real toll now.
It was hard to keep a positive outlook when everything around her had turned to shit.
Cam came to her mind, along with the tattoo on his back. The crossed hammers and the broken clock were simple, but the time it showed still held her curiosity. His chosen phrase also had some meaning to him: “Forget the past. Start over. Every day.”
It must have something to do with the scars she’d felt under her fingers that day.
Sabrina believed he’d been through some serious shit in his life to put that saying on his body.
She could definitely relate, and a part of her wanted to hear his story.
Perhaps he would share it with her one day.
So far, their encounters had been friendly and even a bit flirtatious on her side.
He was a good-looking man, and when he was on her table, she’d noticed his body’s reaction to her touch.
The boner he sported was impressive, but he didn’t try to mess with her over it.
He did the gentlemanly thing and ignored it until it subsided.
Even though he wore an Iron City Knights cut, he was in her corner.
Her instincts told her Frank wasn’t going to be that noble.
She shook her head to get back to the task at hand.
She rapped her knuckles against the door and entered when Frank called out.
It didn’t take her very long to see the man was totally naked under the blanket.
Sabrina gritted her teeth, but she did most of her work covered, so if this guy wanted to go commando, no harm. Yet.
“You can dig in as much as you want to. I’m a tough guy. You can’t hurt me,” Frank teased.
Wanna bet?
“Well, the goal isn’t to hurt you but to release any tension you have.” She used her most neutral voice, even though she could already see where this was going. As long as the dude stuck to a flirty vibe only and kept his hands to himself, she could handle him.
Of course, that was too much to ask.
She started mapping as she usually did, and as she moved around the table, she felt the brush of his hand against her hip.
Her jaw tightened as she tamped down on her urge to smack him.
Sometimes, people made touches by mistake.
This one she let go for the moment, just in case.
Men could talk a good game, but they typically failed at the follow-through.
Unfortunately, the would-be Romeo took her silence for acquiescence. This time, he flat-out stroked and then cupped her hip in his bowl-like hand.
Sabrina leaned over and planted an elbow in the spot near his spine, quickly hiding the smile that spread on her face when he yelped. “Too much pressure? Must be a bad trigger point.”
“Nope,” Frank ground out. “It’s fine. I can take it.”
Yeah, I bet you can.
“This is a really crunchy area. Let me know if it’s too much, okay?”
Sabrina felt his body flinch beneath her, but he did remove his hand from her hip.
An hour later, Frank was sweating and breathing hard, but all the knots in his shoulder and back were gone. He had tried twice more to put his hands on her as she worked, and both times, she’d found a trigger point that made him rethink those decisions.
“You’re a lot stronger than you look,” he remarked warily as she was about to leave the room so he could get dressed.
Sabrina put on her sticky-sugar Southern-belle smile and simpered at him. “Aw, it’s so sweet of you to say that!”
She paused to turn her phone back on before cleaning the room and changing the sheets on the table.
A dozen notification bells rang one after another.
She smirked as she guessed that most, if not all, of those texts came from her brother cursing her to hell and back.
She might check them later or simply delete them altogether.
He could either speak to her with a civil tongue or not at all.
Cicely came in as she was finishing up. Her mouth was in a deep frown, her sculpted brows narrowed. “That guy who just left—what did you do to him?”
Sabrina blinked. “Just a routine mapping and massage. Why?”
“He said you touched him inappropriately and he’s gonna leave a bad Yelp review.”
Anger flared up in her chest. “I did what? Absolutely not! That nutjob tried to feel me up!”
Cicely took a deep breath. “Are you sure he didn’t just, um, brush against you or something?”
Sabrina was shocked. Never had a supervisor or someone she worked with questioned her integrity like this. “I don’t know how you do things up here, but in Sarasota, when a man cups a woman’s hip, it’s usually considered deliberate.”
Cicely raised her chin and blew out a breath toward the ceiling, as if asking for guidance. “Okay, I won’t assign him to you again. But if I get another bad customer review naming you, I’ll have to let you go. Understand?”
Sabrina bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I get it.”
She finished cleaning and prepping the room for the next client, but her mind was elsewhere. Was this a sign that she needed to move on?
Rodrigo’s texts came back to her. There was nothing back in Florida for her either.
Perhaps it was time she gave up on Scrap and his refusal to take the test, loaded up her van, and left.
It wasn’t like she’d put roots down in this city that obviously didn’t want her.
The only person so far who seemed to have any welcome for her at all was Cam, and even that was still limited.
No family, no friends, and a workplace that was slowly turning toxic. Perhaps it was time to throw in the towel and move on. Surely there was a place for her somewhere.
A blast of heavy metal music came from her back pocket, and she pulled out her phone. Cam’s number flashed across the screen. With a sense of dread, she answered. “Hey, stranger. Weird that I was just thinking about you.”
“I hope you’re not with a client. I didn’t want to text this news, so I took a chance and called. Scrap collapsed during a meeting and is on his way to the hospital. Thought you should know.”
Sabrina’s heart stuttered as emotions warred inside her chest. She swung like a pendulum between serves the bastard right to please don’t die! “Where—” She stopped and swallowed the lump lodged in her throat. “Where is he?”
“West Penn.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she pressed a fist to her mouth to keep it still.
Thoughts full of anger, worry, justification, confusion, and fear circled in her mind like a merry-go-round, and she wanted to scream, cry, or both at the same time.
She swallowed the ball of emotions, leaving them sitting in her gut like a lump of iron ore. “Should… should I go there?”
“It’s up to you. No judgment from me.”
“I, um… I think I will. What’s the address?”
Cam’s voice calmed some of the chaos in her brain. “You’re at work, right? Got your helmet?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not far from the club. I’ll come get you, yeah?”
“You don’t have to—”
He interrupted her with a gentle but firm tone. “I don’t have to do a damn thing, but I’m going to. Stay put. I’ll be right there.”