Chapter 3
June
I noticed something move behind the curtain. They were fighting, and Ethan Austin was about to catch them red-handed.
Before he could bolt in their direction, I took off my hoodie and stood in front of him in my bra.
“So? Can you put some music on?” I asked, trembling, hoping it would muffle the noise Will and James were making.
Austin looked around suspiciously one more time, but the scene in front of him seemed to pique his interest.
“What song? Do you really think you have to dance for me?” He sneered in such a slimy way that it made me want to hide in a corner.
Instead, I held the hoodie tight around my chest to cover my breasts. But when Austin sat back down on the couch and stretched his legs out, I understood that I didn’t really have another choice.
“Come on, I’m joking.”
James was right, it really did look like it was going to end badly.
“Full disclosure, I’ve never—”
“You don’t have to be a particularly good dancer.
Move.” I struggled to continue. I had to hold back a groan of fear while he put music on.
After a while, a song I didn’t know came on the speaker, but I didn’t move an inch.
I stayed glued to the pole. The cold metal against my bare back made me shiver.
I thought about my mom and the fact that I’d have my English test tomorrow. Shouldn’t I be at school instead of what I was doing here?
I let my hair loose just to hide my face.
The last thing I saw before starting to move was Austin’s smug face as he licked his lips, both hands on his knees.
I threw the hoodie onto the floor, took two steps, and moved my hips a bit, then turned around with the only goal of not looking at him in the eye.
Without even the slightest hesitation, I threw my head back and forth, maybe because of the beer.
I didn’t cling to the pole or make any winding moves.
I was probably the clumsiest person he’d ever seen in his life.
At a certain point, I finished what I was doing and froze.
He turned the music down. “Well, there’s only one criteria, and you exceeded it with flying colors,” he remarked, pointing at the crotch of his pants.
I quickly grabbed hoodie as my eyes widened in horror. “What?”
When the music stopped, I breathed such a heavy sigh of relief that I felt my lungs completely empty out.
But this time, it was really impossible not to hear them, though the thuds that were so close to us now sounded increasingly distant.
Austin stood up and rushed toward the cloth behind him.
I couldn’t breathe again. My heart almost skipped a beat as he lifted the fabric up.
Nobody was there anymore. My phone vibrated in my jeans.
William: Get out
I threw my hoodie back on and got another text from James.
Hunter: Now. Before we drive through the place and break it open
“I should go now.”
“So you’ll think about it?” Before I could get to the door, Austin took wider steps and blocked me from leaving.
“Yeah. But I gotta go now.”
He stared at me, puzzled.
“It’s really weird that you came here out of the blue, in the middle of the day.” It seemed too good to be true. “How old are you? Don’t you have school?”
“Yeah, but I told you, my mom lost her job.”
Austin yanked me hard, making me bounce off his chest.
“You look like you go to that school for those bratty little rich kids. You don’t need money, do you?”
Oh no.
“I actually do.”
He got in my face. He reeked of alcohol so badly that I held my breath.
“If I find out that asshole Hunter’s behind this . . .”
I didn’t have the guts to look him in the eye.
“First I’ll kill him, then I’ll come take you from your home.”
“What? What the hell are you—”
“While you’re sound asleep in your bed.”
When he finally let go of my arm to go back to his office, I stood there, frozen against the door, terrified.
My phone started vibrating like crazy, reminding me that I had to bolt. I ran to the main entrance and jumped into James’s car and we sped off from that nightmare.
I curled up on the back seat, shaking and upset. But nobody seemed to be paying attention to me.
“What the fuck’s gotten into you, James?”
I jumped. Will had just raised his voice, and I’d never seen him so angry.
“That was our chance! We could’ve taken the safety deposit box when the music was blasting, and you just stood their gawking like a dumbass!”
“It was too heavy. The safe was too heavy.”
“No, you stopped! What the fuck were you looking at?”
James shot me a look in the rearview mirror.
“Nothing. Everything okay back there?”
“Yeah.”
“James, are you listening to me? We could’ve gotten it!”
“Will, we couldn’t’ve dragged it by ourselves. Think about it—it weighed a ton.”
But William wasn’t thinking at all. “That’s not true. That’s bullshit. We could’ve done it, we were almost there. Should we try again tomorrow?”
James and I looked at each other in the rearview mirror.
“Okay, Will, we better get home. What do you say?” I tried to reassure him by putting my hand on his shoulder. He seemed upset.
“Fuck, we almost had it!”
“We’ll try again. Now calm down,” said James with an icy stare.
We stayed silent for a few moments, until I spoke up. “I think Austin threatened me.”
James ran his hand through his hair. “Just what we need.”
“He said that if he finds out you were behind all this—”
My chin started to tremble, and my breath escaped me every time I tried to breathe in.
“What the fuck did he do to you?”
James’s question was so abrupt that I shut my mouth. At that point even William turned around to look at me curiously.
“June, what did he do?”
“Nothing. He didn’t do anything to me, but when he threatened me, well, I was scared. He can’t find out where I live, can he?”
“Oh fuck. Maybe he figured it out.” I saw William cover his mouth.
“You’re never setting foot in there again. You don’t know what he’s capable of,” James said, a hint of rage in his voice.
Will seemed to stop reacting. From the way he put his head against the seat, I got the sense that he was tired. And when we got to his house, I noticed that it was hard for him to even concentrate while we were talking.
“I didn’t want you to get scared. I thought it would be easier, June.”
“Don’t worry about it. Get some rest. I’m going home.”
He came closer to me, and we exchanged a kiss so light that I almost didn’t feel it.
“I’ll call you when I’m up, okay?”
“See you later, Will.”
I counted his slow-moving steps away from me while James came back in workout clothes.
“Shouldn’t you be getting home, White?”
I nodded while James took some boxing hand wraps and unrolled them. He took a few moments to look at me, and I couldn’t help but do the same with him. His brown hair had lighter flecks when he wasn’t using gel, and his slightly bronzed cheeks had turned red with the temperature jumps.
I saw him freeze, holding a black band suspended for a brief moment.
“Did that asshole touch you?”
The unexpected question chilled me. I shook my head. He expected that, so he went back to wrapping his hand, and his lips turned up in a smile.
“Um, but you lied to your mom, you slept with me, you cut class, you did a lap dance . . .”
“What do you know about it, Hunter?”
“Do you think I didn’t catch you moving your ass on a pole?” he taunted derisively.
“Stop it,” I murmured, lowering my gaze.
“Stop what, White?”
I was caught up in his movements. Even the most banal gestures like wrapping his hand with a bandage drew me in.
“Quit acting like that around me. It’s not cool.”
“What’d I do? Although I was dying to be that pole.” His giggle was more than explicit. He was messing with me. Like he always did.
“James!”
On the surface it looked like I was angry at him, when I was really angry at myself. I didn’t budge, not even when he took off his T-shirt.
“Suit yourself, Snow White.” James shrugged nonchalantly and started winding the wrap around his other hand.
“I’m going home.”
His blue eyes darted.
“I can—”
“No, I have my bike.”
James suddenly came up to me, an inch away from my face. He does that with everyone, June. I held his gaze steadily just so I wouldn’t be distracted by his perfect body.
“What are you waiting for?” he whispered, sending a chill down my spine.
Something invisible froze me, something strong between us, and I wondered if he felt it too.
I should’ve used double my usual strength to acquiesce to what my brain was saying, because my body didn’t want to listen to it.
I got up on my tiptoes and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek.
The contact with his warm skin made me shiver, while his all-too-familiar scent dug a hole in my stomach. I watched him bite his lower lip.
“You were great.”
For a few moments, I caught a glimpse of peace in his chronically agitated gaze.
His narrowed eyes relaxed and traveled down to stare at my mouth. I turned around so he wouldn’t see my cheeks turn every color of the rainbow.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“And I’m not talking about that R-rated dance, but the fact that you took that kind of risk for Will. You did something important for him. It was stupid, but it was meaningful.”
“It’s not like that, James.”
“What do you mean?”
I turned around to look at him.
“I did it for both of you.”
>> <<
My mom interrogated me like crazy to figure out where I’d been the night before.
I could barely manage to convince her that I was at Amelia’s, and that I needed to talk to someone because what she told me freaked me out. She pretended to fall for it, but I already knew that she wouldn’t let me go out that night even if someone tortured her.
“Come on, we haven’t seen each other in forever!”
It was nine p.m., and I was still on a video call with Amelia and Poppy. I was stunned when Ari joined us. I was under the impression that Amelia had been keeping her distance from Ari after she and Brian broke up, but it seemed I was wrong.