Chapter 31 Kaian
Kaian
Quinn turns into the parking lot under the familiar, flashing The Glory Hole sign.
In the few days since Kaian had thought he might try his luck to win enough to eat, no one had bothered to change the bulbs, and it still read The Hole—for how much longer was anyone’s guess, as the bulbs behind the “L” weren’t long for this world.
He pulls around the side, setting the old car into park and turning off the engine. The thirty-minute drive from the safe house had been tense, both caught up in their thoughts.
For Kaian, it had been about how he was going to catch a bus on the measly twenty-nine bucks in his wallet.
His financial situation hasn’t changed since he met Quinn, in that way at least. Everything else, though?
Life-altering. The thought of getting out of this car and walking into the dawn makes his belly churn as it had when he’d followed him out of the silent house earlier.
“Why are we here?” Kaian finally asks when Quinn makes no move to open the car door.
There’s an entrance set into the brick building to Quinn’s left that says STAF, with the other F faded away entirely.
The streetlights didn’t reach this far from the road, and the weak yellow bulb had seen better days, much like the rest of The Hole’s facade.
It didn’t seem like the kind of place Connall would run, let alone run into the ground, but maybe Kaian didn’t know him as well as he liked to think.
“I gotta pick up my last pay. Then—” he breaks off like he’s not sure what’s next. He doesn’t move to open the door, just squeezes the steering wheel until it creaks. “I don’t want to bring you inside, but I don’t want to leave you alone out here, either.” The words come out fast.
“You could just drop me at that diner on Baker. I’m going to have to work a few days before I can get enough together to go somewhere else.” He hopes Oscar’s offer of a job washing dishes is still open, even after he hadn’t shown up.
Quinn grits his teeth. “I’ll buy you breakfast after this shit, and we can talk.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Why is this so fucking hard? Ugh. Don’t answer that. I know why.”
“You just don’t like it,” Kaian mutters. And wonders if it means he doesn’t like him. “Look, don’t get bent out of shape. I can take care of myself. I’ll just get out of your hair.” He’s got his hand on the doorknob, but it’s not a sticky lock that stops him. It’s Quinn’s hand around his arm.
“No, come on. I want to make sure you have food and a ticket to wherever you want to go.”
Kaian doesn’t tell him that this is where he wants to be, but they both know it’s not where he should be.
The words remind him that he doesn’t even have an inkling about where he’s headed.
Maybe once he does, he can get this anxious dread to quiet down.
His coin is hot in his palm when he pulls it out of his jacket pocket, even though the air in the car is cool.
The lunar moth etched into the coin catches the thin yellow light. Something flutters past the windshield a heartbeat later, and he looks up to find its living twin trembling against the glass.
“I’m not sure where I’m going yet.” He tosses the coin, lets it drop into his palm without looking.
“You flip a coin? That’s how you decide where you’ll end up? That’s fucking crazy.”
“Not all of us have somewhere to go, so it doesn’t matter where we end up.” Even after only these three days, he’ll always have somewhere he wants to be.“ Maybe it’s time for Kansas City or Seattle.”
With the words, he tosses the coin in the air, catching it in his palm. When it lands, the coin doesn’t lie flat. It balances, on its edge, both the fire and the moth spinning around and around.
“Holy shit,” Quinn whispers the words. “Are you doing that?”
No, that was the point. He wants badly to pull on The Plain, even though he knows he can’t see his destiny. There would be comfort in it flowing through him. He tamps down the urge, forcing the eager flow back behind his barriers.
“Clearwater?” He says, but still the coin stays spinning. He can’t get farther than the continental US without a passport, or some serious planning to get around that. Maybe he could get a ride into Canada in the back of a semi-truck. “Calgary?” Nothing.
“Fucking Fate,” Quinn says with disgust.
It is Fate, and it wouldn’t be the first time Kaian railed against it. But right now, when he needs to be anywhere else but here, it’s more than just inconvenient when They leave him hanging. “Maybe I’ll stay in Nashville—” The coin stops spinning and lands with the lunar moth side up. Dammit.
There’s a beat of silence before Quinn murmurs, “You could ignore it.”
“I could.” He’s not done that since he’d nearly ended up in the back of a black van in Honolulu fifteen years ago.
“But you won’t. Fucking hell.” Quinn slams his hand on the steering wheel. “Let’s get my money and eat. Come on.” He climbs out of the car, slipping his bag over his shoulder, and Kaian joins him under the single bulb.
Even though the coin had wanted him to stay, Kaian feels a cold brush of anxiety on the back of his neck. “Anything I should know?”
He leans in close, nose under Kaian’s chin.
“My boss, Jewel, is a bottom feeder. She probably knows we’re here already.
Don’t let her get a rise out of you, okay?
And just…could you try to be less—fucking irresistible?
She’d love to get her hooks into you.” He runs a hand over Kaian’s head and uses his thumb to pull his lower lip down.
“What am I thinking? Get back in the car, I’ll just lock the doors. ”
That idea definitely doesn’t feel good, and that icy finger becomes a deluge of frigid water down his spine. “I think we need to stick together.”
Quinn hesitates, and Kaian thinks he might push, but in the end, he places a hard kiss on Kaian’s mouth.
It devolves into something hungry, all tongues and spit, and Kaian is so hard there isn’t any blood left in his brain to worry about anything but whether Quinn will fuck him over the hood of the car.
With a last press of his lips, Quinn stares into his eyes as if he’s memorizing every pore and freckle. “Stay close.”
He pulls open the door. It’s eerily quiet in a pitch-black hall that heads off to the right. Quinn heads in that direction before pushing open another door marked Club.
“Has everyone gone home? How do you know Jewel is still here?”
“Kenny and Lou are probably here trying to make this dump less of a biohazard until they give up and go home around noon. Maybe they’re in the can.
Jewel’s office is this way.” He heads across a wide open space with chairs and small tables in clusters around the two main stages.
There are four narrow cages spaced around the cavernous space, like mini jail cells.
“That’s my gig.” Quinn points to one far enough away from the main stage that he wouldn’t get sweated on, but he can still see the bar and is closest to the backstage door. “Can’t say I’m going to miss this place.”
“Did you have any friends?” Kaian can’t help the wistfulness in his voice.
“Nah. I mean, there are a few cool dancers and a bartender I liked, but friends aren’t my thing. I don’t like to get too attached, you know?”
Yeah, Kaian knew exactly.
“It’s back here.”
Quinn doesn’t head for the stage side. He angles for the south wall, straight toward the bar.
He slips behind it without hesitation, pushing through a swinging door into another dark hallway. There’s a half-open door to their left, and that dread he’d felt outside peaks.
“Wait—” Kaian gets out a second too late, Quinn is pushing the door open like he owns the place.
“Come in, why don’t you?” The voice is gravelly, like the occupant has been smoking nonstop since they left the cradle.
Kaian follows him into a cramped office that looks nothing like the rest of the club.
The lighting is brighter, a desk lamp casting a yellow pool over stacks of paperwork, receipts, and a laptop pushed half off the edge of a scarred desk.
A metal filing cabinet leans against one wall.
A security monitor glows on another, cycling through grainy black-and-white views of the empty club floor and the parking lot behind the club.
Connall’s white Mustang sits in the ghostly glow of that single bulb.
Behind the desk sits a middle-aged blonde woman in a vinyl chair that squeaks when she shifts. Jewel.
Her heels are kicked off under the desk, chipped red nails tapping lazily on the wood while she scrolls through something on her phone. Her greying blonde hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, with the coarse ends trailing over a narrow, bony shoulder.
When she looks up, the smile she gives Quinn is slow and mean, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment.
“Well, well,” she says. “Look what crawled back.”
Quinn leans one shoulder against the doorframe like he has all the time in the world. “Relax. I’m here to give my notice. I’m done dancing for you.”
“Shame.” Her eyes slide down him with open appraisal before flicking past him to Kaian. The look changes immediately, sharp with interest. “You bringing me an apology gift now, Quinn? I might forgive you. Or is it that you’ve started recruiting?”
Quinn’s jaw ticks, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. “I’m here for my last pay.”
Vinyl creaks as she leans back in her chair. Up close, Kaian can see the office is crowded with little things that look expensive but cheap at the same time—gold pens, fake marble paperweights, and an ashtray overflowing with red lipstick on the butts.
“Oh, honey.” She tilts her head. “You were a no-show last night. That’s not how I run payroll.”
Quinn’s muscles clench, but Kaian isn’t sure if Jewel notices. “Funny,” he says. “You didn’t seem worried about procedure when I was making you money.”
Jewel’s attention drifts back to Kaian, eager now. Kaian feels her gaze like a physical touch, like someone walking over his grave, and he shivers.