Chapter 11 #3
“Call him then,” he says. “Ask him.” Dammit. He wasn’t supposed to call my bluff.
“I’m not asking him, but I am going to tell him that you’re trying to boss me around.”
“Good, maybe I’ll get a bonus.”
“Great. Just great.” I want to stomp my feet.
Instead, I look at my phone and notice that I have not one, not two, but three messages from Cavin.
I tap on the first one.
Cavin
Am I still blocked? Or do you actually see this now? You brat.
The second:
Cavin
I’m sending three of my men to watch over you.
The third:
Cavin
Put on your location tracker so that I can watch you.
I type back quickly:
Number one: You’re not blocked. Number two: I’m well aware that you sent your goons round to watch over me. Number three: Fuck off.
I toss my phone in my bag and take Bridget by the hand. “Let’s go.”
She wobbles a little, and one of the guards steps in as if to catch her, but she quickly steadies herself.
“I’m fine,” she says with a forced smile.
When we enter, I don’t understand why he protested so much.
This just looks like a normal pub. There’s a match on the telly—hurling, maybe, or football—playing on a massive screen.
Glasses line the bar, bottles gleaming in the low light, and couples sit at round tables nursing their pints.
It’s actually quite nice in here, cozy even, though dimly lit.
Nothing sinister about it at all.
It isn’t until my second round of soda water that I see someone questionably dressed walk past me.
“Is that… latex?” Bridget whispers, staring at the girl’s black skirt. “It’s an interesting clothing choice, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” I say, and I watch as she walks to the back of the room, whispers something to someone, and they take her down a little corridor to a separate elevator.
She doesn’t come back.
“Where’d she go?” I say to Bridget. “That’s odd.”
Bridget gasps, covering her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh my god. Oh my god!”
“What?” I whisper, alarmed, my heart racing.
“I know why he didn’t want us to go in here,” she says quietly.
“Well, care to fill me in?” I ask, shaking my head. “I’d like to know.”
“Erin. This is the secret entrance to The Craic.”
“Oh, right.” I roll my eyes. “Cavin’s little dungeon.”
“Little dungeon!” Bridget giggles. “What are you talking about, Erin? You talk as if you know all about it.”
“That was the whole thing, wasn’t it? The McCarthys and The Craic. They own this little club. Everybody in Ballyhock worships the fucking ground they walk on because of the damn place.”
“Oh god,” Bridget says. “I forgot about that.” She grins. “We have to find a way in.”
“We?” I shake my head. “Oh no, little sister. There’s no fucking way I’m taking my baby sister into a kink club. That’d be the most irresponsible thing I could possibly do.”
“Oh, for once in your life, Erin!” Bridget says, shaking her head in exasperation. “Do something irresponsible.”
I stare at her in surprise.
Her voice is passionate, raw. And there’s a tone in it that I haven’t heard in a while—something that arrests my attention immediately, making my chest tighten.
“I’m dying, Erin. Nobody wants to say it out loud. Nobody wants to admit it.” She points to herself, her hand trembling slightly. “But I’m dying. And I don’t want to die a virgin.”
I don’t want to tell her that I don’t understand what she’s talking about because I would happily die a virgin. Sex has never been the prize for me that it seems to be for everyone else.
And my little sister is not losing her virginity in a club.
“First of all, you have a life-threatening disease,” I say pragmatically, falling back on logic because it’s safer than emotion.
“You’re only dying if we don’t treat it.
And we’re working on that. We’re going to find a way to treat it.
I promise you. You know I don’t promise anything lightly, Bridget. ”
“I know.” She says it so softly I almost don’t hear her.
“But what if we don’t? What if I don’t?” Her voice cracks.
“I want to… I want someone to hold me. I want to be excited around a man. I want to…” She sniffs, swiping at her eyes before the tears can fall.
“I want to feel like a woman. Not a girl. I want to feel like a woman, Erin.”
She swipes at her eyes again, and even with tears threatening to spill, she’s beautiful. My god, she’s gorgeous.
I blow out a breath, defeated before I’ve even begun to fight. “You exasperating, beautiful woman.” I shake my head at her. “Are you seriously trying to convince me to bring you to a sex club? Me?”
She taps her chin thoughtfully, a mischievous glint returning to her eyes. “I might be able to get you one of those cards that gets us in…”
“Bridget!”
She’s laughing now, and god, it’s good to hear.
“Well, I can’t just take you in anyway, even if I did want to—which I definitely don’t.” I cross my arms. “You have to know how to get in. You need to know the code. There’s like a secret handshake or something.”
She rolls her eyes at me dramatically. “Well, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Codes. Patterns. Pattern recognition. You’ve never met a password you couldn’t crack. You know that.”
She’s not wrong, but I blow out another breath. “We’re not dressed for it.”
She winks at me, victorious. “That’s easy. I know what you have on under that sweater. And I know what I do too. Anyway, don’t we have, like, bags of new clothes?”
We do. This is true.
“Oh, Bridget.” I groan, rubbing my face. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Take me in?” Her grin is absolutely wicked.
“Okay, calm down.” I sigh. “Great. So… we have outfits we can change into, but that doesn’t solve the actual problem of getting in.”
“Alright.” Bridget leans forward, and there’s a spark in her eye—that old fire I haven’t seen in so long—and it excites me and makes my heart kick against my ribs. I want to give her anything that she wants right now. Anything at all.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“I think I’ve seen a couple of people come in here that look like they’re definitely heading to the club,” she says quietly, conspiratorially.
“I’m thinking we head to the back of this bar, order another drink, and then we monitor everything.
Just very casually look around and observe.
And then, you know, maybe you work your magic and figure out how to get us in there. ”
“Oh, fine,” I say quietly.
She grins at me—hopeful, alive, vibrant.
“Really?” Her eyes are shining now.
I look at my baby sister, at the determination written across her face, at the desperate need to feel something beyond the fear and the pain and the waiting.
“Alright. I’ll figure it out.” I blow out a breath. “Let’s go.”