Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
PIGGY
ONE MONTH LATER
I can’t make myself go back inside the club. I don’t want to see her, but I can’t stay away from her. So every night I’m not on duty, I’m here, watching. It’s a wonder the bouncers haven’t caught on to me being a weirdo lurker. They do suck balls at their jobs, so it shouldn’t surprise me.
When the club closes, the bouncers head to their cars, leaving the women to fend for themselves. At least the owner stays behind as they lock up. Although I’m not sure how much good he would do in an ambush situation.
The women filter to their cars, some of them in twos, all chatting with one another, except for one dark redhead, who isn’t speaking to anyone. She’s walking straight to her white Mercedes coupe.
She folds into her car, then the engine starts, and the lights turn on. I think about just watching her drive away, but something begs me to follow. She pulls out of the parking lot, and that’s when I shift to Drive and follow her.
I didn’t bring my bike, knowing she might recognize me if I did. Plus, you can’t really follow someone incognito when you’re on a loud-as-fuck bike. So, I’m a little less obvious in my black lifted Ford F-150, but only slightly.
Her car moves down the streets of Raleigh. It’s not deserted, but there isn’t much traffic, a rare sight for Raleigh at any time of day or night. Keeping a safe following distance, I watch her car until she pulls into the parking garage of a very nice apartment complex.
I can’t imagine what the rent would be here a month. It’s fancy, about a million steps up from her childhood home and the little shitbox we lived in together. I could have afforded better, and I should have, for her.
My life was the club and only the club. I lived down there more than I did at the apartment. It was a place to hold my uniforms for the police department and to put down on my paperwork as my primary residence, nothing else.
But it wasn’t good enough for Millie. I knew it then, yet I did nothing to change it. Another way that showed my immaturity. If I stacked up all the ways in which I was immature, they would topple over.
Which is bullshit.
I shouldn’t have been.
I was old enough to know better. Old enough to be a man, but I wasn’t. I was playing at being a man while I was behaving like a boy. Looking back, I can see what a fucking fool I was. I can’t fix it. I can’t change it, but I can see her from a distance and know that she is safe.
And happy.
I need to know that she’s happy.
There is a lot that I regret about us, about the way I treated her and the fact that I let her walk away without so much as lifting my pinkie finger to fight for her, but I don’t regret falling for her.
I watch as she unfolds from the front seat of her car. Like this, in her matching sweatpants and hoodie, she doesn’t look like the siren who danced on stage, making every single man in the audience wish for just one look from her golden eyes.
But what I wouldn’t give for just one look from those eyes of hers right now. If she senses me watching her, she doesn’t show it. She moves toward the staircase, opens the door, and then she’s gone.
It wouldn’t take much for me to find out which apartment is hers, and it would take even less effort for me to get inside the building and to her apartment. I’m not sure I need to do that yet, or ever.
This obsession will pass.
It’s only because she’s back from wherever she ran, and I’m curious. I don’t know where she went, and I don’t know why she’s back. There’s a reason behind her reemergence. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think she’s here because she missed North Carolina.
And she’s definitely not here because she missed me.
I stay at her apartment building longer than I should. When the sun begins to rise, I decide to head back home, an actual home instead of a shitbox. Shifting the pickup truck into Reverse, I back out and head back to the mountains, where I belong.
I’m only a few miles out of town when my phone rings. I’m surprised to be getting a call at this hour, so I touch the answer button on the truck’s screen. It’s Bullet, which is odd as fuck, because I can’t imagine he’d be anywhere but his bed at this hour.
“What’s up?” I ask as my greeting.
“Are you driving?”
“Coming back from Raleigh.”
There’s no reason for me to lie, though I have omitted the fact that I saw her. That Millie is back, because I’m not sure she is indeed back. She’s in North Carolina, but she’s not back. I’m not sure what I want from her, if anything. So I haven’t made her presence known… yet.
“Interesting. I got a call from the owner of the strip club. They got a problem.”
“Do they?” I ask, feigning innocence or maybe ignorance.
He clears his throat before he continues. “They got some guy casing the place. The bouncers are fucking useless, just like we said they would be.”
Fuck.
It’s me.
“And what did you say?” I ask.
“We can’t be part of them, not if we want to separate ourselves,” he murmurs.
“But we haven’t come up with another stream of revenue.”
I’m pointing out the obvious, I know I am, but it’s the truth. For all our brainstorming, we haven’t come up with anything else. I’m wondering if closing the surveillance business wasn’t a mistake, but what’s done is done. Just like Millie and me…
MILLIE
A black truck followed me home from the club tonight. I don’t know who was driving or why they followed me, but they did. Something about it didn’t scare me the way it should have.
It’s not the first time I’ve been followed home from work, been watched, been stalked.
But it is the first time I wanted the person to get out of the car and show themselves.
Whoever it was kept their distance enough that, if the roads had been busier, I would never have known it was even happening.
It felt more like a curiosity than a stalking situation.
I guess when you’ve been in this predicament more than once, you get a feeling for who is watching you.
And I’m watched all the time. I know who a predator is and who is simply curious.
It’s just a gut feeling, and it’s not one I can turn off.
There was a connection there, and I can’t help but wonder if it was him.
If it was Axton.
I still think it was him in the club a month ago.
I haven’t been able to get him out of my head since that night.
Not that I’ve been able to get him out of my head for the past decade, either.
But he’s in the forefront of my mind now, day in and day out.
I search him out in the audience every single night to no avail.
And just when I think it can’t possibly be him, that he doesn’t even know I’m here or would even care if he did, I get that feeling again.
Like tonight with the truck.
Could it have been Axton?
Stripping out of my sweats, I start my shower and wait for the water to warm up as I look at my reflection in the mirror. I don’t take in my naked body. I’ve seen enough of that for the evening.
Instead, I look at my face as it reflects back to me. I’m covered in the thick makeup from work. I hate it. I hate the way it makes me feel when I see myself, when I really look. It’s a mask.
Though it helps me do my job, it’s not me. And when I’m alone like this, when I really take in my reflection and appearance, I hate it. All of it. Tomorrow, I will wake up and feel different, but right now, I hate it.
I’m not ashamed of my career. In fact, I’m the exact opposite. I have worked very hard to become one of the best dancers out there. Men and women came from all over to see me perform in Vegas.
Maybe it’s the place that makes me hate my reflection so much. I’m not in Vegas anymore. I’m not raised on that pedestal. I’m not around the friends and family I made there. I’m here, in North Carolina, so close to home and yet so far away.
I’m here, and it’s not really by choice. It’s by necessity. Perhaps that’s what I hate, not the actual makeup or mask itself. I think that could tell me more of what I’m feeling right now, and I’m just hyperfixating on the makeup itself.
After removing my makeup as the water continues to warm, I flick my gaze to the mirror again, this time seeing my fresh face and smile. Better. But still very much not my old self. I wonder if she’s gone.
I lost myself once before when I went to Vegas. I transformed who I was, and maybe that’s what’s happening again—a transformation. The job is the same, but I’m not the same as I was a few months ago.
I’ve changed.
And that makes me feel very uncomfortable in my own skin. I just don’t know how to fix it. It’s not going to happen tonight, though. What is going to happen is me taking a shower and then going to bed to sleep for a minimum of ten hours, maybe more if I can.