Jay Crownover - Better When He’s Bad

Bax seemed more keyed up than normal. He didn’t have the hood of his sweatshirt up around his face and his eyes kept bouncing around the room and then back to me. The place didn’t look so much like a trashy strip club tonight as it did a trashy casino. There were tables and dealers, and the girls who typically danced on the stage were walking around in itty-bitty outfits, handing out drinks and sitting on the laps of old men while the scent of dirty money and choking smoke from cigars filled my lungs. I felt Bax tense from where I was plastered against his side and he bent down so that his lips were practically touching my ear.

“Okay, see the guy in the gray polo shirt?”

I scanned the crowd. They all looked like bankers and golfers, guys who were out cheating on their wives. I pinpointed the guy Bax was asking about and gave my head a little nod.

“Do you recognize him?”

Why he thought I would recognize the guy confused me, so I opened my mouth to ask him what was going on when the older man suddenly lifted his head like he could feel me staring at him. I felt like the very ground under my feet slipped away. I had never seen him before, didn’t know him from Adam, but I saw those eyes in the mirror every morning when I got up. He looked a lot like Race and clearly he was where my dark green eyes came from. But he was a stranger.

“Lord Hartman.”

It wasn’t a question and I saw a grim line flatten the older man’s mouth when he caught sight of who I was with. I stiffened up and went to pull away from Bax, but his hand tightened on my spine and his dark eyes pinned me in place.

“Don’t.”

“What do you want with him? Why did you want him to see us together?”

I was mad. I didn’t want him to use me. I wanted whatever was going on between us to be more than that. I was fooling myself. Now I understood why he had been so willing to let me come with him on this excursion tonight.

“Stop. He’s the one Race was asking about. Somehow he’s tied into Race’s disappearance and my trip to the joint. I wanted him to see that even with Race gone, someone has your back.”

“Why?”

“Because that rich asshole wanted you gone.”

I jerked away from him and moved so we were face-to-face. I felt all the blood bleed out of my face and I started to get dizzy. Yeah, I knew Lord Hartman had no use for me, didn’t particularly want to acknowledge that I was a living, breathing human being, but wanting me off the face of the earth seemed a little extreme. What bothered me most was the matter-of-fact, chilling way Bax gave me the information. Talking about a threat on my life should bother him, crack that icy exterior he always had, but there was nothing. His eyes were as black and as infinite as always.

“Great, so my brother is missing and the guy responsible for my birth wants me dead. This was a fun date, Bax. Can we go now?”

“No. I need to talk to him. I need to find some of the missing pieces, and he’s bound to have them.”

“I’m not going over there.” I hated that my voice squeaked in alarm.

He leveled me a hard look.

“I need to talk to him. Either you come with me or you fend for yourself until I’m done. Benny’s bound to show once someone lets him know I crashed the party, so you need to keep your eyes peeled.”

If only he knew how many times I had heard that very warning where he was concerned lately. I backed away from him like I couldn’t get away fast enough. I purposely avoided looking at the man who had already paid one person to get rid of me before I even took my first breath, and now it sounded like he was trying to finish the job. I made my way up to the bar and found an empty seat. The bartender gave me a look and I rolled my eyes. I looked younger than my twenty years but I needed something to calm my nerves, so I hooked a thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of where Bax was winding his way through the crowd.

“I’m with him.”

The girl gave me a “yeah, right” look but gave me a shot of Jack on the rocks while I tunneled my fingers in my hair and tried to sort out the live current of emotions flowing through me.

“Back again.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t bother to answer, but when the stacked stripper that had been rubbing up on Bax from my first visit here slid into the empty space next to me, I was forced to look up at her or appear like I was scared of her and hiding. “That’s surprising.”

I wished she’d looked run-down and tired like so many other strippers in the District, but now that she wasn’t naked and dry-humping Bax, I could see that she was startlingly lovely. I bet she made a fortune.

“Why is it surprising?”

She snagged a plastic sword from the bar and stabbed a couple of olives from the drink station. She popped them in her mouth and met my gaze directly.

“Because you looked scared shitless and disgusted when you left last time. Plus, Bax isn’t known for being available for a repeat performance, if you know what I mean. His dance card is full.”

I slammed back the whiskey and blew out a stream of fire that followed it hitting my gut. “We aren’t dancing.”

The pretty stripper laughed a little and pointed the end of the sword to where Bax had gone. “Oh, yes you are. You should see the death glare he’s giving me right now. If I didn’t know for a fact that he doesn’t hit chicks, I would be so freaked out.”

I rubbed my forehead and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “What kind of name is ‘Honor’ for a stripper anyway?”

She took a couple of beers the bartender handed her. “Honor . . . on-her . . . get it?” She laughed a little. “My real name is Keelyn.”

I let my head drop back down. How did I end up here?

“I don’t know what I’m doing here.” I didn’t mean to blurt it out to her, she didn’t like me. She had been naked with the two most important men in my life and I didn’t really think she was any kind of ally, but the words just tumbled out. She tilted her head a little to the side and her artfully painted mouth kicked up in a grin on one side.

“When you are connected, even in the most basic way, to a guy like Bax, this is where you end up, honey. I know he makes the ride worthwhile, but the destination leaves a lot to be desired. Do yourself a favor and remember falling in love with a guy like him is about the stupidest thing you could do. It’ll make your life here even harder, and we all know how rough it is already just to get by.”

“I’m not going to fall in love with him.” I wished I’d sounded stronger, more sure of the fact.

She just gave me a look that was full of knowing and pity. Great, like I needed a stripper to feel sorry for me.

“Honey, you’re already halfway there if you forced yourself to come back here.”

“What’s going on?” Bax’s deep voice was hard and suspicious as his hands landed on my shoulders.

“Just making nice.” I sounded like I had been sucking on a lemon.

“Yeah?”

Honor laughed and sauntered away, making sure to shake her ass in Bax’s direction as she left.

“Yep. You have so many charming friends, Bax.”

He grunted at me and took my arm in his hand. “Let’s go before the welcoming committee shows up.”

I slid off the bar stool and my knees wobbled a little so he had to hold me up.

“Did he help you? Do you have all the answers?” Like there was ever a justifiable reason for wanting your own flesh and blood dead.

“Some of them.” I let him pull me out of the club like a rag doll. “Granted it took a little force and he doesn’t look so much like the king of the castle anymore.”

I looked at his hands and noticed that his knuckles were bloody. My stomach should turn at the thought of him beating the answers out of the man that was half of my DNA, but all I could feel was a solid ball of anxiety and disappointment. “Tell me.”

He looked down at me and sighed as he pushed some of my wild hair away from my face. “It isn’t pretty.”

“It never is.”

“Let’s go to the house.”

I recoiled at the idea. The cute little bungalow was so nice, so removed from all the ugliness that filled the Point. I felt like hearing all about my father’s plans to off me would somehow taint it.

“Let’s go to my apartment. I cleaned it and it’s closer.”

“Your furniture was trashed.”

I rubbed my arms and shivered even though I wasn’t cold. “Fine; let’s go to your place in the city.”

He pulled back and narrowed his eyes at me. “Why?”

“Why not?” Maybe seeing his crash pad, I would get the idea that there really was no Shane, that he was always just Bax and I would never, ever be foolish enough to hand my heart over to that guy. Maybe he knew exactly what I was doing, because all his barriers snapped into place.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

I DIDN’T WANT TO know what Dovie thought about the place that I called home, but really it was just a place to store all my stuff and catch a few z’s in between all the stuff I usually had going on. It was a crap hole. A studio in an apartment complex that was only half a step up from her own. I actually had a security door that worked, but other than that, between the dirty hallways and loud, disruptive neighbors, the two places could’ve been on the same block.

I didn’t have much. Just a bed that hadn’t been made, ever, a flat screen that I was always amazed to see when I opened the door, a black leather chair that had rips in the arms, and posters on the walls that were of mostly naked chicks and badass cars. I liked the cars better than the girls most of the time. It was dirty, musty, and I felt like she was seeing inside of who I really was as she followed me in the door, those wide green eyes taking it all in. This was where I belonged; not that bungalow so far out of the city.