A Twisted Love Story(71)

Wes does have a retirement account, though there isn’t a lot of money in it. He also has his house. He could use it as collateral if necessary, and if Bryce could arrange it. Papers would have to be drawn up and signed, giving Bryce permission to secure the bond.

“Let’s wait and see what the amount is,” Bryce said.

Now Wes is alone again, waiting for his arraignment. He tries to think about that and only that, but his brain doesn’t cooperate. It keeps bringing him back to the same thought, the one he’s had since being arrested:

Karen got it all wrong.





58




That night could have gone so many other ways.

Wes had been at home, watching a baseball game. It was a normal Thursday evening right up until Ivy walked into the living room, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her hair had been curled, and she was wearing a lot of makeup. Too much.

“Where are you—”

“I start work tonight,” she said. “So I’ll be home late.”

“You’re taking the car?”

“I’ll take a cab, in case you need it. I’ll make more than enough to cover the fare.”

Wes laughed. She was carrying this whole strip-club thing way too far.

He figured she would give up this little act of hers and be home by eleven. When the baseball game ended, he opened another beer and took out his laptop to do a little work. Wes had just started at Siphon a few weeks earlier, and he had a lot of onboarding documents to fill out and research materials to learn.

Eleven o’clock came and went.

Close to midnight, he started to wonder if he was wrong.

Only one way to find out. Wes grabbed his keys and drove down to the Fine Line. He still didn’t believe she was working there or that she would ever work at a strip club. She was probably out with her friends. But he felt a need to check.

While he had been to strip clubs before, he had never been inside the Fine Line. It was more expensive than the clubs he and his friends had gone to back in college. The parking lot was about half-full, even late on a Thursday. No cover charge, and the half-naked girl at the front barely glanced at his ID before waving him in the door.

The music was so loud he could feel the thump of the bass in his chest. More half-naked girls walked around in front of him. They seemed to be everywhere, all at once. Most of the customers were men, sitting at tables surrounding the stage. Wes watched a woman wrap her legs around a pole and hang upside down. The men cheered.

Wes snapped out of it and scanned the room, thinking this was stupid. No way Ivy was working here. No way she would put up with men like this, the kind who could barely control themselves in front of a mostly naked woman. No. Way.

He believed that right up until he saw her.

Saw so much of her.

Ivy was wearing—or barely wearing—something that was sky blue and resembled a bikini. Her whole body was bursting out of it. The shimmery material caught the light as she stood in front of a table filled with men, making her sparkle as she served the drinks on her tray.

And she was laughing.

“Ivy,” he said. It felt like he was yelling. Maybe he was.

She looked up and saw him, a smile still on her face. “Wes.”

He looked down at the men who were salivating over his girlfriend. “You can’t work here,” he said to her.

“And yet I am.”

She walked away from him, toward the bar. He followed, heading her off before she reached it. “We’re going home,” he said.

“You go home. I have to work,” she said. “And don’t call me Ivy again. My name is Summer.”

“Summer?”

“Is there a problem here?”

The man who appeared in front of Wes was three times his size, he wore a jacket with SECURITY on the breast pocket, and he wasn’t looking at Wes. The man was talking to Ivy, who now looked angry.

“He’s my boyfriend,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

She put her tray down and led Wes toward the front door. Outside the club, in the parking lot, she ordered him to leave.

“I told you I was doing this,” she said. “You didn’t believe me, and that’s your problem.”

Wes tried to calm down. He really did. He took a deep breath, telling himself to keep it together. This was not the time or the place for a screaming match with Ivy. But in his mind, all he could see were those men staring at his girlfriend’s body.

One option. Truly. It was only idea he had, the only road forward he could see.

Wes grabbed Ivy around her hips, picked her up, and threw her over his shoulder.

As he walked to the car, she yelled and pounded on his back. Wes glanced back, expecting to see the club’s security guys running after him. They weren’t. Disturbances outside the club didn’t seem to interest them at all—at least not between a couple. Not even when Ivy continued to yell at him.

“Put me down!

“Put. Me. Down.

“Wes, I swear to God, you better put me down.”

He did, eventually. He opened the hatchback of the 4Runner, put her inside, then closed and locked the doors. She immediately scrambled over the seat, but not fast enough to get out of the car before he got in and started driving away. That’s when she climbed into the front passenger seat and started yelling in his ear.