Iced

I freeze-frame through the club, hyperfast, knocking folks out of my way left and right. Hearing grunts all around makes me feel better ’bout stuff.

When I stop in front of her, she looks startled then mad. What the feck does she have to be mad at me about?

She removes the last drink from her tray, sits it on a napkin in front of a Rhino-boy then holds the tray to her chest, her arms around it like it’s a shield or something.

“Traitor.”

“Dani, don’t do this. Not here. Not now.”

“You did that up there,” I say, flinging my arm up toward Ryodan’s office, “without worrying for one tiny little sec about my here and now. The whole time I was practically dying, you were having sex two doors down with the dude you came to rescue me from. From his dungeon. Like, where he was holding me prisoner. Remember?”

“It’s not like that.”

“What? I wasn’t in the dungeon? Or you didn’t come to rescue me from him? Don’t tell me you weren’t having sex. I saw what I saw.”

“I didn’t believe he’d hurt you and he didn’t. He didn’t hurt either of us.”

“He’s got us both working like dogs for him! You’re waiting on Fae, and I’m running around on his fecking leash! He feeds people to the Fae, Jo. He kills them!”

“He does not. He runs a club. It’s not his fault if people want to die. What is he supposed to do? Talk them out of it? Start a Chester’s counseling service? What do you expect of him, Dani?”

I stare at her in disbelief. “You’ve got to fecking be kidding me! You’re going to defend him? Stockholm syndrome much, Jo?” I mock.

She moves to an empty table and begins to clear it, stacking dirty dishes on her tray. It makes me madder that she’s cleaning up after these monsters. Doubly mad that she looks so good doing it. Jo’s making herself prettier. I don’t understand it. She used to be perfectly happy wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no makeup and just hanging with the girls. We had pj parties and watched movies. Now she’s all superglam Jo. I hate it.

“I thought you didn’t know what that was.”

“I looked it up and, dude, you got it bad. You’re letting him screw you every which way. How long do you think it’s going to last? You think he’s going to bring you flowers? You think you’re going to, like, go steady with the owner of Chester’s?”

She stacks a small tower of glasses on her tray and gives me an exasperated look. “Can we just not do this right now?”

“Sure. If you tell me you’ll never have sex with him again, I’ll go away. Right now. End of conversation.”

Her mouth tightens. As she wipes the table off with a damp cloth, she glances up at his office. It pisses me off how soft her face goes when she looks up. The tension fades and she looks like a woman in love. I hate it. I hate him.

She looks back at me.

“No, Dani. I won’t. And stay out of this. It’s none of your business. This is grown-up stuff between grown-ups.” She turns away and heads for the bar with her cluttered tray. Distantly I hear Fae calling orders, trying to get her attention, but I don’t care. I want her attention.

I freeze-frame in behind her hard and fast, causing a wicked breeze in the subclub and nearly knocking the tray from her hands. She has to work hard to catch it. Almost doesn’t. Ryodan’s not the only one that can screw with people and things.

“Don’t walk away from me. I’m not done yet.”

“Yes, you are.”

I hiss in her ear, “Don’t you get it? Dude’s never going to love you. He’s not wired that way. He’s just using you and he’s going to throw you away, and then there you’re going to be like a dirty piece of toilet paper he doesn’t want anymore.”

She sucks in a breath and gives me a look over her shoulder that just fecking slays me.

I drown in instant self-hate for saying what I just said. And I hate him because I know it’s true. Jo will never be able to keep Ryodan’s interest. She’s too good. Clean and nice inside. She doesn’t have an ounce of malice or deceit or unkind feelings or anything bad in her. She’s not complicated enough for him. He’s twisted like that. I chose the wrong person to chew out. I should have chosen him. He’s going to hurt her and I’m never going to forgive him. So, here I am, hurting her first. Dude, stupid much?

“Do you really think I don’t know that?” If we weren’t in Chester’s, I’m pretty sure the wet in her eyes would start to slide down her cheeks.

All the sudden I’m miserable I said anything about any of it. I want to hug her. I want to run away. I don’t want Jo to hurt. I should have kept my mouth shut. I can’t keep my mouth shut. Grown-ups are so strange. But I don’t understand! “Then why? Why would you do something that you know is going to end up bad? Why would anyone ever do something they know is going to hurt them?”

“You’re too young to be talking about this kind of stuff.”

“Aw, c’mon, Jo, it’s me. I was never young. Life didn’t happen that way in my world. Tell me.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Like everything isn’t. Try.”

She doesn’t say anything so I just stand and wait. A long silence usually makes people fill it up with something.

It stretches. Finally she looks away like she’s embarrassed and, so soft it’s almost like she’s talking to herself, not me at all, she says, “Every morning he comes to the top of the stairs and looks down over the club and he stands there, so big and powerful and beautiful and …” She swallows hard like her mouth just went totally dry. “Sexy. God, so unbelievably sexy.” Her eyes get a weird, intense look like she’s remembering something, then she makes a soft noise and doesn’t say anything for a second. “And he’s funny. Do you know he’s funny? You must know that. You spend a lot of time with him.”

I fist my hands. Sure I do. I didn’t know she did. What do they do? Crack jokes with each other like Dancer and me?

Her expression is far off, seeing a memory. “Every morning when the night shift ends, he singles out a woman in the crowd and he nods at her. She goes upstairs and when she eventually shows up in the club again she looks like …” She shivers like she just got goose bumps. “And you wonder what he did that made her look like that. You watch her walking around, smiling, moving different than she moved before she went to him, and you know something happened up there that made her feel more alive than she ever felt before, that she got to be the way you hope you’ll get to be with a man, even if it’s just once in your life. A man has to see women a certain way for it to be that way. You try not to think about him, but it doesn’t work. I swore if he ever gave me that nod, I wouldn’t go.”