Stripped (Stripped, #1)(23)
Author: H.M. Ward

Sean catches my arm and tries to pin it to my back, but I break free. Before he can speak, my fist collides with his mouth. The bastard is still talking, but I can’t hear anything except the roaring of my pulse in my ears. We pound each other, twisting around on the ground, covered in dirt, until Trystan and Bryan pull us apart.

"What the fuck?" Bryan hisses at Sean, before smacking him in the back of the head. "Have you guys totally lost it?"

Sean swats at Bryan, but doesn’t hit him. Instead, he glares at me as he bats the dust off his clothes. "Get rid of this. Now."

"So you can save face? Yeah, sure. Why not?" My voice is dripping with sarcasm that clearly conveys a different message—suck it.

Trystan is standing next to me. He tilts his chin up and asks Sean, "What’s he looking at for something like this?"

"Disowned, if he’s lucky." Sean looks over Trystan once, like he’s no longer certain about the guy. When his gaze lands on me, he adds, "Peter will come by later with papers. Wait here for him, and sign the damn thing. Don’t show your face until you do." Sean crosses the parking lot and glares at two girls who are headed toward the front door.

When I see who they are, my heart drops to my shoes. Trystan leans in and shoulders me, "Decide."

"What?" Blinking rapidly, I rub my temple and wipe away a bit of blood from where Sean’s ring ripped open my skin. I avoid Cassie’s gaze as she passes quickly. It’s almost like she’s running away from me.

"You see what’s happening here, right?" Trystan hunches his shoulders forward and leans in. Bryan does the same thing, and places his hand on his chin, listening. "They’re drawing lines, but they have no f**king clue why you’re standing on this side."

"And they don’t care, Jonny," Bryan adds quickly. "You’re going to lose everything if you don’t fix this. I mean, if Sean is trying to step in—"

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I shake my head. "He’s not trying to fix anything. Sean’s after whatever Sean wants. He doesn’t give a shit about me."

Trystan laughs and wraps his arm over my shoulder. "You’re so amazingly wrong. I know what it looks like when people don’t give a shit about you, and that wasn’t it. Sean is trying to change your mind, although he’s doing it wrong."

Bryan laughs like this whole mess is hysterical. Trystan and I stop walking and I look at him like he’s gone nuts. Bryan holds his hand to his stomach, nearly doubled over. When he can breathe, he says, "I’m sorry, I just can’t believe that I’m going to be the Ferro heir because you pissed off your mother and bought a strip club. Dude, you named it Club Ferro? You have a death wish. You have to. No one would be that mental, not around our family. Even this a**hole knows that." He jabs his thumb at Trystan.

I glance at my car, and back at my newly acquired strip shack. I don’t want to go back in there. I wonder if Cassie feels like that every time she steps into the place. Glancing at the guys out of the corner of my eye, I say, "Come on. Drinks are on me until Peter shows his face."

CHAPTER 32

CASSIE

I didn’t expect to see Jon tonight, but he was standing in the parking lot when Beth and I passed. His eyes swept over me, like he couldn’t stomach the sight of me. Nausea hits in a hard wave threatening to make me relive my cheap-o dinner.

Beth notices, but she doesn’t say much as we dress. There are too many people around. The other girls who work the first shift are dressing quickly, and applying thick make-up.

Gretchen glares at me as she sprays her hair into place. I ignore her, and continue to get ready. I’m applying eyeliner when she leaves. As she walks by her hip bumps my elbow and I nearly stab my eye out. Stopping, she glances down at me. "Oops. Sorry, I didn’t expect those beefy man arms to stick out quite so far." She walks past, swaying her h*ps with a smile on her lips.

"What a bitch," Beth says, and hands me make up remover to take off the jagged black line.

My eye won’t stop watering, so I press my finger to the lower lid, trying to stop the flow of tears.

Bruce steps into the room and bellows at Beth, "Get on stage! And you," he points his sausage-sized finger at me, "Boss wants you in the pink room. Now. Move it."

Beth smiles at me before slipping away to reassure me that everything is going to be fine, but it’s not. This is the end. I’m walking into his office and he’s going to hand me my ass. I don’t see why he hasn’t done it already. After I finish dressing, I make my way to the pink room. When I get there, it’s quiet. There’s no one seated in front of the stage, no music blasting from the speakers. I’m wearing a corset that has my boobs ready to pop out over the top, along with matching bottoms, thigh highs, and stilettos.

My heart races faster as I step out onto the floor. "Hello?"

Someone moves in the back corner of the room and suddenly, I can see him. A man is standing, leaning against a dark wall, submerged in shadows. He steps toward me and my heart pounds harder. Jon.

"Hey, Cassie." He looks beaten, like life has sucked him dry and he can barely stand up.

"Are you okay?" I step toward him, wanting to touch the gash on his face, but I think twice and keep my distance.

Jon’s blazing blue eyes sweep over me, drinking me in like he’ll never see me again. He doesn’t answer my question. Looking at the floor, he says, "The pink room is closed tonight."

I manage to keep a plastic smile plastered on my face, right up until he says that. "Oh. Am I… supposed to work a different room?" My stomach is twisting into knots.

Jon shakes his head, and then lifts his chin and pushes his dark hair away from his eyes. "No, not tonight."

"Jon, are you firing me?" My heart thumps inside my chest like this can’t be happening.

His eyes sweep over my face, but I can’t read his expression. He seems so somber, like someone died. "Why are you working here?" I stiffen, my defenses rising, but Jon steps toward me and rests his hands on my bare shoulders. He’s strong and careful. He smiles sadly at me, and says, "I need to know what happened to you."

"Nothing worth repeating." I smile weakly, and then drop his gaze knowing that my answer is too weak. We have no relationship, not anymore, but I wish—just for one second—that I could start over. Such hopes are useless, which is why I usually bat them away as soon as they flood my mind, but not tonight. Tonight I want to fix the unfixable. I want another chance with him, but there’s no way. Jon would be an idiot to give it to me. There’s no way he’ll ever trust me again. Not after the things I did to him.

Sucking in a deep breath, I step forward saying, "You were right. My ideals, the way I wanted to live my life, were lacking a dose of reality. I was so naïve—"

"No, you weren’t. I just said that so I’d get a shot with you." He smiles at me, but it’s hollow. It’s a mingling of regret masked by humor and I hear it choking him when he says the words.

Jon presses his eyes closed for a second and when he looks at me again it feels like someone’s sucked all the air out of the room. The way he looks at me sends a jolt of hope straight into my heart. It’s almost too much to witness, but I don’t look away—I can’t.

Swallowing hard, his voice is barely a whisper when he speaks, "I was in love with you, Cassie. I never had a chance, so of course I’d say whatever I could to get you to look at me that way." The soft lines on his face harden as his expression turns rancid. "But you never did, did you? I was always something expendable." The pencil in his hand cracks, but neither of us acknowledges the sound.

The insides of my ears throb. I heard the words, but I can’t believe them. I stare at him, leaning forward like he’s using an invisible lure to reel me in. I can’t fight with him anymore, and things can’t end this way, and this clearly feels like the end for us. My pulse pounds faster as I blink away tears and slap a smile across my face to hide my pain. "You weren’t expendable. I would have kept you around forever. I would have—"

Shaking his head, Jon steps toward me. "But you didn’t. You told the press where I was, what I’d done. You knew what that meant, what would happen to me, and you did it anyway. Why? Just tell me why so I can walk away from you and know the truth." As he speaks, he takes my hands and presses them to his face. It’s like he’s begging me to release him, but I never knew he was mine.

My lips part, jaw dropping open as my heart is ripped out of my chest. Is it true? Was he really in love with me? I remain on my feet even though my knees are ready to go out. My throat tightens so much that it’s difficult to speak. "I tried to tell you, but your uncle wouldn’t let me see you. Then you were gone before I could explain. Jon, I meant to help you. I thought I was helping you. Everything the press wrote about you at the time was wrong—like horribly wrong. They had no idea how smart and compassionate you were. They only printed crap about your latest conquest or screw up. I thought if I told them the truth—I thought if I told them who you really are—that they’d see it, too."

He stares at me, wide-eyed, shocked. His hands drop to my arms. "You didn’t tell them that I bought a high school to sleep with that girl? Or those things about my dad’s mistress?" He wants to believe me, but I can see that he’s not going to. It doesn’t matter what I say. Too much time has passed, and anguish has consumed any chance we had.

I try anyway, because the truth can’t make it worse. Not now. "A guy gave me a card right before we left the hospital. He knew that we went to the exhibit together and thought we were, uh, intimate. I didn’t talk to him then. I knew what you said, how you needed to avoid the press, so I didn’t talk to him. But I didn’t like it. The papers kept running stuff on you, even when you were with me, making up stories about how you were f**king your way through Europe.

"So, I called the reporter, and I told him about you and the school, and the way you spoke of their curriculum—and the way you knew about Jonathan Gray’s art work. I told them how you protected me at his show—and how you helped the others who were hurt. That old lady survived because of you. At the end of the day you were covered in blood and you didn’t even care about your own safety. You never do, Jon. You always put other people first."

I smile sadly at him. "I told the reporter how you helped Aunt Paula, and how you helped me. I told him the Jonathan Ferro they printed stories about didn’t exist, that there was this other side to him, a side that’s good, a side that he keeps hidden. That was what I said. I told them to run that story."

His fingers tighten on my forearms before he releases me and looks away. Pushing his hair out of his eyes, he asks, "And he didn’t, did he?"

I shake my head. "No, he didn’t." Out of all the stupid things I’ve done, that was the dumbest. I never saw it coming until my words showed up in the paper, their meaning twisted, and showcasing Jon as the playboy troublemaker that the world loves and wants. Scandals sell papers, not altruistic young men.

Jon presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose and turns away from me suddenly. "It doesn’t make sense. You talked to the reporter—you called him—and he ran other information, things you didn’t tell him?"

"I don’t remember telling him some of the things he wrote, but I must have. I did mention there was a girl you liked, which is how you knew about her school. He must have read into it. Jon, I’m sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. I never meant to hurt you."