by Meghan Quinn
“Kace, it will help to talk about it.”
“It won’t,” I gritted out. I pushed Lyla to the side and sat up. My elbows rested on my legs while I bent my head down and gripped my hair. The once euphoric yet confusing feeling vanished at the mention of my tattoo, and in its place was a cold, dark void, the emptiness I counted on to help me through my days.
My pain was much easier to forget than relive.
Small hands rested on my back while the bed dipped behind me. Lyla gripped me from behind and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she ran kisses up my back.
I went stiff from her tender touch. I didn’t deserve this, this warm, caring woman. What did she even see in me? “Don’t. Don’t fucking apologize,” I swore, hating myself.
She gripped me tighter and her warmth started to penetrate my cold exterior, melting me in her arms.
She encouraged me to lie down. I told myself to get up instead, to grab my clothes and get the fuck out of her place, but my body betrayed me and rested on one of her pillows. Lyla settled into my side and wrapped an arm around my waist. I moved my hand to her hair and ran my fingers through it.
A lump settled in my throat as I studied the cracks of her ceilings again and our breathing evened out. Why couldn’t I let this woman go?
“You’re not alone, Kace,” Lyla said, breaking the silence between us. “You’re not the only one with demons.”
This wasn’t the first time Lyla had mentioned something from her past. I knew there had to be something that happened in her life, that had her turning to the life she held now. A part of me wanted to know her story, wanted to help fix her problems, protect her and give her everything she needed, but how could I help her when I couldn’t help myself? She wanted a whole man, someone to stand by her side, to fight and walk through this dark world with her.
I wasn’t that man.
“You don’t have to talk,” Lyla said, rubbing my side. “You don’t even have to ask any questions. I just need you to know where I’m coming from. I wanted you to know you’re not alone, Kace.”
There was no way in hell our stories were even close to being similar, but it was hard to resist what she was offering. Even though I knew I had to distance myself, I still wanted to know about her.
Instead of answering her, I pulled her closer, savoring the way her breasts felt against me, the way her nipples were puckered even though I wasn’t trying to turn her on.
“I didn’t always live in poverty, scraping for every last cent,” she said. I tensed, wondering if I really wanted to hear this. “It was me and my dad my entire life. My mom wasn’t interested in being a mom, which was fine because I would rather have no mom than a mom who lived with me but never gave me an ounce of attention. My dad gave me all the attention I needed.”
I could feel her smile against my chest as she talked about her him. It was endearing.
“He was the best man I ever knew. He worked hard, provided for me, and made it to every dance recital I had. He was the perfect father.”
“Sounds like it,” I responded, surprising myself since the lump in my throat grew. I didn’t understand what a close relationship with a father was like. Like my dad had said, I was a disappointment. He was probably laughing in his grave at me right now, watching me struggle with my day-to-day life. I knew in his eyes, I was a complete fuck-up, not worth the air I breathed.
Carefully dropping all thoughts of my father, I listened to Lyla continue her story. “After each recital, he would take me to get ice cream. We’d sit on a bench overlooking the Mississippi River and talk about our day. He would praise me for my pirouettes and tell me how pretty I was.”
I kissed the top of her head. “You talk as if he is no longer in your life.”
She gripped me tighter and sighed. “He’s not.” She took a deep breath. “He had a temper.”
“Did he fucking touch you?” I growled, instantly ready to snap.
“No!” she practically shouted. “He’d never do anything like that to me. I was his entire life, Kace. His temper was never directed at me. He loved me dearly.”
The tension in me eased. I didn’t think I would have been able to handle hearing she was abused by her father.
“How did he die?” I asked, hating how invested I was getting in her story.
“My dad used to work at the Domino Sugar Refinery.”
“In Chalmette?” I asked, referring to its location.
“Yup, he was a line supervisor.”
I was impressed. That refinery was one of the oldest and biggest in the country. It brought a lot of needed jobs to the city of New Orleans.
“He worked hard to get to where he was,” Lyla continued. “He was driven, determined to give me everything he thought I wanted when in fact all I wanted was him. He was my hero.”
“What happened?” I asked, my heart splintering for Lyla.
“When he first got a job there, he started with a bunch of his friends. It was my dad and three other guys who entered the system together. They were inseparable and were like uncles to me. When I would visit my dad, they had a little pink hard hat for me.”
Fuck my heart.
“My dance lessons got more expensive each year, and my dad insisted upon me taking them since I had talent and it was an after-school activity that kept me occupied while he was at work. Because expenses were high, he buckled down and worked harder, pushing his limits, pushing his friends’ limits.”
“He wanted to make more money. There is nothing wrong with that,” I said.
“There is when you have a trigger-happy temper that goes off at the slightest disturbance. I don’t really know the details, because no one would tell me, but I guess my dad got in an altercation with someone at work. It was quickly broken up, but it put a target on my dad’s back. Later that night, when he was walking to the dance studio to pick me up, he was murdered in the back of an alley, brutally beaten to death.”
Someone took her dad’s life?
Sweat started to skate across my body, and my chest began to seize. “Someone murdered your dad?” I asked, barely able to squeak out the words.
“At first they thought he was kidnapped since they couldn’t find him. I waited for hours in the dance studio for him to pick me up. Once I realized he wasn’t coming, I went to my dance teacher, who called the cops for help. I was put into protective custody. They found his body in a dumpster in the alley.”
My throat closed on me. I was being swallowed whole by the Lyla’s grief and the thought of her father being taken away from her…just like Madeline.
“Shortly after, I was thrown into the foster care system since I didn’t have any family, and I was quickly introduced into a different world where dance lessons didn’t exist and a loving father no longer lived. I was tortured by the other girls, called nicknames like ‘princess’ and ‘spoiled’ because my stuff far exceeded what the other girls had.”
“How old were you?” I choked out.
“Fourteen. I endured four years of torture until I was able to get out of the home and survive on my own. My lack of education and my jaded outlook on the world landed me in the hands of Marv, the owner of Kitten’s Castle. He took me in and showed me the ropes. Slowly, I worked my way up to the pole, where I am now.”
Fuck, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t focus. The room was spinning, causing a kaleidoscope of cracks to appear on Lyla’s ceiling. A black fog entered my brain as one sole thought appeared in my head.
Madeline, the daughter of the man I’d killed. She could end up just like Lyla, jaded and living in poverty with no future.
The urge to throw up had me springing up from the bed. Sweat trickled down my back and saliva flooded my mouth. I quickly grabbed my clothes and ran to the bathroom, making sure to close the door.
I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and retched violently, purging the contents of my stomach, along with the horrible pain that overtook my body from heari
ng Lyla’s story. My throat burned from stomach acid, my muscles shook violently, and I clutched the cool porcelain until I didn’t think I had anything left in me.
A light knock sounded at the door, and I prayed she didn’t let herself in. I couldn’t possibly recover from her seeing me like this. I was already gutted. I didn’t need the humiliation as well.
“Kace, can I come in?”
Taking a deep breath, I replied, “No.”
I could hear her sigh on the other end of the door, but I didn’t give in to the temptation this time. I kept the barrier of the door between us.
Pulling myself off the floor, I put my jeans on and looked in the mirror.
An ugly version of the man I’d once known stared back at me. Instead of the youthful face of someone full of potential and stardom, a broken, battered, and bruised man stared back at me. A man with age showing in his eyes, a man full of absolutely nothing, a man who only knew the feeling of remorse.
I gripped the counter and lowered my head, not able to look into my vacant blue eyes anymore. A lonesome tear left my eye and trailed down my face, surprising me with the heavy emotion I was feeling, knowing everything Lyla had been through had the potential to be what I put Madeline through or what she would be going through.
A piercing pain shot through my stomach, crippling me into the bathroom counter for support. My legs wobbled beneath me as I tried to regain control of my body. I was better than this. I was stronger than this. I didn’t let such feelings enter my body.
With a need to extract myself from Lyla’s apartment, I turned on the faucet and doused my face with water. I dried off with a little pink towel that was resting on a hook, reveling in the smell of Lyla on it. She was everywhere, making the need to leave that much stronger.
I flushed the toilet, pulled my tasseled shirt over my head, and took a deep breath before I opened the bathroom door. I half expected to see Lyla waiting for me, naked with her arms crossed, but she wasn’t there.
Grateful, I went to her door, forgetting anything else I might have left behind. I was about to leave when a flash of purple caught my eye. Lyla was lounging on her couch, wearing a short purple silk robe, holding a glass of wine in her hand, and staring at the wall.
She didn’t look at me, didn’t even acknowledge my presence as I grabbed the doorknob. Without saying goodbye, I slipped out and walked the few blocks to Diego’s apartment, where I grabbed a liter of whiskey and brought it up to my room.
It was time to forget.
Chapter Sixteen
My past…
Cheers erupted in the distance as I stepped out into the bright, stifling weather of New Orleans. The sun was brutal, bouncing off every surface in the park, making it almost unbearable to open my eyes. I put on my sunglasses, providing a protective layer not just from the sun, but from the truth I was about to face.
Several months had passed since the death, and I thought maybe the crippling feeling I experienced every day would have eased slightly with time, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. It only felt like the pain grew deeper.
Jett tried to distract me with the Lafayette Club, giving me more responsibilities and adding three more girls to the roster. He had me training them in the state-of-the-art gym, but it was just a minor distraction, nothing more.
A typical day of mine began with a long workout, beating a sand-filled bag until my knuckles felt raw in the boxing gloves, then I would shower, meet the girls in the gym, and train them with simple plyometrics. Afterwards, we would spend hours in the Toulouse Room, where I watched the girls practice their routines until I was satisfied with their performance. Food fell in there somewhere, but it was never anything I enjoyed because frankly, I couldn’t taste anything anymore. It was all bland nourishment required to help me endure my arduous self-hatred. My nights were filled with getting lost in a bottle of hard liquor that was kept well stocked in the Lafayette Club. The next morning, I would repeat my day, never allowing myself to enjoy any aspect of my life.
I was a dead man walking the streets of New Orleans, a lifeless soul with no future, a fragmented and beaten down human with a passion to live a miserable life, serving a lifetime of repentance.
The crack of a ball against an aluminum bat shifted my thoughts to the tee-ball game. There was no baseball field, just a grass lot mapped with cones and bases, and lined with chairs of parents, cheering on their children. There were at least four fields in the park with the same setup, maximizing the park’s space for the growing little league the city offered the community.
A snack table flanked one side of the fields, where a group of moms took money in exchange for sports drinks and sunflower seeds.
Children’s laughter echoed through the park, owners walked their dogs, and parents tried to confine their littles ones who were supposed to be watching their older siblings play the simple game of baseball.
The park reeked of family, making me itch all over.
This was welcome torture.
The masochistic pain buried itself deep into my bones and radiated through my veins, reminding me once again that I was alive to feel such pain.
“Got you!” a little boy screamed in front of me, tagging his friend.
“No you didn’t. You got my shirt. That doesn’t count,” his friend replied.
“Your shirt is on you, so I got you.”
“Doesn’t count,” the boy who was not making a valid statement said.
“Does too,” the tagger fought.
“No it doesn’t,” the cheater replied.
“Fine,” the little boy said, stepping forward and punching his friend in the arm. “Got you now!”
Hell, a small smirk crossed my face from the genius move.
The other boy fell backward for a second and then regained his balance while holding on to his arm. His face raged and in an instant, they both took off running, yelling at each other the whole time.
The interaction made me think of all the times Jett and I had chased each other around during recess. We’d been from different classes in society, but that hadn’t stopped Jett from meeting me out on the playground and forming a bond that could never be broken.
We’d been through everything together, and even though we’d had our fights, our disagreements, there was always an underlining understanding that whatever happened, we would always have each other’s backs.
That pact had been prevalent in the last year. Jett had never left my side at the beginning of my boxing career. He’d been the driving force behind me, making sure I stayed true to myself. When I’d lost everything, been stripped of my career, he’d stood by me, believed in my innocence. When I had taken the life of another man, he’d covered up my guilt. He’d taken me in and provided shelter, a refuge for my contrition.
He stood by my side on days like today, when the urge to persecute myself weighed heavy on my shoulders.
“Do you know which field it’s on?” Jett asked, pulling up next to me and putting on his sunglasses.
“No,” I replied, looking around.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jett asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“I have to. This isn’t an option.”
“Why are you torturing yourself?”
I spoke as softly as I could over the uproarious cheers of the parents edging the fields’ sidelines.
“You can either walk with me to the field and stand with me, or you can leave. Questions are not welcome. I fucking do this because I want to. Deal with it.”
Without a word, Jett gave me a curt nod and followed me as I took off toward the fields, looking for the woman ingrained in my brain.
She had long brown hair that floated around her shoulders. Her skinny frame was not hard to see since she was tall for a woman. Her pointed shoulders and knobby knees were also easy to find, but it was the dark circles under her eyes I could never forget.
Linda Duncan, mother of one, wife of none.
I scanned the parents sitt
ing in their camping chairs, lounging over coolers, and talking to each other while watching their children attempt to play baseball.
The first field was occupied by two teams wearing a hodge-podge of clothes, but you could tell one team was supposed to be yellow and the other orange. I didn’t see anyone who resembled Linda Duncan, so I turned my attention to the second field, where teams of gray and purple played against each other. There was a huddle of parents on one side, drinking from their water bottles and laughing, but I didn’t see Linda there either. I was about to turn to the third field when I heard a bunch of parents clap and start cheering for Madeline.
“Knock them in, Madeline!” a stout man called while he fist-pumped the air.
I spotted the little girl who’d been haunting my dreams. She wore a pair of jean shorts that were entirely too big on her and hoisted up around her waist with a pink belt. Her large purple jersey was tucked in, and the white shoes with pink laces she was wearing were marked with dirt.
She grabbed a bat from the ground and pushed up a helmet so she could see where she was going. She was tiny, too fucking tiny. It broke my heart in half.
“Come on, Madeline. You got this, baby,” said a woman behind me.
Just before I looked behind me, Linda Duncan brushed past me on her way to the field, holding a bag of orange slices. My heart seized in my chest as the widow of the man whose life I’d taken passed me, her brown hair lifting in the light breeze. She was still too thin, but from the brief glance I got of her face, the dark circles were gone and she wore a bright smile.
Confusion hit me hard as I wondered why she looked so free, so happy. I glanced over at Madeline, who held the aluminum bat in one hand and pushed on her helmet again with the other. Freckles graced her cheeks and a tiny smile spread across her face when she saw her mom walking toward the field. Madeline raised her hand and waved at her mom with excitement. Linda gave her a thumbs-up and pointed at the field.