Teddy's Truth

by KD Ellis

Johnny shrugged. “Sure, babe. Last time.” It was as believable as his claim that he had a ten-inch dick.

  The warning notes sounded over the sound system that the doors were opening soon, so he sighed and headed to his platform. At least Johnny wasn’t completely stupid. It was the one closest to the restrooms. Getting him on the platform was one thing—putting him center stage was something even Johnny wasn’t stupid enough to try. Even if Teddy managed not to vomit on the crowd, his moves—or relative lack thereof—would be more of a turn-off than a turn-on.

  The new platforms were higher than the old ones. It took all his thigh strength to clamber up. When he straightened, he wobbled slightly. The platforms were only three feet off the ground, but that was still a whole foot more than he was used to—and the old platforms had been more than high enough for him.

  At least Ian was somewhere behind the bar, not watching him flounder like a dead fish on the podium. And he only suffered through two sets before jumping—okay, awkwardly crawling while trying to ignore the hands that groped at him as he slid, feet first, on his belly—off the platform.

  His hope that Ian hadn’t seen him was dashed when he rounded the bar. Ian was unsuccessfully trying to bury his chuckling.

  “I see you,” Teddy said pointedly.

  Ian dropped his hand, his mouth still spread in a wide grin. “I see why you don’t like the podiums.”

  “It’s not my fault I’m short.” Teddy tugged the service towel out of Ian’s hand and started wiping down the bar, mostly to avoid looking at the familiar smile. It made him want to go hide in the stock room for a few minutes…hours…days…preferably with the larger man pressed against him in the cramped shelving.

  An arm landed on his head as Ian used it for an armrest. Teddy huffed when he realized Ian didn’t even have to go up on tiptoes to manage it. He shook his head, dislodging the elbow, and glared. He lifted the towel in his hand threateningly. “I still remember how to use one of these, you know…”

  Ian chuckled, probably remembering the same thing Teddy was—Teddy and Lucas, barely fourteen, chasing Ian around the community pool with soaking-wet towels, in retaliation for Ian dunking them.

  Ian’s smile dimmed slightly. Teddy flushed, guilt welling as he wondered if he should say something. He visited Lucas’ headstone every couple of months. He was careful about when he went, so he wouldn’t run into Mama Romero or Noa. He’d sit against the headstone while it drizzled, talking things out, like maybe, somewhere, Lucas was listening. He tried to pretend he wasn’t just talking to stone. He wondered if Ian ever visited, but as far as he knew, since Ian had skipped out of the funeral four years ago, he hadn’t come back.

  Teddy cleared his throat and scrubbed at an invisible spill on the counter, averting his eyes from Ian’s to avoid seeing the sadness that had dimmed them.

  Ian cleared his throat as well. “So, how have things been? Mama said you’ve been busy…”

  Teddy wondered if Ian was genuinely curious, or just trying to change the subject. He shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple of jobs. Just trying to pay the bills, you know how it is.” Or maybe he didn’t. He clearly had enough capital to come in and buy a club, then completely renovate it.

  “Yeah.” Ian trailed off, an awkward silence spreading between them. Teddy was grateful when a slew of men spilled off the dance floor and approached the bar, giving Teddy something to do besides dwell on Ian’s presence at his side. He wondered if Ian was going to hover around him every shift, because the years had apparently not dampened the spark that flared to life inside him with Ian’s presence. It had only been one day and Teddy already felt weak-kneed and out of sorts.

  He glanced at the clock under the bar. An hour and a half down…only five more to go.

  * * * *

  Teddy glared at the bright red letters stamped across the front of the envelope on his coffee table. Final Notice, his ass. It was at least the third ‘final notice’ he’d gotten. Unfortunately, there was little to nothing he could do about it. Six weeks of not working at Nik’s—or Envy, as it had been renamed—had fucked up his budget. Hopefully, not irreparably. The severance checks he’d gotten every other week during the six-week construction had helped, but they’d barely covered half his pay, not even factoring in tips. They weren’t enough to pay both his rent and Julian, and he’d had to choose.

  Between the two, his landlord was less scary. Even giving nearly every cent of the checks to Hugo, he was still behind.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t think his landlord would accept that as an excuse. He snorted at the thought of trying to explain that to him. “Yeah, sorry, sir. Can’t pay you the rent this month because a big guy with a bat will break my kneecaps. But yes, your letters are very intimidating.” Yeah. Likely, wouldn’t go over well.

  Teddy pinched the bridge of his nose. He already worked three jobs. He wasn’t sure where he could squeeze in a fourth. Between washing dishes at Antonio’s in the morning, cleaning the kickboxing studio in the afternoon and working at Envy at night, he already struggled to find time to sleep.

  Sleeping is overrated, he thought.

  But damn, he missed sleeping. He imagined he could orgasm just thinking about getting a single good night’s sleep. He was more likely to win the lottery, at this point.

  Which would really be something, since he couldn’t afford to play the lottery.

  Teddy brushed his hair out of his face and got back to work organizing the envelopes on his table. Bills in one stack, spam in the trash, correspondence in another stack. The majority of the envelopes were bills. He threw a half-dozen away, then stared at the final ones remaining.

  His mom’s name was written neatly across the top left in a familiar hand. He clutched it by the edges. She wrote to him occasionally. Sometimes, it was drunken ramblings, mostly apologies intermingled with pleas for him to come home. Sometimes, it was a drunken plea for money and empty promises. He dropped the letter into the trash. He wasn’t curious enough about which way it swayed to open it.

  He abandoned the bills. He stood and crossed the room to stare out of the window, not paying much attention to the view outside. Mrs. Tanlin was walking her dog again, a Doberman with a weak bladder. Mr. Waverly was leaning into the window of a rusty Chevrolet, probably buying weed. Nothing new, nothing to draw his attention.

  Instead, he stared blankly in the direction where he knew his mom’s house lay. He missed her. Not the drunk, childish woman she was now. He missed the mother who’d told him bedtime stories and always tucked him in, even if it was the third time in the same night, the woman who’d taken him out for ice cream after one of his father’s fits or gone with him to each and every one of his therapy appointments, at least until the drinking had started.

  Teddy rested his fist against the windowpane but not hard enough to risk cracking it. The drinking had started before his father had passed away after a particularly violent fit of his father’s had sent her tumbling down a flight of stairs. It wasn’t the first time it had happened—but she’d been a few months pregnant. He could still remember the blank stare she’d walked around with for weeks.

  It was the reason Teddy hated the smell of chrysanthemums. His father had felt more guilty than usual and filled the house with them, until the smell had clogged Teddy’s nose, filling the house with the cloying scent. She’d started drinking when the flowers had died.

  Teddy stared out of the window, lost in thought, until his phone jarred him from his memories, ringing behind him. He scooped it off the table and flicked it open, lifting it to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Teddy. I was hoping I’d reach you before you left.” Santiago, his boss at Antonio’s, sounded apologetic, and Teddy already knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming. “It’s been a slow night. I’m afraid we won’t need you to come in.”

  Teddy closed his eyes and took in a deep breath to keep from cursing. “Okay, thanks for letting me know.”

  Santiago wished him a good night before he go
t off the phone. Teddy clenched his cell in his hand, fighting the urge to chuck it at the wall. It seemed like every time he turned around lately, his hours were being cut somewhere. If he believed in God, he’d think it was a punishment.

  Fortunately, the only thing he believed in was karma, and this must be karma coming back around to bite him in the ass.

  He decided to head to his room to take a nap, but before he did, he dug his mother’s letter out of the trash, placing it back on the table to deal with later.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’m not here for Teddy.

  I’m not here for Teddy.

  But damn, no matter how many times he tried to remind himself why he was there, his eyes kept skipping back behind the bar. It was Friday, so Teddy was in blue, but that only highlighted the blue shadows below his eyes. Ian dropped his gaze lower with a frown. Teddy had always been slender, but now, he seemed closer to skeletal. Even through the thin, glittery top, Ian could count his ribs…or nearly.

  “Boss?”

  Ian blinked, reluctantly turning his attention to Johnny. His manager was looking curiously between Ian and Teddy.

  “Do you need something?” Ian asked, voice coming out harsher than he’d meant. He winced and softened it. “Sorry. I spaced out.”

  Johnny smirked, glancing toward Teddy again. “Can’t blame you. I just wanted to let you know that the office phone was ringing. Someone named Sam is asking for you.”

  His spine straightened at the mention of his boss’ name. “I’ll be right there, thank you.” He circled behind the bar, bypassing Teddy to enter his office nook. He’d had it built there intentionally. It was close enough to the bar for him to keep an eye on everything, but thanks to the clever use of lights and shadows, he couldn’t be seen from the club floor.

  He sat behind his desk and picked up the phone. “Ian Romero speaking.”

  “Mr. Romero. The delivery is on track, as scheduled.” Sam’s voice was stern, even through the receiver. Ian could practically see the strict line of his mouth, the closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ian acknowledged his agent’s coded phrase implying that all was going as planned. “Will you be reaching out to new suppliers this week?”

  “I’ll keep you posted. Our investors are hoping to see a quick return on their investment.”

  There was a click, then the line was filled with the sound of a dial tone. Ian replaced the receiver but didn’t leave the office. Instead, he opened his laptop and entered his password to log in. He pulled up the inventory program. He navigated through a series of hyperlinks hidden in a random pattern of items—the third number in the UPC for Redd’s Red Apple Ale, then the ‘B’ in Bacardi Rum, and so on—until he navigated to the sleeper program embedded inside.

  A secondary login box popped up on the screen. He carefully typed in his username and password. It was a one-and-done. No option to re-enter if he tapped the wrong key—the program would just self-destruct until a security team had time to set up a cover and re-install it, costing time and money he couldn’t afford to waste.

  It took a few seconds for the program to boot, then the computer connected him directly to headquarters’ servers. He pulled up the file Tennyson was assembling. It was thinner than Ian would have liked, but he knew he was impatient. Either he was getting better at recognizing the patterns or the La Familia cartel was just sloppy.

  He was hoping for the second, if only to get this done and over with so he could move on with his life.

  The files on known members were easy to access, if only because there weren’t many of them. There were ten confirmed members—four already in police custody and six suspected. They were all low level, or at least seemed to be. Ian had marked two for Tennyson to follow up on. One, Joey Alvarez, was suspected of transporting cocaine during his business trips into Mexico. Rather than arresting him, though, he’d been placed on a watchlist.

  The other, Hugo Ward, was a known enforcer. He’d been arrested for everything from petty theft to assault, but none of the charges had ever stuck.

  He frowned at the attached photograph. He’d flagged this one because there was something uncomfortably familiar about the man. Six-foot-five inches, with corded neck muscles and fists the size of mallets, he wasn’t someone Ian would have spent time with, so the familiarity nagged at him. Had he seen him with his brother, during one of the rare instances he’d spotted Lucas stirring shit up in the neighborhood? Lucas had never introduced him to his so-called friends. Looking back, that probably had been because he knew Ian would never have let him keep hanging around them. If this Hugo had been one of the bastards his brother had been running with, then maybe he knew something about Lucas’ death.

  He hurriedly closed out of the program when someone hesitated in the entrance to his office. Johnny awkwardly cleared his throat. “Hey, boss? Can we get a hand at the bar?”

  “Of course.” Ian closed the laptop and stood. He wished he could lock the laptop up, but since only employees could get behind the bar, and they were all on camera anyway, he knew it would look suspicious. The last thing he wanted was to tip someone in the cartel off that he wasn’t who he said he was.

  He followed Johnny to the unattended bar and started quickly serving drinks, frowning at the number of waiting customers. When the line had dwindled to normal, he pulled Johnny aside and asked, “Where’s Teddy? Why were you the only one behind the bar?”

  Johnny shrugged, his expression betraying his annoyance. “I don’t know. He went on break about thirty minutes ago and never came back.”

  Ian’s frown deepened. That didn’t seem like Teddy. The bartenders were given fifteen-minute break every two hours. He was only fifteen minutes late…but the Teddy he remembered would have hated that.

  “Is that normal for him? He didn’t look like he was feeling well. Have you checked the restroom?” Ian asked, already glancing that way.

  “Nah, we’ve been slammed.” Johnny leaned over the bar and flagged down one of the bouncers. “Dude, can you go check the toilets? We’re missing a bartender.”

  The bouncer—a glance at his name tag named him Deacon—nodded and wandered away. Ian wanted to snap at him to hurry, but he bit it back. He wasn’t there for Teddy. He needed to remember that. Besides, the last thing he needed was for someone to think Teddy was something special to him and use it against him. He’d seen it happen before, back in Chicago, and it wasn’t pretty.

  The bouncer wandered back. “Just a pair of blokes having a good time.”

  Johnny glanced at Ian and shrugged. “Maybe he went home early?”

  “Maybe,” Ian acknowledged, though he still thought Teddy would have said something first. But he didn’t really know Teddy, not anymore. Four years was a long time. He couldn’t expect him to be the same person he’d left behind.

  Still, he couldn’t help scanning the dance floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of familiar blond head that never came.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was funny—not in the ha-ha way—how a night could start out so good and end up going completely to shit. Granted, he considered the night good simply because he wasn’t on the platforms. He was still shit out of luck when it came to picking up another source of income—or paying his rent, or making his next payment. But he’d walked into Envy with a determination to look at the positives. So…if not dancing was the only thing he had going for him, he was damn well going to take it.

  Unfortunately, his good mood only lasted two hours.

  “Alley. Five minutes.” One of the bouncers, Deacon, muttered as he passed the bar, giving Teddy a pointed look. Low man on the totem pole or not, Deak was still a full-fledged member of the La Familia cartel, which put him above Teddy in any way that mattered.

  “My shift’s not over until two,” Teddy protested quietly, scrubbing at a non-existent spill, his heart pounding. Whatever he was needed for in the alley was bound to not be good.

  “And your debt to the cartel
isn’t over until you cough up your payments.” Deak tapped his fingers on the bar. “Alley. Three minutes.”

  Teddy gave a sharp, staccato nod and dropped the cleaning rag into the soiled bucket behind the bar. He rounded it to go to the changing room but Deak gripped his arm tightly to stop him. “No need to change.”

  Teddy cringed, wiping his hands on the booty shorts. “I don’t have shoes.”

  “You won’t need them. Go.”

  Teddy’s nod was small. He picked his way through grinding bodies, ignoring the drunk hands that reached out to prod his skin and grope his ass.

  “Dance with me,” a slurred voice screamed into his ear, large hands wrapping around his hips, nearly pulling him off balance.

  Teddy glared and tugged free. “Hands off!”

  The man was large and reeked of alcohol but wasn’t drunk enough to ignore the house rules. Mainly…don’t touch. The bouncers let it go, if it was clear the dancers didn’t care, but if Teddy made a fuss, the man would be kicked out on his ear immediately. “Bitch,” the man cursed but turned away, setting his eyes on a different twink.

  Teddy skirted the edge of the dance floor and stepped into the narrow hallway to the side. He made his way down the dimly lit passage, bypassing the bathrooms to reach the black door. It was lit only by the neon green of the exit sign. He shoved the push bar and the door opened with the squealing of hinges, spilling him out into the back alley.

  Ian had added a single streetlight to the small parking lot during renovations, which gave the alley an illusion of safety. The parking lot was small, big enough for six cars—or the four cars and one blue SUV it held now. The paint was faded, the asphalt riddled with potholes.

  The entrance to the alley was narrow, wide enough for a single car to pick its way down, and was narrowed farther by the pair of large green dumpsters across from the back door. They were surprisingly neat.

  Three men were spread around them. He recognized Mike from his ginger hair, though he’d only had to deal with him a handful of times over the past few years, but it was impossible not to recognize Hugo. His shoulders were set, his muscles corded in tension, and there was a grimness to his expression that made Teddy hesitate to approach. He let the door fall closed behind him, cutting off the pulsing dance music like a power switch. The alley seemed to hold its breath at the sudden silence.