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Devin wandered down the sidewalk in a haze of confusion.
Paper bag clutched to her chest in a crumpled wad, she paid no attention to the bustling pedestrians who passed her. Knocked about by handbags and shoulders, she whirled on one such vicious impact to have her back slammed against the rough brick of a building. Taking a moment of refuse in the cool shade of the awning, she tried to process the last two hours.
The money they’d given her was more than enough for a taxi home. Somehow, she’d avoided Hart and his notices, escaping into her apartment with only bumping into the chattering teens from the floor below her. Devin scrubbed herself raw for the third time that day, then dressed in the well-worn safety of clothes that had become far more loose these past few months. Tennis shoes, more gray than white, gave a sense of stability she clung to. Another taxi took her to the clinic, though Devin couldn’t say why. She could have left, gone to Ashley’s, and begged for the very real safety she could provide.
In fact, she’d thought about it during the entire humiliating process of explaining what she needed and the following exams. How she would just go to Ashley’s lush apartment and wait at the door like a lost puppy. The words she practiced seemed effortless within her thoughts, yet even trying to mutter them aloud while getting dressed once the nurse finished with all the poking and prodding made her stomach sour.
Chest tight, hands shaking, she’d accepted the packets of pills in their innocuous white paper bag.
Devin startled, wrenched back into the moment by the jarring peal of the bell from the door she stood beside. Casting her gaze away the moment she identified the woman as an Alpha, Devin collapsed in on herself to make a smaller target of attention. She didn’t release the breath she held until the suited female strode off into the stream of people.
Checking her watch, Devin realized she’d lost far more time than she’d thought. Twenty minutes gone despairing her circumstances, and all of it with nothing new to be gained. Inhaling and exhaling a controlled breath, she quick-stepped through the fast-moving crowd towards the curb to hail a cab. More time to spend in fruitless contemplation, except what should have taken forever happened within seconds. A cab pulled right up to her raised arm, the man inside slinging an arm over the backseat with raised brows.
This couldn’t be happening.
The one time she didn’t want a taxi to appear, one did. Devin’s shoulders collapsed as she yanked open the door to fall into the backseat. Without even looking at the driver, she slammed the door shut and gave him Wicked’s address.
Traffic would no doubt give her the time she needed to dwell on it all, to come to her senses and run as fast as she could back to Elmbrook Gorge. The cramped quarters of her parents’ mobile home would do for a time, at least until she found a job. There, no one would know of her troubles in the big city, and the small clothing shop she worked at as a teenager might still be open. She’d find a nice Beta and settle down in her own trailer, with a scrubby lawn and plastic chairs out front. Might even find a decent Alpha. Maybe.
Maybe pigs would fly, because even traffic couldn’t keep her from returning to Wicked with undue haste. The cab flew through the city streets, the driver speeding around turns and slipping through yellow lights as if his entire life depended on getting her back to that Gods awful building sooner rather than later. Long before Devin could even grasp what she was walking back into, the taxi pulled up to the curb of the nightclub where the line to get in was already snaking its way down the block.
After slipping a sweat stained bill through the cash drawer with a distracted insistence the cabby keep the change, Devin clambered out of the backseat to peer around in amazement. The sun had yet to set, and people dressed in their sluttiest finery fidgeted and squirmed to get inside. Makeup garish, the glittering dresses and loud patterned shirts were far more than jarring in the light of day. What appeared normal if obnoxious within the strobing lights of the club looked foolish and almost laughable outside.
Shaking her head, Devin shoved her crumpled paper bag into the waist of her jeans as she wound her way through the milling foot traffic. She should have grabbed a purse, a bag, something to hide the evidence of her downfall as she dashed between a pair of primping Betas to approach the bouncer at the door.
“What the fuck!”
“You can’t cut the line, grungy bitch!”
The verbal assault rained down on Devin as she turned wide eyes from the massive muscles of the bouncer to the crowd behind her. Worn tennis shoe grinding against the rough pavement, she was already turning to flee when the bouncer laid a heavy palm on her shoulder and urged her into the dim entryway. His gleaming pate shone red then blue under the neon lights, his narrowed gaze appearing black in the shifting colors. Free hand going to his collar, he tipped his chin down to murmur into a mic attached at his collar.
“Devin, right?” The man hunched down to bring their face a bit more level, a sweet smile spreading his thin lips wide.
“Y-Yes. I’m sorry, I—” Devin flinched, cowering against the door as someone from the crowd sent a takeout cup full of dark liquid sailing through the air towards them.
“I’m Jackson, party manager and sometimes door wrangler.” He took her shoulder again, pulling her out of the way as the door flew open and several bulky males flooded from the wild lights and thumping bass of the club. “Chrissy forgets the front end shit all the time. Sorry about that. Next time, go to the side door after opening, okay?”
“O-Okay?”
“Chrissy’s on her way. Why don’t you head inside and wait in the lobby.”
Jackson gave Devin a gentle nudge, smile still patient and sweet as candy. Only then did Devin realize he wasn’t an Alpha, but a Beta teeming with enough pharmaceuticals to give him the bulky physique of one. Returning his smile with a considerable amount of trepidation, Devin went inside the club.
Chrissy rounded the corner just as Devin cleared the inner doors, the angular features of her face in sharp relief as she pursed her lips tight.
“So sorry, honey,” Chrissy said, linking arms with Devin and tugging her into motion. “I thought you’d be back before the zoo showed up. You okay?”
“I’m fine…” Giving Chrissy a sideways glance, Devin didn’t know what to make of all this. No one ever made such a fuss over her, and to not blame her for whatever happened? It astounded Devin to no end.
Following Chrissy into the club proper, Devin gasped as the beat slammed into her chest. Knocked senseless in her rattled state, she didn’t even realize where they were going until the music faded as they headed down the hall of the second floor to yet another office, this one far less spacious and lacking the rows of liquor bottles. Faded metal with peeling paint reigned supreme over a chaos of stacked papers, the entire rainbow represented in folders and memo slips. Hundreds of sticky notes in neon hues affixed to the near wall fluttered with a rushing sigh in the wake of the door closing.
Devin released a shuddering sigh as she looked at the seeming disorder, already trying to pick apart Chrissy’s system. And there was one, despite the disarray to the untrained eye. Devin had seen dozens of offices just like this, where one misplaced piece of paper sent the owner into a rage.
“So, they said you had experience?” Chrissy folded her arms as she leaned against a dented cabinet.
“Accounting in a few places, some clerical work. Other odds and ends.”
“Okay, so the system…”
