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I couldn’t get my head straight. The guy had been looking at me like he wanted to eat me whole all night, and I couldn’t honestly say that the feeling wasn’t at least a little mutual. Then he’d what…? Threatened me so weirdly and obliquely that, had he not addressed me by my name—my real name, not only my stage name—I would have just dismissed him another drunk, or high frat boy freak who was too lit to know what he was even saying. But he’d called me Kristina, so I knew it wasn’t just crazy talk. “Mutual interests.” Those were his words. What the fuck had he meant?
Chapter 3
Drew
I’d decided to do exactly what my father had said, and organize my birthday drinks at Rollergirl to get the ball rolling. The sooner I could put an end to the situation with Kristina Sanchez, and move on with my life, knowing my mom and Grampsie were safe from my father’s threats, the better.
It was kind of a seedy hole, but I figured as long as we had booze, we’d have a good time. The fact that it was staffed by hot girls on skates, wearing short shorts and shorter tees was an added bonus. I could barely keep a straight face when I let the guys know, though, especially when Fox and Kane tried to act like they didn’t think I’d taken total leave of my senses. Getting caught up with one of my father’s crooked schemes amounted to sheer madness, so maybe they weren’t too far from the truth.
On a normal day, I’d avoid anything he was doing like the plague. But Victor Cavanagh was nothing if not smart, and ultimately, a master manipulator. He knew exactly which of my buttons to press to get what he wanted from me. He was well aware that I’d do just about anything for my mom, so he had me by the balls when he threatened her. Same with Grampsie.
I gave zero fucks about my personal safety when it came to my father, but the two of them—and to a certain extent, my sister Bella—were my Achilles heel. Not that Bella needed my protection from him. Despite her errant ways, my troubled older sister was by far his favorite child. And although part of me thought he was probably bluffing, another part of me knew that he was every bit evil enough to do exactly what he threatened. If he didn’t get his way, he’d throw both Mom and Grampsie to the wolves, and not look back.
Surprised as they were by my choice of venue, everyone seemed to quickly embrace the idea for what it was—good cheesy fun, and bound to be a source of entertainment, no matter what. Everyone except Xavier, of course, who, if nothing else, could always be relied on to play the asshole card at any given time. My birthday was no exception. Not that I would have expected anything different from him, because there was no card, and he wasn’t playing. He just really was an asshole.
We’d known each other since we were in short pants in prep school, and his MO had always been the same. The dude was a born-again douche. Mostly I ignored his shit, and this was no exception. I let him throw his weight around a little when he first found out, but I didn’t back down. I suspected that was why we’d been friends for as long as we had—and the same reason he didn’t have many other friends from our school days—nobody else knew how to deal with his shit the way I did.
As it had turned out, it had been an “interesting” choice of venue for more reason than one, not the least of which being that while I scoped out Kik/Kristina, Xavier seemed to have something weird going on with our skating server, and it was making him crazier than usual. Not that I could blame him—she was hot with a capital “Holy-Fucking-Shit.”
I wasn’t sure what was going on between the two of them, or if anyone else had noticed, but if Xavier was too much on a normal day, Rocky, our waitress, seemed to bring out his not-at-all-inner psycho even more. The guy was a literal sociopath around her.
In truth, I really only had half an eye on him, as I was way too focused on Kik to overly concern myself with whatever it was that Xavier had going on. Plus, if I knew him, I’d find out soon enough, anyway. I decided to just wait it out and mind my own complicated business, for once, instead of worrying about his shit.
When the announcer introduced Kik—even having seen photos of her prior—I totally wasn’t prepared for what I was about to witness. Not the least of reasons being that my father hadn’t thought to mention the nature of her act, assuming he was aware of it. She was a pole dancer, and Jesus Christ, she could do some shit with her body that had me cross-eyed both with wonder at the possibilities, and with the strain of trying not to come in my pants.
That was the other thing about the photos my dad had shown me. The grainy black-and-white long-lens shots didn’t do her looks justice at all, especially as her face had been partially obscured by a baseball cap in most of them. Turns out she was fucking stunning, but in an almost androgynous, not classically beautiful, totally not my usual type, kind of way.
And as if that fact wasn’t weird enough, I was all kinds of confused by her act. The pole dancing part made some kind of sense until you took into account the fact that she was wearing a tux, and with a name like Kik, the short hair and slightly unisex features, seemed every bit like the teenage boy I’d first assumed her to be. I didn’t get it. Was male pole dancing a thing? And even if it was, why would a chick pretend to be a dude pole dancer when it was more of a female thing anyway? I had no idea what the hell was going on.
Still, regardless of all that, I couldn’t take my fucking eyes off her, whether she was on or off stage. I’d spent the night getting steadily drunker, and trying to work out how I was going to carry out my father’s instructions. Meanwhile, I was watching her like a hawk—probably not very subtly—if the fact that she’d glanced at me a handful of times throughout the night, and each time, I’d been staring at her right back, was anything to go by.
By the time I’d made it backstage at the end of her last set, I was as hard as stone, and drunk as a skunk. Still, I figured there was no time like the present to get what I needed to do done, so that I could get my father off my back, and know that my mother and grandfather weren’t going to be made homeless. Until the next threat, of course.
When I’d barged into the room, I hadn’t had a plan, as such, I’d figured I could play that by ear depending on how the whole thing went down. Not that I’d really properly thought through the possible outcomes of a strange guy following a girl into her dressing room. After the awkward stand-off, where my booze-addled brain couldn’t think past my throbbing dick, as I took in her semi-naked body, it was only the mention of the police that had kicked the drink-induced cobwebs from my mind, and spurred me into action.
I’d taken weird enjoyment in seeing her squirm when I’d used her real name, and could practically hear the cogs of her brain turning as she attempted to piece together who the fuck I was, and more to the point, how I knew who she was. It was a priceless moment. If he’d been capable of feeling any emotion except hate, Victor would have been proud.
I wondered if maybe for the first time ever, my father had misjudged the situation and her. He seemed to think she was a tough nut to crack, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of that so far. She’d looked like a deer in the headlights throughout the entire encounter. Even more so after I’d dropped the name bomb.
And sure, she’d recovered herself eventually, but it had been too little, too late. Plus, her voice had been shaking a little as she yelled. Her tough-girl routine wasn’t even mildly convincing, and the fact was, with the difference in height and build, I could have snapped her like a twig if I’d wanted to. Good thing for her that I’d had no intention of doing so, although there were quite a lot of things I did want to do to her.
I’d backed out of the room, my mind suddenly clearer than it had been all night, and strolled across to the bar, both to get another drink, and to think about what best to do next. More than that, though, it was to buy myself time for my boner to dissipate, so that I didn’t have to go back to our booth, looking like I was sporting wood for one of the guys, or worse still, for one of them to figure out that something was going on with me and Kik.
The shit show with Xavier and the waitress was more than enough drama for us to be dealing with, without adding my crap into the mix. Besides, there was no real way of me telling anyone what was happening without lifting the lid on the whole sorry mess of lies that was my life. and I had neither the mental, nor physical energy to pick that scab at that point in time. Or at any point in the foreseeable future.
The fact that my entire existence was one big charade, as was that of the legendarily perfect Cavanagh family, was a massive bombshell, and one that I didn’t see myself dropping—not even to Xavier—any time soon.
Chapter 4
Kik
Thursdays, along with Mondays, were my favorite days of the week, as they were comparatively easy. Hanging with old Mr. Malcolm and living the life of a retired wealthy octogenarian for eight hours a day, was a pleasure. I accompanied him everywhere, even when he went to play poker with the “boys”, and on his regular dates with old Mrs. Erstwine. Most of the time I felt more like a friend than an employee. A friend who not only happened to be a lot younger than him, but also got paid to be in his company. Not only did I get paid, but I got paid very well.
Though, even if no money changed hands, it was a pleasure to hang out with Ernie—as he insisted I called him. Ernest Maclean Malcolm III was a cool guy now, so I could only imagine how awesome he must have been back in the day when he was in his prime. He would have been my kind of dude for sure. Not for dating—the slick-rich-dude thing really wasn’t my vibe—but definitely for hanging out.
Even at almost ninety, his mind was as sharp as anything, and his tongue was even sharper. Even better, he had a filthy mind, the contents of which he had no qualms about sharing with me whenever the mood took him, which was often. I loved the fact that there was zero need to be on my best behavior around him.
A case in point was the fact that he had a list—an actual written list—of all the women he wanted to nail, and it was long. It made me laugh every time he consulted it. I reality, if he lived to be one hundred and fifty years old, and survived on a diet of spinach like Popeye, and mainlined Viagra, he wouldn’t ever have the time to sleep with that many women, let alone the energy.
