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 hearing 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.