A gasp escaped my mouth as I knew exactly what stone he was talking about; it was my favorite. The one I had more drawings of than any other sketch in my collection.

“I was going to ask you what the hell you were doing, but when I saw you were wearing ear buds and completely lost in your drawing, I decided to observe you instead. I couldn’t get over the fact that your hair looked soft as silk or the way you tilted your head slightly to the side and bit your bottom lip as you tried to caress your paper with just the right shadowing. When you got up, I followed you to your next stop, and that’s when you stopped here and started talking to your parents about your life and the trouble you were going through. At that moment, I knew my mom brought you to me to help, to save.”

My heart was pounding rapidly as I tried to take in everything that Jett was saying to me, but it was all too much to think about. He believed his mom brought us together? His mom’s grave was my favorite in the cemetery? To say I was creeped the fuck out was an understatement.

I didn’t get him. At this moment, his eyes spoke to me and cared for me, but what about the last couple of days? I was used to Kace being hot and cold with me, but when it came to Jett, I couldn’t handle his emotional mood swings because I cared too damn much when he looked at me with those soulful eyes…those eyes that made me promises the owner couldn’t keep.

Shaking my head and getting up off the ground, I started to walk backwards to put distance between me and him. Coincidences I believed in, but outright fate? I had a harder time with that.

“Where are you going?” Jett asked, as he walked toward me.

“Don’t touch me,” I flailed my arms, trying to block off any form of him holding onto me like a lunatic. “I can’t be here right now. I can’t listen to you talk to me as if the last couple of days haven’t been torture, as if you actually care about me.”

“I do care about you…”

My head snapped up to look at him. “No, you don’t. If you cared about me, you never would have dropped me like you did. You never would have made me feel like a cheap whore that you were tired of. I have been paid for sex many times, but never once did I ever feel cheap and used. But, after you refused to even be near me the past couple of days, you made me feel like a used slut that you were too good to be with.”

“That was not my intention.”

“Then what was?” I asked, as my chest heaved from being too worked up.

Jett opened his mouth to answer, but then shut it as he was racking his brain to figure out what to say. Too little too late, I thought, as I huffed and stormed off. In the far distance, I could hear him call my name, but I didn’t listen. I just continued forward; I had a date to make.

Chapter Thirty Nine

“Thinking About You”

Jett

Fuck me.

What possessed me to tell Goldie why I picked her? I never told anyone about my mom, besides Kace, but that fucker could care less, so why did I tell Goldie? Why did I even follow her to the cemetery in the first place? I’ve been doing a good job of keeping my distance, staying away from her maneating ways, but for the life of me, when I observed her from my third floor window walking in the direction of the cemetery, I had to follow her; I had to see her.

I remembered the day I saw Goldie specifically. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts, an oversized T-shirt with a boy band on the front and a sad looking pair of Converse. She was tapping her foot to music I couldn’t hear, but could tell made her happy because the smile on her face as she drew the intricate curves of my mom’s grave fascinated me. The way her fingers stroked against her thick drawing paper urged me to get to know her, to have her fingers make the same strokes on my body. Little did I know, once I followed her, that she was going to need me more than I was going to need her, but at the moment, I wondered if it was the other way around. I refused to acknowledge that thought and continued to convince myself that the infatuation I had with the smart-mouthed girl was because she was new and she was different; that was it.

 I walked back to the Lafayette Club, replaying the conversation I had with Goldie just moments ago, as I chastised myself for confessing to her about how I thought we were brought together by my fucking dead mom’s spirit.

What. The. Hell.

It was a little intense. I didn’t quite expect her to run away from me, but I didn’t expect for her to fly into my fucking arms either, not like I wanted her to or anything.

Shit.

What the fuck was I thinking? I actually wasn’t thinking. I hadn’t been thinking since the moment I buried my fingers into that sweet pussy of hers. She bewitched me that night with the way she responded to my touch, the innocent looks she gave me, and the way she thanked me for saving her. That night, she drove a wedge into me and staked her claim.

Now I was in a hell of a spot as I fought for my own sanity and losing Goldie. I knew the distance I put between us was hurting her, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her up. Instead, I called up Babs and Pepper and talked to them…fucking talked to them!

When the hell did I ever talk? We didn’t talk about me, we just talked about their future and what they planned on accomplishing after they left the Lafayette Club. Babs wanted to design her own makeup line named after her Jett Girl name. She had mock ups of all her designs for packaging and started mixing her own colors for eye shadow. I didn’t know much about the makeup side of things, but I sure as hell knew how to help her market herself and that’s what we’ve been working on the past couple of nights.

Babs was on her way out and I couldn’t be happier with the way she’d turned her life around. She was my first-ever recruit and I was sad to see her go, but proud she was able to accomplish something while she was here. It meant what I was doing for these girls was actually something good.

I started walking up the stairs to the third floor when I stopped at the second floor landing where Kace was sitting, staring straight ahead at me. He stood up, grabbed my arms and ushered me up the rest of the steps. By the time I reached the top, I shook off his hands and pushed him to the side. The man had the ability to kill with one punch, but he didn’t bother me. I knew I could stand my ground with him.

“Watch it,” I said, as I stood a couple paces away from him.

Kace paced the floor of the third floor landing as he said, “Do you know what you are doing to her? Do you realize you are pushing her completely away, to the point that she is going to leave the club to go back to her old life? Is that what you really want?”

“She told you that?”

“She said she didn’t know if she could stay. Where else would she go if she didn’t have the club? She doesn’t have parents to lean on and her only friend is the one from Kitten’s Castle. You are driving her back to her old life, the complete opposite of your goal here.”

I blew out an exasperated breath as I headed to my office to grab a drink. Once I had a handle on some bourbon, I whirled on Kace and said, “What the hell am I supposed to do? She is…she’s too much for me.”

“Shocker. I fucking told you she wasn’t the girl for this club. Now, not only have you hurt her, but she is probably going to be worse off because she won’t be able to get her old job back after the way you told off her old boss. You have made her life a living hell.”

“I’ll give her as much money as she wants.”

“You really think she is going to take your money? You are more delusional than I thought.”

“What?” I shrugged my shoulders, “She took Rex’s money.” The minute the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them instantly. She was right, I did treat her like a whore. I was about to take a drink of my bourbon to sooth the aching burn in my chest when I was pinned against the wall. Kace’s forearm cut off my throat as his other hand pushed against my shoulders. I dropped my glass and upper-cutted my fist into his stomach, making him buckle over.