“This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. I had a way to fix it, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle me stripping, so I did what I had to,” I explained.

“Because you were protecting me,” he said, staring at me like I had done something noble instead of something degrading.

“If you weren’t such a crowd-pleaser, I’d fire you,” Dee said from behind me. “We finally get rid of the tattooed guy, and now this? Really? Can’t you tell your boyfriends to stay the hell away when you’re working?”

I started to explain, but Jason took me and pulled me behind him as if he was protecting me from Dee. “You won’t have to deal with it anymore, because she won’t be coming back,” he said.

Dee cocked an eyebrow and a hip, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Is that so?”

I opened my mouth to say no.

“Yes, it is. Jess is done here,” Jason said.

I had to do something. “No, Jason, stop,” I said, struggling to get around him. “You can’t come in here and do this. I have bills to pay, and this pays them. You can’t just—”

“Do you love me, Jess?” he asked, interrupting me.

Why was he asking me this? He knew I loved him. I’d told him that already.

“Do you love me?” he repeated as I stared at him.

“You know I do,” I finally replied.

“Say it,” he said.

I didn’t have time for this. I had said it once and he hadn’t said it back. I wasn’t saying it again. I had a job to save. “I don’t see what that—”

“Say it, Jess,” he pleaded, pulling me close to him. His voice had dropped to that sexy deep sound that always made me melt.

“I love you,” I said, unable to tell him no.

“I love you more. And I won’t let one more man see what belongs to me again. I will take care of it. Everything. Your mother will have the absolute best medical care available. I won’t argue with you about it. That’s how it’s going to be. I’m taking care of you because you’re the reason I wake up in the morning, and when you took that reason away from me I was miserable. Fucking miserable. I never want to feel like that again.”

“You love me?” I repeated, still stuck on that part of everything he’d just said.

A grin tugged at his lips. “More than life,” he said.

“Really?” I asked, needing to hear it again.

“Oh, for chrissake, he said it already. He loves you. Get your clothes and get going. I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t have a prince charming running after you to save the day.” Dee’s voice reminded me that we weren’t alone. I turned to look at her, and she nodded toward the back door. “Go on. You never belonged here to begin with,” she said, and turned to walk away.

“Let’s go,” Jason said in my ear.

“You can’t just pay for my mother’s medical bills. It isn’t right,” I argued. “You don’t even have the money. Your mother does, and she hates me. She tried to pay me to break up with you.”

“She what?” he asked.

Crap. I hadn’t meant to say that. “She, uh … The day after you left me last time. She came by my house and offered me money to break up with you and disappear. I didn’t take it and I told her no. Then I found out about Momma that night, so she got her wish anyway.”

Jason took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. “She offered you money?” he repeated in disbelief.

I just nodded. She was really going to hate me now.

“Why didn’t you take it? When you found out about your momma, why didn’t you take it? Why did you do this?” he said, looking around him with distaste.

“I couldn’t take money to break up with you. I love you. I couldn’t do that,” I said, thinking that this was self-explanatory.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just held me against him. “Let’s go,” he finally whispered.

“I can’t. Your mother won’t pay my mother’s bills,” I reminded him.

“I wouldn’t touch my mother’s money. Besides, she’s about to take a hit to her allowance. Jax owes me, and I have no doubt he’s waiting for me to call him with this specific request.”

I couldn’t have him ask his brother for that kind of money. “No. I won’t let you do that. I love that you want to help me, but I can’t let you ask your brother to give you that kind of money.”

Jason frowned. “Give me? Hell, Jax won’t give me shit. He loans me stuff, but he won’t be giving me anything. When I turn twenty-three, my grandfather’s entire estate will become mine per his last will and testament. Jax is keeping tabs on what I’ll owe him in a couple of years, I assure you. But I’ve got more money in the bank than that rock star brother of mine, and he knows it.”

JASON

Jess was wrapped up in my coat and sitting quietly while I drove her truck. She hadn’t said much since we’d left the club. Seeing her on that stage and hearing the men around me talking about her tits had all hit me at one time. I had acted on impulse, needing to protect her. Now I had her out of there, it was all starting to sink in, and I wanted to break something.

She should never have had to do that, but it had been her means of survival. It was all she knew to do, and she had been willing to do whatever she had to in order to help her momma. Everything but take money from my mother. Because she loved me.

I wished she had taken the money from my mother. I wouldn’t even be mad about it right now. I would have been fucking relieved that she had had money to take care of her mother and that she was still safely in her home.

“Here,” she said, breaking the silence, and I glanced at the run-down apartments to my left. It was just getting worse. I pulled into the parking lot, and the darkness surrounding the place from the burnt-out streetlights wasn’t helping me deal with this. I turned off the truck and sat there, staring straight ahead.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“A little over three weeks,” she said softly.

“What time do you get home at night?”

She fidgeted with her hands in her lap. “About three,” she finally said.

She was fine. Nothing had happened to her. She was alive. I kept reminding myself over and over again that she was okay.

“Jason?” Her voice sounded unsure.

I shifted my gaze to hers. “Yeah.”

“I carry Mace with me when I go from the truck to the apartment, and Momma has a gun. There are three locks on the door,” she said, trying to reassure me.

“Let me get your door,” I told her, and opened the truck door. Kane had already parked the limo and was walking over to us. He was going to make sure we made it safely inside. Even Kane saw the danger here. It wasn’t just me being overprotective.

“I’m getting them out of here tomorrow,” I told him as I walked over to get her door.

“Good” was his single response.

I opened her door and helped her down. She pulled the coat tightly around her and let me lace my fingers through hers as she led me up the stairs and then to the far corner of the building. She opened the door. I had prepared myself for the inside, but seeing it was still hard to deal with.

“I need to get a shower,” she said, looking around unsure of what I was planning on doing. There small room with one sofa had a mini kitchen attached to it. Then two doors. One had to be the bedroom and the other the bathroom. They were sharing a room.

“Go take a shower. I’ll be out here,” I told her, nodding to the sofa.

“It takes me a while. I like to get … clean,” she said, the last word so soft I almost missed it. The meaning behind her words made my heart feel as if it had exploded. She thought she was dirty.

“Okay,” I said, and when she turned to go to the bathroom, I followed behind her. She glanced back at me when she reached the door.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to bathe you,” I told her, and didn’t wait for her to say anything more. I stepped into the bathroom and found the light switch. The small room had a tiny shower in the corner.

“It’s too small for both of us,” she said.