“Texas salad,” he laughs, sipping from his drink. “Little bit of everywhere. I think I was born in Lubbock; somewhere around there, at least. Picked up a little something from everywhere I went: Odessa, Galveston, spent a couple months in Abilene. Then there was Austin and Dallas.”
“You moved around a lot. Military family?”
He shakes his head. “Foster care. Got shipped around a lot, sent back. Didn’t spend more than six months in one place until I got adopted, a couple months after my twelfth ‘birthday.’”
Something shatters in my heart when he tells me that. I always thought of kids being in the system as babies who wouldn’t remember what it was like before they found a permanent family, but twelve? And theysent him back?
“How long were you in the system?” I brave asking him.
“Since I was a couple days old, I think. I was a firehouse baby; too clean to be fresh, but too squishy to be more than a week old.”
He said everywhere that hewent. Not everywhere that helived.
For twelve years, he neverlivedanywhere.
“That must have been horrible.”
He shrugs, draping his hand over my thigh in a way that sends liquid heat pouring through my veins. “I think I turned out alright.”
His tone is cool, relaxed in a way that makes it hard for me to tell if he just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, or if he’s really just that fine with where he came from and what I can only imagine he went through. Maybe he’s just had enough time that it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’ll drag it out of him one of these days.
Extending my arms toward the table and making a grabbing gesture with my hands, I put on my best pout. “Drink please?”
Eric throws me a sideways look, shaking his head and pulling his lips together to try to keep from smiling as he reaches forward to grab the bottle of champagne from the table and hand it to me. “You’re something else,” he tells me.
“I’m adorable.”
I haven’t been this happy to be at work in so long. I actually look forward to coming in now, simply because I know that Eric will be here, at his table, waiting for me. I know that there will be no pressure to be anyone other than myself, or to do anything that I don’t want to do. I know that I’ll be safe. I still worry, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, that Nash will show up and kick him out or even transfer me to a different club because he gets off on us not enjoying our time here –somethingthat will make the other shoe drop.
I’ve been in self-preservation mode for so long that when I walk up these stairs and see him every night that I’m here, it feels like I’m being given an oxygen mask. It’s like I can finally take a deep breath without choking on some hidden toxin hanging in the air around me.
I feel Eric tense before I see the reason why. Ethan’s blond head bobs up the stairs and he heads straight for us, inspecting each section in a way not unlike I did when I first saw the VIP section cleared out. As he rounds the corner, I throw my legs off of Eric’s lap, reaching for an empty flute to performatively pour champagne into.
“I thought you said all of the tables were bought out,” Ethan says as he approaches.
Eric doesn’t give me a chance to speak before saying, “They were. I don’t like to share space with people I don’t know.”
That might be the only lie that I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth.
“Do you want a drink?” I interject, holding the flute out to Ethan, and Eric shoots me a look as if to ask who the girl in front of him is and what the fuck did she do with Sophia...Er, withNoelle.
But the truth is, I know that I’m in the wrong. I know that I should not be sitting here alone every night with the guy that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since the day that I met him. I know that I shouldn’t be letting him touchme, I shouldn’t be touching him, even if we’re not doing anything physical together. I should be staying far away from him, because whatever exists between us goes so far beyond being physical; the feelings that I have for him could not be further from platonic.
But he sees me.
He knows me.
He issafe.
“No, I don’t want a goddamn drink, Sophia,” Ethan hisses, and I cringe at the sound of my real name dripping off of his tongue like a poison. “I want to know what the fuck you’re doing with this guy. Is he buying time with you every night?”
“Alright,” Eric says, bringing himself to a standing position. His tone is dark; warning. His six-foot-six frame towers over Ethan’s. “This is the oneand onlytime I’m gonna warn you about speaking disrespectfully to her.” He moves around the table so fluidly, it’s almost like an art form, until his body is practically touching Ethan’s. “She’s at work, and now you’re bothering her. So what you’re gonna do is apologize, then turn your little ass around and walk out of here before this gets ugly.”
“Sophia,” Ethan says past him, “are you serious?”
“I’m working, Ethan,” I sort of, kind of, definitely lie. “Nash will kill me if you make a scene up here. Can we talk about this when I’m off? I’ll call you.”
Eric’s body tenses again, his fists visibly balling in the pockets of his dark wash jeans, the cords in his arms flexing with the motion. So that animalistic side of him that I love so much doesn’t just come out in the bedroom - or in the alleyway. It comes out when he’s feeling protective, too.
