I’m speeding a whole lot faster than I should on my way to the bar where I last saw Eric. I went to Nikki’s apartment, but she wasn’t home, and she still isn’t answering her phone. Every time I call, it goes straight to voicemail, and every text I send is unanswered. The only idea I have now is to try and figure out where that friend of hers, Alyssa, lives, and just drop by unannounced and see if she’s there. And the only way I can even hope to think of doing that is through Eric.
Thankfully, Eric is tending bar when I arrive. His eyes light up when he sees me come over, and he immediately starts preparing me a drink, but I quickly signal him to stop. This seems to puzzle him. I lean over the bar and motion for him to come closer.
“How you doing, man?” he asks. “Missed you the other night. Figured your evening must have gone…well. Did it?”
“You could say that.” I nod. “Ended up taking one of the dancers home with me.”
Eric’s eyes light up. He reaches over and gives me a pat on the shoulder. “Hell yeah! Look at you, buddy! What company are you CEO of?” He laughs.
I can’t help but smirk slightly. “In fact, she and I…we’ve got something going actually.”
“Seriously?”
I nod. “But there’s been a little…misunderstanding. She won’t answer my calls or texts, and she’s not at her apartment. I’m pretty sure she’s staying with a friend of hers – the girl who got her the job at the mansion. You know this girl, a girl named Alyssa?”
“Alyssa, Alyssa…” Eric mutters, as though shuffling a Rolodex of women through his mind. Then, something sparks and he snaps his fingers. “Yeah! Yeah, I think I do. If it’s the girl I’m thinking of, she dates a guy who works here…”
Eric pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his photos until he finds the one he’s looking for. “Is this her?” He shows me a photo of Alyssa standing next to a tall guy with tattoos and his arm around her, both of them standing by a cliff at one of those touristy spots where people go to take pictures.
“That’s her.” I nod.
“And you need her address?” Eric asks, sounding like my co-conspirator in a secret government plot.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure my girl is over there right now,” I reply. “I’ve got to go see her and straighten this mess out.”
Eric nods knowingly, a smile on his lips. “Give me two minutes.”
Before I can respond, he vanishes through the doors into the kitchen, leaving me standing alone by the bar. It’s early in the evening, so there aren’t many people here yet, and without a drink in my hand, all I have are my thoughts to occupy my mind. And that’s great right now.
What must be running through Nikki’s mind right now? What could Cheryl have possibly said to her while they were alone together? Based on the way she was behaving on her way out, I can’t even imagine.
During our time together, Cheryl and I rarely ever fought, but when we did, they got pretty nasty. Cheryl knew just how to hit me where it hurt – how to get under my skin and poke me where I was vulnerable. To think that I wasn’t there to shield Nikki from her and any of her potential manipulation and games makes me sick.
My heart is aching – absolutely aching. Normally, after an incident with Cheryl like the one I just experienced, I would still be running things over and over in my mind, making myself angrier and angrier. But not today. Today, all I can think about is Nikki. All of my concern is on her, how she’s feeling and what I need to do to straighten things out with her.
And it’s that realization that makes me understand that I’ve completely fallen in love with her. And despite everything I’m feeling right now, I can’t help but smile.
I’m going to fix this.
Just then, the doors to the kitchen open, and Eric emerges with a torn slip of paper in his hand. He passes it to me. “There you go,” he says. “Alyssa’s address. You didn’t get it from me.”
“I didn’t?”
He leans close. “Pilfered it out of the bar’s computer system. The one where we keep addresses on file for recent deliveries. Boss finds out I did that and he’ll plant his foot up my ass.”
I glance down at the address, then grin up at Eric and return him a hearty slap on the shoulder, similar to the one he gave me earlier. “Don’t worry, buddy. Your secret’s safe with me.”
I can actually say I’m nervous as I pull up to the address Eric gave me to Alyssa’s apartment, but I waste no time getting out of my car. There are two units, but it’s pretty clear which one is Alyssa’s – unless Unit 1 with the large framed Rambo picture on the door and the large set of steel balls on the knocker is somehow hers.
So, I go ahead and knock on the door to Unit 2, and after a few seconds, it opens to reveal Alyssa standing there, arms crossed, looking seriously angry.
“So, a fiancée, huh?”
My heart sinks. I brace myself against the wall and look down at my feet. “Oh my fucking God,” I mutter. “So that’s what she told her…”
“You know, I actually blame myself for this,” Alyssa says. “If I hadn’t gone to the bar that night and talked you into getting together with Nikki–”
“I’m not engaged, Alyssa,” I say firmly, raising my eyes and looking at her with every ounce of persuasion in me.
“Oh, bullshit!”
“It’s not,” I reply. “That was my ex-girlfriend. She came over to see me. I couldn’t tell you why, but I was at work, and she ran into Nikki and clearly made up some sort of bullshit about us.”
“Why would she do that?” Alyssa asks.
“To fuck with me?” I shrug. “I don’t know, but I need to talk to Nikki. I don’t want her hurting over this, Alyssa. Please.”
Alyssa chews her lip for a moment. I can see her contemplating. I just want to rush past her into the apartment, but I feel like that would only make things worse right now.
“Come on, Alyssa. You seriously think that’s the kind of man I am?”
“How the hell did you even get here?” she asks, but before I get a chance to respond, a look comes over her face. “Ah…Eric.”
“Five minutes, Alyssa,” I persist. “If she doesn’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave, okay?”
Alyssa thinks again for a moment, then shrugs with a sigh and moves aside. “Okay, but I don’t think…well, I don’t think this is going to go like you think it’s going to.”
I smile and step past her. “Thank you!”
As I enter the living room, I notice a man, middle-aged, completely passed out on the couch. His greasy hair is matted across his face, and he has a beer bottle clutched to his chest and is gently snoring.
I move quickly past him to the bedroom, where I find Nikki standing with her back to me. My chest swells, and my heart fills with happiness – that is until I see what’s happening.
Nikki is wearing gorgeous, clearly expensive lingerie, and is facing a large mirror where she’s doing her makeup. Her hair is already done, and there is a selection of heels on the floor beside her.
There’s only one reason she would be getting all dressed up like this, and that’s to be going out for the one job she told me she would never be doing again: working at the mansion.
“What – what are you doing, Nikki?” I ask, my voice low.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she replies, not even turning to look at me. “I’m getting ready for work.”
I don’t even know what to do. The reactions that come over me are almost impossible to process at once.
My heart sinks yet fills with anger and jealousy at the same time. My stomach twists and fills with knots. I experience a massive adrenaline dump and am overcome with such confusion, but at the same time, I feel as though I’ve just been stabbed in the heart with a serrated dagger.
“Work?” I somehow manage to say, forcing the word from my lips. “But I thought…I thought you were all done with that?”
“Yeah, well, my dad”—she points over her shoulder into the living room, and I immediately put two and two together. The man on the couch is her father—“put himself into debt again and needs more money, so…”
“Nikki, that’s not your responsibility–”
“And I thought you were single.”
“I am single!” I blurt out, the words spilling from my lips accompanied by an ocean of pain and rage. “Cheryl is my ex-girlfriend!”
“Uh huh.”
“She ran off on me with my lawyer,” I exclaim, doing my best not to shout the words as the emotion builds and builds within me. “I haven’t even been with a woman since her.”
I don’t have a clue what girls do to do their makeup, but I do see her hand briefly pause before she goes back to whatever it is she was doing.
“Why would she lie to me, Russell?” she asks. “She doesn’t even know me.”
“To screw with me?” I suggest. “She tried to seduce me when I came back to the house and found her in my bedroom.”
She pauses again. This time, she glances at me in the mirror. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Seriously. She was even still wearing the engagement ring I gave her that I’ve been asking for her to return for months now.”
Despite everything that’s going on right now, my eyes are still drawn to her unparalleled beauty. Even though I know she’s dressing up to go back to work at the mansion, I can’t help but drag my eyes up and down her incredible physique.
The protective instincts inside me come alive. There’s absolutely no way I can let this girl go back there. Not tonight. Not ever.
She’s mine.
It simply cannot happen.
I have to make her understand that what happened back at my house between her and Cheryl was complete nonsense, and that she and I are meant to be together. And I think that deep down, she understands that too.
“Listen, Russell, I get it,” she says, averting her gaze. “You’re a good guy, and you feel guilty.”
“What?”
“You were my teacher way back when, you feel like you didn’t handle my first time well, and now you feel bad for not being home when Cheryl showed up,” she continues. “So you want to come and apologize.”
“No,” I reply, completely flabbergasted. “Nikki, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.”
I step forward, hoping to draw her eyes, but she won’t look at me. She just continues doing her makeup.
“Nikki, the reason I came here tonight was because I care about you.” I can’t help myself any longer. I reach out and grab her by the waist and spin her around, forcing her to face me. “You should have seen me when I got home and realized what happened. I kicked her out, then I sped over to your place, just to find you not home. I was frantically calling you, texting you, and then I drove to the bar, praying Eric would be working and that he’d know how to get Alyssa’s address so I could come over here and that you’d be here so I could talk to you.”
A hint of softness comes across Nikki’s face. It isn’t much, but it’s there. She places her hands on my wrists as though her next move might be to push me away, but she doesn’t. She allows me to continue holding her.
“You…you did all that?”
I smile. “How do you think I got over here?”
Nikki thinks a moment, then a tiny blush comes over her cheeks, and the corners of her lips twist upward. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”
I squeeze her sides just enough to make her jump and try to wriggle away, but I hold her strong. “And you know why I did all that, gorgeous?” I ask her. She shakes her head. I can see the defenses coming down now. Joy begins to swell within me. “Because I love you.”
She wasn’t expecting that.
Her eyes go wide, and her jaw drops. A visage of innocence comes over her face, and she moves closer, so close our bodies are nearly pressing against each other.
“Russell…”
“I know you may have trust issues from your father,” I say softly. “But I promise you, baby, you will never have to worry about trusting me. I will always be there for you.” I notice a T-shirt lying on the bed and pick it up. I take a step back and lift it up over her head. She looks confused for a moment, then smiles and raises her arms up, and I slip it down over and on.
It goes on backwards, and we both laugh. “And you will never, ever have to go back to work at that mansion again,” I tell her. “Not so long as I’m around.”
Nikki lets out a deep sigh and collapses into my arms. I hold her against my chest, relishing in the warmth of her body, feeling every breath she takes as I run my hand through her hair.
This is it. This is our life. This is where she belongs.
“I’m so sorry,” she whimpers. “I never should have believed some woman I don’t even know.”
“It’s all right,” I reply. “It’s over now.”
She looks up, and I can see the tears beginning to form in her eyes. “I love you too, Russell. I’ll never leave you again ever.”
