Page 11 of Dancing With Doubt

6

Roxie

“Okay, you have to pay attention to how I use my thigh muscles to control my descent,” Roxie said, a month after her lunch date with June. “This will give you bruises so prepare yourselves.”

She grinned as she relaxed the same muscles she’d just warned her students about and slid down the pole. A quick flex and she stopped with an almost painful grip on her skin. Yeah, there would be bruises.

Her captive audience clapped as if she hadn’t just done something that wasn’t second nature to her by now. They were new members of the dance studio so to them it probably did seem miraculous. She’d managed to get a few nights of teaching at the studio lined up and so far, quite a few students in. It was probably too soon to show them this move but they’d all begged Roxie to know how it was done so she’d agreed.

She let her thighs go and stopped herself just before she reached the floor. “We’ll practice that move a little more later, but that should give you an idea of how it’s done.”

The ladies, all over eighteen and eager to learn, flooded around her to bombard her with questions. Roxie enjoyed their enthusiasm and was trying to answer them all when another face walked into the studio, one she was far too familiar with and hoped she’d never see again. Her stomach dropped and her throat went tight as someone grabbed her hand.

His face was almost black with anger, twisted with a rage she definitely didn’t deserve. Roxie glanced back to see which of the ladies had her hand and saw it was a woman she knew as Keily. It didn’t matter which of the women it was, it only mattered that one of them was there for her.

“You owe me, bitch!” Nathan shouted and the women that hadn’t noticed him yet, all turned as one to face the savage voice.

“I don’t owe you shit, Nathan. Get out.” Roxie stood her ground in black stiletto boots, a pair of black denim shorts that barely covered her ass, and a loose white t-shirt. She felt powerful with those boots on, like she could stab his foot with one of the pointed heels. It helped that she had a wall of women behind her.

“I think you owe me quite a lot. I bought you shit while we were together.” He paused, his eyes rolling up to the ceiling as if he were watching a bug fly around his head before he went back to speaking. “Yeah, I even bought you some tampons once. And other shit too. I want all of my money back.”

He started to scratch at his neck like a dog with a bad case of fleas, which made the scowl and twisted look on his face seem totally harmless. Roxie knew she had to stand her ground, not just to show these ladies how to deal with unruly clients, but because backing down would make him bolder.

“Fuck off, Nathan. You got all the money you’re getting out of me. I don’t have any more to give to you. In fact, I have nothing else to give to you, so beat it. I’ve got a class to teach and you’re in the way.”

“I’m not leaving, Roxie. Not until you give me something.” His face wasn’t twisted anymore, it was filled with panic and a manic look in his eyes that made her wonder just how unbalanced he was. Or was it drugs? It was probably drugs.

Roxie gasped in surprise when he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together. “Please Roxie. I just need enough for a fix. I mean, just something, anything. It hurts, Roxie, please?”

Roxie might have helped him if he’d admitted that he had a problem a long time ago, if he’d walked out of jail and into rehab, but this shit? No, she wasn’t having it. “No, Nathan. Leave.”

“You’d better leave, or I’m going to call 911 and get the law out here on your ass.” Keily, a transplant from somewhere else in South Carolina if Roxie was remembering correctly, went full country on Nathan, right down to holding out her phone and waving it at him with her lips pursed and her blonde head tilted to the side.

“Nathan.” Roxie started to say, but he didn’t let her answer. Instead, he sprung up from the floor with a growl and slammed Roxie into the mirrored wall behind her. Roxie’s head hit the glass so hard her ears rang, and the mirror shattered. She slid to the floor, her sight going dark around the edges until there was almost no light left at all.

“Look what you made me do, you bitch. You couldn’t just give me some money, could you? You always thought you were better than me, even though you whore for a living.” Nathan shouted, but Roxie didn’t really hear him. Her head was spinning.

“Hello, I’d like to report an assault.” Roxie heard Keily say, but then the other women were shouting and screaming, and from the sounds she heard, Roxie was certain that a few kicks and punches landed somewhere on Nathan. Her students were dragging him out of the studio, their banshee screams of anger filling the building.

Keily finished on the phone and then rushed to sit down by Roxie. Gentle fingers probed at her head and then tugged at her chin. “You okay, honey?”

“I feel sick to my stomach.” Roxie drawled thickly, her head splitting now.

“I think you’ve got a concussion. The ambulance will be here soon.”

“I can’t go to the hospital, no insurance,” Roxie murmured and tried to get control of her senses. “I’m fine, I just need some ice and to sit here for a minute.”

“I understand. It’s tough when you don’t have insurance.” Keily looked at her with understanding, her pretty eyes sad for Roxie. “Let me see what the other women are doing and find a first aid kit.”

“It’s on the wall in the office, behind that closed door.” There was only one, Roxie remembered, and hoped there was an ice pack in the thing. She’d never opened it and didn’t know.

Keily came back just as a local police patrol car arrived outside. An ambulance followed a few minutes later after Roxie told the story of what had happened for the first time. Of course, it was asshole Detective Slater’s bitchy ass that showed up, but at least this time she didn’t sneer at Roxie like she was wasting her time.

“I’m glad you called to report this, it’s been a while since we had any news on him. I’d started to think he left the state.” Detective Slater said as she wrote something down and walked away to let the ambulance driver have a look at Roxie.

Roxie let the female paramedic check her over but refused to go to the hospital. The paramedic tried to urge her to go, which forced Roxie to be blunt. “Look, I can’t afford the ride in your shiny little medical taxi out there and I certainly can’t afford the hospital bill. If I get worse, I’ll have someone drive me to urgent care or something.”

Not that urgent care was really any cheaper, but she didn’t have a whole lot of choices.