Page 92 of Ruthless Protector

“Don’t let me hold you up, beautiful. You know your way out.”

I bit my lip, fingers digging into the doorframe. Everything in me screamed to stay. But I couldn’t.

I let go and walked out.

22

Willa

“You okay, honey?” Steph asked, surprising me.

We were in the dressing room, taking a break, a moment of quiet before heading back out to the smoke and heat and throbbing music of the club.

I looked at the mirror, and nodded at her reflection. Doing what she and I always did. We were fine. We were always fine. This time, though, she shook her head and put her hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“You’re too young to be as closed off as me.”

“You’re only a couple of years older than me,” I reminded her.

She shook her head, her soft, wavy red locks moving around her lovely face. Lovely, but wary. “I feel a hundred years old some days.”

“What’s going on?”

Steph and I talked, no, maybe nothing too deep, but we did have a bond, a friendship of sorts, and in the months that I’d worked here, I’d never seen her like this.

She smiled. It was sad and that sadness reached her eyes. “For a long time, I’ve been closed off. I shut down completely, for a lot of reasons. To protect myself mainly.” She bit her lip and glanced away. When she looked back at me, her eyes were glistening. “I think…I think maybe that was a mistake. When someone hurts you, really hurts you, you get into this habit of pushing people away, you know, until it becomes second nature. Until you don’t know why you’re doing it anymore, until you don’t know how to…be. Until the person you were, they’re just gone, lost.”

I stood and turned to her. “Steph…”

“And then one day, you wake up and you realize you’re too late, that you’re so deep inside yourself, so broken, that you don’t even know how to break free. That you…” She sucked in a shaky breath. “That you don’t know how to reach for happiness, that you don’t even know what that is anymore. That you’ve missed your chance.”

She blinked, and a tear streaked down her face.

“Jesus, Steph, what happened?”

She gave me another one of her sad smiles. “Don’t forget how to look beyond your own pain, Willa, because one day, you’ll realize it’s too late, there’s nothing left. That you’re nothing but a shell.” Her arms came around me and she gave me a quick squeeze. “I’ll miss you.”

“Raul told you?”

She nodded.

I held her eyes. “I’ll miss you, too.”

She straightened her shoulders, wiped her eyes, and I watched as the mask dropped, the performer returned, and the Steph she’d just shown me vanished. She smiled and gave me a wink. “See you out on the floor.” Then she walked out.

I had no idea why Steph said what she did, but it hit me, hard. I knew she and I had things in common. I mean, I didn’t know what had caused her that kind of pain, but it was something we shared. I’d leaned on her, but I hadn’t gotten too close.

She’d done the same.

I regretted that now. I regretted that I’d never really gotten to know her, that I hadn’t tried.

Her words struck, rang true. I didn’t like the way they made me feel.

I chose not to look too deeply into why that was, straightened my shoulders, and headed out to the floor for my last shift. Raul had been disappointed that I was leaving, but he didn’t question me over my decision to leave town, though I could see in his eyes that he wanted to.

He’d probably called Fay as soon as I’d left his office.

The club was even busier when I walked out, and I was glad for it. Anything to take my mind off my situation. Off what came next.