Whispers of a Broken Halo by Abbi Glines

The other server was there then, standing in front of Bryn. She was smiling at me in a way that was supposed to distract me, I was sure, but she wasn’t a part of our history.

“Ah, the girls on the floor just serve the drinks and food. If you want anything more, we do have a couple dancers here tonight that offer that kind of thing.” She winked at me.

“Bryn,” I said her name, needing her to say something.

“Oh fuck,” Drake said, realizing who she was now that I had said her name.

Bryn touched the other girl’s shoulder and whispered something to her, but the other server didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she was now glaring at me with a warning.

“This way,” Bryn said to me and turned, walking toward the door we had entered through.

I followed her, getting a view of how bare her ass was in the tiny bottoms she was wearing. She might as well be naked. I had guessed Bryn’s body was nice under her conservative clothing, but I had never imagined this. And damn if she wasn’t out, making money with it.

Where had the girl I knew gone? How had she changed so completely?

First, she’d bashed the fuck out of my Jeep, and now, this. It felt like losing someone. As if the girl from my past that I had cared about so deeply had died.

She stopped at the bar and spoke in a whisper to the tattooed bartender-slash-bouncer. He scowled at me, as if he was thinking of tossing me out. Bryn said something to him that made him look at her instead of me, and he shook his head, then pointed toward a red door far away from the entertainment.

When she looked back at me, she said, “Come on,” then started walking in that direction.

She didn’t say more or look back to see if I was following her. Instead, she kept walking until we were through the red door to a much quieter area that was empty. Bryn walked over to yet another door, then glanced back at me.

“W-w-wait here,” she said.

I stood there, battling internally about my reaction to this. Why do I care? She had beaten my Jeep up. I’d fired her from the market. It wasn’t as if I had kept up with her after that. I hadn’t wanted to see her. Now, she was here, serving drinks, naked, and I suddenly gave a shit.

Bryn emerged, wrapped in a black leather jacket that was too large to be hers, hanging halfway down her thighs. Having her covered up should have calmed me down and helped me focus, but knowing it belonged to a man just made this worse.

She squared her shoulders and looked directly at me this time. “You c-c-came with a g-g-g-group. We are short-staffed, an-an-and until Demi gets here, I c-c-can’t leave Trix with the entire g-g-g-gr-group. I’ll stay a-a-a-away from you-you-your end of the t-t-table. That’s all I can d-do for now.”

She thought this was about my not wanting her to wait on us. Part of it was because I didn’t want my friends seeing her naked. Knowing they were all going to use her body in their next spank session pissed me the fuck off. And it shouldn’t. That made me even angrier. Bryn wasn’t mine and had never been mine. Even when we had been younger, she’d just been the girl I was fascinated with and determined to protect. But never mine.

“I can’t believe you’re working here,” I said. “What happened to you, Bryn? You take a damn steel pole to my Jeep like an insane person, and now, you’re serving men drinks, topless, with your ass barely covered. Is this how you had the money that you kept leaving with Hazel to give to me?”

Starting six months ago, every two weeks, Hazel would give me an envelope with my name written on the front and five hundred dollars in cash inside. She told me Bryn had dropped it off as payment for the Jeep. After she gave me two thousand, I refused any more, as my deductible had been met. Three months ago, when Bryn had arrived with another envelope, Hazel had given it back to her and relayed the message that she had paid me enough.

Anger flashed in her eyes, and she let out a hard, cynical laugh. A laugh that made me feel as if I were wrong about something when she was the one who was wrong. She was the one doing things that were fucked up.

“It’s been six m-m-months. Six months since you sp-sp-spoke to me. Six months since you fired m-m-me. And you are going to st-st-stand here and ju-ju-judge me because I work at a strip c-club? What d-d-does it matter how I p-p-paid you back?”

If I had been ready to respond to that, I wouldn’t have had time because Bryn didn’t pause but for a second.

“The Shores is a small t-t-town, and there wasn’t an e-e-employer willing to hire me after the incident with your J-J-Jeep. We needed m-m-m-money if we were going to live. I was tired of not having enough. I came here. I don’t have to answer to y-y-you. Now, if you would like me not to serve your table, that is f-f-fine. I didn’t br-br-bring you back here for you to judge me or talk about things. I brought you back here for m-m-my privacy, n-n-n-not yours.”

I hadn’t considered folks in town would hear about my Jeep and not hire Bryn. “Pops would’ve given you a good recommendation if someone had called him,” I said.

“He did,” she replied, looking me in the eyes.

“Then, why didn’t they hire you? It couldn’t have been because of my Jeep.”

She had placed blame at my door, and I didn’t like it. I was going to make it clear that her reasons for working here weren’t because of me.

“They did hire me. I’m here n-n-now. Look, I need to get back on th-the f-f-floor. Trix can’t handle it alone. If you are okay with m-m-me serving your table until another server arrives, then that’s all w-w-we need to di-discuss.”