I knew I should’ve hidden tennis shoes under this long dress.
Seeing our escorts, the bouncer nods as we pass and says, “Evening, sirs.” Dax pushes back the curtain, and I almost gag on the smoke.
It’s impossible to tell how big the room is it’s so swathed in shadows. Swirling lights flit off a tall ceiling, and I catch glimpses of balconies and a glass second floor on which more patrons dance. The main floor is clogged with dancers wreathed in mist drifting from hidden fog machines both in the floor and streaming from above.
They meant steam literally.
The pulse of the tuneless music is so loud I can’t even hear my own footsteps as we enter. “Great, isn’t it?” Dax shouts toward my ear, and I nod with a partial smile. Maybe this was a mistake. Sure, I might get Dax away from Slade in here, but even if I do, we won’t be able to hear each other for any kind of conversation.
Drawing me down the glass steps into the melee, Dax asks simply, “Dance?”
Panic roils in my stomach. I’ve never been to a club like this, but I have a good idea what kind of dancing is expected here.
You’re Carmella. You’re cool and distant. You decide what kind of dancing it is.
“Only if I can lead,” I holler back, and he laughs, pulling me toward the center of the floor.
Whoa—people really don’t keep their distance in here, do they? I’ve never had my personal bubble popped by so many people at once. Dax finds roughly a single square foot of empty space and starts to bop, pulsing his shoulders with the music. Instantly he tries to draw me too close to him, but I just push him back with what I hope is a coy smile and keep only his hands around mine, moving as well as I can without getting my feet tangled in this long dress.
A few times he attempts to slip up closer again, but I keep pressing him back. He seems amused by it. Thank goodness Carmella is scary enough for me to demand space between us. I don’t think he’d be up for the “fit a set of scriptures between us” rule.
When I’ve ushered him back to his own bubble for about the tenth time, he laughs and shouts, “You’re a bit of a tease, aren’t you?”
I shrug and answer, “A girl has to keep some mystery.”
After several minutes, the song doesn’t really stop—I’m pretty sure club music never actually stops—but it kind of morphs into a different rhythm. It’s a little slower, and I use the lull to ask, “Is there somewhere a bit more secluded?”
Surprised then pleased, he answers, “Absolutely,” and leads me toward the back of the club. Here several little alcoves are partitioned with draping curtains—most drawn back to reveal twos and threes lounging on couches with bottles of alcohol, laughing. Some kissing. When Dax indicates an empty couch and closes the curtain, alarms go off in my head.
Okay, Jack. Keep this focused. Then get out of here quick.
Already he’s slouched on the couch, motioning for me to come sit beside him. Reluctantly I perch on the far end and lean my chin on my hand, facing him. “I just wanted a chance to talk to you in private.”
“Well, I’m glad.” He smiles. “After that first dinner, I didn’t think I had a chance.”
A chance?
Oh, the favors thing. Oops.
I force myself to smile as I say, “My policy is still in place, but it’s clear between you and your brother, you’re the real one with vision.” For a moment I think he’ll be angry about being twice rejected and storm out, but he just nods.
“Not many people see that,” he says.
Aha. I’ve hit on a sibling rivalry.
“I don’t know how they couldn’t see it. Slade’s only interested in numbers. You’re the one with imagination.”
“I know, right?” He scoots closer to me but is adamant as he talks. “Everyone’s always looking to Slade as the leader, but I’m the one with all the ideas. He was content with the Kiev business. I was the one who realized our resources could be used differently.”
My pulse quickens. I’m actually getting close to something here. “Most people in our business are narrow-minded. They stick to the old crimes in the old ways because that’s all they’ve known.”
“Yeah. Slade was fine doing all that brunt work. I’m the one who suggested we corner a new market. Make the work come to us.” He chuckles. “You’re not the only one who likes to make a quick killing.”
It’s good, but it’s too vague. Flatter him. Flattery makes people open up. Hesitantly, I trail my fingers along the back of his neck. “I so admire ingenuity,” I say. “It got me where I am. You don’t become a woman like me without taking risks.”
His dimple flashes. “But that’s the great thing. With this setup, we have zero risk. We’re providing our employees and our customers face-to-face anonymity. They come to us to get what they need and walk away clean.”
Still too vague! “I’ll admit that running artillery back and forth, having to deal with these secondhand thugs with no imagination gets tiring. Sometimes I’m so bored with the business . . .” I let my voice trail off, meeting his gaze. “Some days I think I’d like to try something new.”
Dax clenches his jaw, but it’s clear he’s dying to say more. Probably afraid of what Slade will do if he finds out we talked at all.
“I’ve been sort of in the market for a new angle for a long time,” I say, going for broke. “I’ve just been waiting for something intriguing enough to make the change. For someone innovative enough.” I touch his shoulder. “For that person, the mutual benefits would be beyond comprehension.”
Dax drops his voice, leaning toward me. “What we have here is the best thing you’ll ever see.”
“I’d love to see it.” I nod. “If only I knew what to look for.”
Dax wets his lips. He glances at the curtain as though just waiting for Slade to come in and stop him. “Haiko,” he says finally.
My brow furrows. “The high roller at our table?”
“Watch him tonight,” he says. “He’s always at the poker table until at least two a.m., but after that . . .” A tiny grin curves his lips. “He’s worth taking a look at.”
I grin back. “Maybe I’ve found the innovation at last.”
Dax reaches up to grip the back of my neck, pulling me toward him, and too late I realize he’s going to kiss me. “You certainly have,” he says as his lips come toward mine.
The curtain flies open, and Damon is standing there, staring at us.
Smothering the need to jump up and insist that it was nothing, I force myself to stay calm. “Problem, Trey?” I ask casually, though my eyes are screaming apologies.
Damon blinks rapidly, but his expression stays neutral. “Just checking in,” he says.
“Do you mind?” Dax asks, his voice hard with annoyance.
“Security is Trey’s job,” I say. “He gets paid to check in.” I push myself to my feet and, over Dax’s objections, insist, “I need to freshen up. I’ll see you on the dance floor.”
Again I force myself to get a good distance away and find another empty alcove before turning to Damon.
Instantly I’m hugging him, babbling, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! It’s not what you think—”
“What was it?” he asks, pulling back to look at me.
“I thought if I could get Dax away from Slade, he would maybe open up and say something. But he was being vague, so I flattered him to get him to talk, and I didn’t realize—I should’ve realized—” I stammer. “I knew it was right on the line of him thinking I was interested, and I was just trying to keep him talking long enough to learn something. I swear, we didn’t kiss. We didn’t anything. He was about to kiss me, which I didn’t realize was going to happen, and then you came in.” I’m clutching his hands. “I promise.”
Damon stares at me for several moments then blows out his breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I’m instantly drenched with relief but also surprise. “That’s it?”
“Yeah. I don’t like that he came on to you,” he adds roughly. “I like it even less that you ran off with him.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I know,” he assents. “I know you were only trying to get information. But running off on your own with that guy was—”
“Reckless?” I offer weakly.
His jaw works. “Definitely.”
“I’m sorry. I guess you were right about me.”
“I didn’t suspect you of anything,” Damon insists. “I was worried for your safety, but I would never suspect you. Even if something looks bad, if you tell me it wasn’t anything, I’ll always believe you.”
“Wow.” I hug him again, weak with relief. “Thank you. I’m so sorry, still. I swear it’ll never happen again.”
“You were just doing your job.” He chuckles, still holding me. “Although next time I’d like your job to involve no other guys at all.”
“Deal,” I say into his neck. When I draw back, I’m ashamed. “And I’m even sorrier I gave you such a hard time about Lela. Here you’re so nice when I actually did something stupid. But you and Lela were a long time ago, and I need to accept that.”
His eyebrows draw together. “Really?”
“Yes. I know you’re surprised because it’s so mature of me.” I pause. “Right after I admit I want to punch her in her stupid, perfect face. There—now I’ll be mature and accept it.”
Damon chuckles. “You’re crazy.”
“True.”
“But you’re my crazy.”
I smile. “Also true.”
Suddenly I realize how close he’s standing to me. He seems to notice at the same moment and looks down at me, his nose brushing mine. Wow. He smells really good.
“I should . . . probably go,” he says, his voice low. Intimate.
“Right, yeah. You should,” I agree.
“We should probably get back out there before they miss us.” But instead of leaving, he’s moving closer, his mouth nearly on mine now.
“Absolutely,” I manage, but then he’s kissing me.
This is it. This is the danger zone. Damon’s not doing anything wrong—his hands are safely on my back—but suddenly I want more. His kiss grows urgent, like maybe he wants more too.
We pull apart at the same time, and he presses his forehead to mine, eyes closed. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he says. “Sometimes I just have a hard time controlling myself with you.”
“Me too,” I agree, grateful that he’s strong even when I feel weak.
He opens his eyes. “I never want to push you,” he says softly. “I don’t ever want to do anything we would regret.”
“Neither do I.”
He traces my jaw with his fingers. “You deserve to have a temple marriage and everything that comes with it. You deserve for that to be special. I’m never going to do anything to ruin that.”
Gratitude swells in my chest. I noticed, too, how he mentioned temple marriage. Not with him necessarily, but at least marriage is somewhere on the brain.
Damon swallows, and suddenly he looks very afraid. “There’s something—there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Okay.”
He draws in a shaky breath. “Maybe you should, uh, sit down.”
I laugh. “Is it that serious?” When he doesn’t answer, just takes my hand and urges me toward the couch, worry grips me. “I guess it is,” I murmur as I sink onto the leather.
Damon sits across from me, elbows on his knees. For nearly a minute he’s silent, studying the floor. When finally he meets my gaze, his expression makes me flinch. I’ve never seen him look so afraid.
“I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time, but I never knew how to begin. I didn’t know when would be right without scaring you away. Then it got to the point where I was less worried about scaring you and more worried about how much time had passed. Suddenly my waiting for the right time had become waiting too long. Then I was scared you’d feel I’d misled you. I was afraid to lose your trust. And believe me, I never meant to deceive you. I always want to be honest with you, no matter how hard it is.”
I muster a nervous laugh. “You’re starting to scare me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry we have to have this conversation—especially now in the middle of everything. But it just can’t wait anymore.”
I’m gripping the arm couch, palms slick with sweat.
Damon takes a breath. “Jack, I—I’m . . .”
Married? Dying? The father to four children?
He tries a different track. “My whole life I wanted to take a girl to the temple. I worked toward that; I honored my personal covenants for that. I kept the promises I’d made to the Lord . . . until a few years ago. Then I broke the most important covenant I’d made to him.”
“Which covenant is that?”
Damon swallows. “Chastity.”
“You broke . . .” I shift slightly on the couch. “You, uh, you mean that you’ve—” My breath is starting to come a little faster. “You’ve already—” Suddenly there seems to be a serious lack of oxygen in the alcove. “You’re not a—a—a—”
Without meeting my gaze, Damon finishes, “I’m not a virgin.”
“Oh.” I’ve unexpectedly lost feeling in my legs. I try to nod, try to manage another word or sentence, something that sounds coherent, but all that comes out is another quiet, “Oh.”
Finally he looks up to meet my gaze, his expression raw and full of uncertainty. When I just keep giving a strange little half nod, he prods, “Do you . . . have anything else to say about that?”
I swallow over the tangle of emotion in my throat. “So you’re not—Which means if we were ever to—Then you would have already—”
Softly he agrees, “I’m afraid so. I gave that away.”
Less and less oxygen is entering my lungs. I’m a full-grown woman, and of course I know how things work, but some completely irrational part of me, the part that has started to hyperventilate, wants to ask, Can’t you get it back?
“Um, I . . .” Before I realize it, I’ve lurched to my feet and started pacing the nook with a serious wobble, dabbing sweat off my brow. “Um, I don’t, uh . . . I don’t really know.” I stop pacing long enough to face him, my chest caving a bit as I search for air. “How did—When did you—?”
Damon stands but doesn’t approach me, his hands extended in a nonthreatening way. “It was about a year after everything happened with Sabrina. By then I’d been inactive for several months, and I was—I was in an emotional spiral. I’d left behind everything I believed my whole life, everything I understood.” He chuckles darkly. “And honestly, I had no clue who I was. I didn’t know what I believed anymore, what I even thought was right and wrong.”
“You didn’t think it was wrong?”
His hands clench into fists briefly. “That’s the most screwed-up part. Deep down, I still felt it was wrong. But there was a part of me that was so angry with God I almost wanted to—to throw it in His face, to prove I didn’t believe even though I really did, to show that His covenants and standards meant nothing to me. I had this reckless desire to repay Him for what He let happen to Sabrina by breaking a covenant of my own.”
I laugh a bit hysterically. “Then why couldn’t you steal some candy bars or something? At least when you repent of that you can give the candy bars back. Even after you repent of this, you can’t give the candy bars back!”
“I know, I know.” Damon comes toward me, reaching for me but not daring to make contact. “It was the worst, dumbest, most idiotic thing I’ve ever done. And as soon as I did it, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. The feeling was so awful, so much a reinforcement of what I’d always believed in, I almost went back to the Church right then.
“But then the guilt set in. Satan knew exactly what I’d done and how much I wanted to run to my bishop and get help. And he started to work on me like—” Something like a shudder passes through him. “I’ve never experienced such guilt and so much . . . darkness. Within a few days I was convinced what I’d done was so bad I could never go back, never be worthy again. And that, more than anything, kept me away. I was”—his voice drops to a whisper—“I was too ashamed to face my Father.”
Despite the deafening pulse of panic and confusion in my ears, what he’s saying does make sense to me. I’ve never done anything that can be categorized as a truly bad sin—none of the general list that sends people to the bishop’s office—and yet how often have my “second-tier sins” left me feeling so unclean I could barely get on my knees to face my Father in prayer? I can’t imagine dealing with the guilt of something that severe.
Again I blot my wet forehead, forcing a normal cycle of breath. “Then—then it was just the one time?”
Damon’s gaze flicks away from me. Only for an instant but long enough.
“It was more than once?” When he hesitates, I cry, “How many was it?!”
“Just two.”
“Two times or two women?”
He blows out his breath. “Two women.”
“Two women? Two women?” I keep shrieking it like somehow asking repeatedly might change his answer. Now I’m pacing manically, my hands fanning my face in an awkward flapping motion. Never in my life has the number two sounded so enormous. “That’s not even one—that is double one. Double! And I’ve had zero, which means that two is like quadruple my zero. Well, I guess you can’t actually quadruple zero, but compared to zero, two is like zero squared to the thousandth power!”
In an attempt at humor, Damon says, “Math is really not your strong suit, is it?”
I whirl to glare at him. “You think now is a great time for insults?”
“I’m sorry. I just thought if I could make you laugh—”
“Well, keep your witty remarks to yourself, Mr. Two.” My legs suddenly give way, and I sink onto the couch again. “If the first time made you feel so horribly guilty, why in the world would you do it again?”
“Because I felt so awful.”
“That makes sense! It’s like, ‘Wow, that stab wound hurt. But just to be sure, I should stab myself again!”
“I know it’s hard to understand.” He drops to his knees in front of me, hands clenched on my knees. “It’s not even that easy for me to explain. The first time did make me feel completely wrecked. Emotionally and spiritually, I couldn’t feel anything anymore. And I got into this horribly self-destructive mindset of ‘Well, I’ve already ruined everything.’”
“So why not pile on?” I say acidly.
Damon flinches. “I know you don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. Didn’t you think about what this would mean for you later? That someday this could badly hurt you?”
“I’d convinced myself there was no going back; I went numb. I was in serious denial. Sure, there was something at the back of my mind screaming that there would be consequences, but at the time I couldn’t see them. I just wanted to feel something—anything—again.”
I just stare at him, my throat gone strangely dry. “And then what? After the . . . two?”
He considers his words. “I . . . saw the second girl a few times. Tried dating her. But she was too much a part of what I didn’t really want. I ended things and threw myself into work. Lost myself there instead.”
“And since then there haven’t—”
“No.” Damon’s adamant, his hands moving to my shoulders. “That’s all; I promise you. It wasn’t what I wanted.” One hand slips up to cradle my cheek. “But it took you reminding me what I did want to give me the strength to face what I’d done, to try to come back.”
A shuddery sigh passes through me. Looking into his earnest, pleading face, I’m caught between affection, sadness, and confusion—like I don’t even know where I am. Then another thought hits me. “What, uh,” I have to wet my lips, “what does this mean for you with the Church?”
Again he hesitates, weighing his words. “I’ve been seeing my bishop these past few months.”
“And?”
“And as of right now, I’m not in full standing with the Church.” Hurriedly he adds, “But we’re working on it.”
More things are clicking into place. “Is this why you’ve been so determined to go to your own sacrament meeting? Because you didn’t want me to see you decline the sacrament?”
“No. My bishop made it clear it was important I attend my own ward.” He pauses. “But I won’t lie. I was relieved that you didn’t have to see that.”
I snatch my hands away. “You won’t lie? How about the last eight months? You didn’t breathe a word of this. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to tell you.” When I snort, he continues, “I mean it. I’ve been working up to it. But our relationship was so new. I didn’t really know how to squeeze it in between ‘What’s your favorite dessert?’ and ‘Where did you go to high school?’”
“You had a whole file on me. You knew exactly where I went to school.” I’ve jumped to my feet and push the curtain open, grabbing my purse on the way.
“Where are you going?” There’s an edge of panic to Damon’s voice.
“I just, uh, I just need to go get some fresh air.”
“Baby, you can’t go by yourself.”
Several feet into the club now, I shout, “Then have someone follow me at a reasonable distance!” before rushing across the smoky floor.