Saturdays at the Viper Rooms Read online

“I know so,” he remarks with a bright smile before fixing my damaged makeup. “Right, let’s get you back up inside. I’ll grab Brianna to come and help you in the bathroom. Think of a good excuse and then I’m taking you dancing.” I shake my head, not wanting to have fun. “Look, you have to stick it out with or without Jace. Just survive another couple of hours and I will personally escort you home.”

  He stands up and I know I have to go with him. I can’t stay out here. He reaches down for me and pulls me to my feet. I might not want this, but I need this. I wish Jace were here, but the sorry truth is that he left me. A promise he made time and time before - “I’ll never leave you to survive this life alone anymore, Joely Gilbert.”

  I put all faith into Eli’s hands and allow my best friend to keep me going until I can leave.

  Chapter Eight

  I watch Eli drive away and I’m thankful all the other girls are still at the party. It means the apartment block will be practically empty for another hour. I can reach the bottom of a tub of ice cream, throw a pity party, and just find some calmness before Luca makes it back.

  I’ve been on the brink of the tears all evening, but Eli kept to his promise. He stayed with me and I quickly told him about my call home earlier that day and how today just seemed to be balancing on the tip of a spindle. Clara soon found out about my disassociation to the cause, but to soften the blow, I told her I was unwell. Apparently I had done my job right and had seven new clients signing up within the first hour to award me praise and not disappointment for leaving.

  By the time I made it home, I was stone cold sober. I stopped drinking when all the festivities died down and I realized that Jace wasn’t coming back. Now I’m home, I’ve locked the door and within minutes I was out of my dress and straight into my pajamas. As I sit on my bed, I feel all motivation drain from my body. The extent of my emotional downfall takes over entirely and I’m left weak and defenseless. It’s now I miss the shell I used to be. I wish I were that emotionless void of a girl that Clara put her perfectly manicured hands on.

  My eyes begin to water again and I know I need to go to my own sanctum. I decide to go to the rooftop before I undo my hair and wipe my face clean of the heavy makeup I have on. There’s no point in attempting to go to bed. I won’t sleep, my mind is on overdrive of what’s happened and my heart is much too heavy to let me sleep peacefully. I need fresh air and peace. I need to hear nothing but the background noise of the city in order to clear my mind. The rooftop is the only place I will find any of this.

  I reach the roof, and tears are already falling. The last time I felt my heart breaking like this I found out my best friend had died. That loss, the longing to see him and my family again is all the same. Life and death definitely live parallel with one another. I don’t even want to think about tomorrow at The Viper Rooms if Jace has ended what we have. Will he still turn up and will we sit in my room for the entire time, or will all be forgotten by the time the sun rises in the morning?

  A part of me really does want to stop thinking for tonight, especially as my head begins to pulsate from all the crying. I halt almost immediately, as if stopped by a glass panel. The entirety of the roof for my apartment is smothered in fairy lights, each twinkling away in the late night. They adorn the sitting area beautiful and I see Jace standing among them all. I watch him set down a massive bouquet of flowers and I can’t even imagine the lengths he must have gone to, to buy flowers at this time of night. But I realize that I don’t care. I should, but I don’t. I don’t care for the lights, the flowers everywhere, the bouquet of my favorite flowers in his hand, the man standing amongst it all.

  “You think this is going to make everything okay?” I ask him. I don’t care for anything else. Now we’re alone I feel myself get angry with him. “You make me feel like I’m the biggest cause of pain in your whole life and you get the easiest job of leaving me behind. You left me in tears after making me feel like something else in my life was my fault. Do you really think that little of me, Jace, that I would fall for someone else?” I ask him, my voice is coarse and full of hurt. “I don’t trust easily, I don’t like people easily, so what makes you think that I suddenly love people easily? Where, in all the time you’ve know me, have I given you any indication that I will willingly just hand my heart to any man willing to come into my room at the club?”

  “You haven’t,” he says, his entire body language screams how remorseful he is and how shamed he is by what he did. “You-“

  “No, you answered me,” I stop him abruptly and don’t care. “Where, in the entire time we’ve been together, have I even so much as looked at another man in any other way but professionally? When have you seen me look to a man and want him, Jace? When have I ever given you any reason to doubt me?”

  “You haven’t,” he remarks, proving how wrong he is right now.

  “Exactly!” I suddenly bellow, the reaction even surprising me and I know I need to keep myself calmer than this.

  “Joely,” he whimpers and as he steps towards me, I feel no need to stop what’s waiting on the tip of my tongue. I can’t stop; it’s all just flowing from me now. My love, my loss, my heartfelt need for him, my heartache. It’s a tidal wave of emotional.

  “I tried to tell myself that if I kept Clara happy, then my time with you would mean that you were happy. But I’ve been a fucking fool. I’m a fool for ever falling at those doors that day. I’m a fool for ever thinking I was capable of being a fucking Viper Girl and I’m a damn fool for ever trusting my heart.”

  “You weren’t a fool for trusting your heart, Joely. Maybe you were fool for falling for me, but trusting your heart is the truest thing you can do.” His words come out in a low, controlled tone. I hear his emotions scratch beneath the surface and I want him to come undone at the seams like I have. I want him raw and emotionally spent. “I don’t know what happened earlier. I was fine, but I could see how Eli was with you and it’s abundantly clear he has feelings for you. And then you were pleasing so many men that I panicked. I imagined one of them getting what I do and my thoughts went into overdrive. I went crazy and jealous and I became the man I hoped I never would. I never wanted to be the guy that left you crying there tonight, Joely. I never wanted to be him.”

  “Well if I’m going to make you into that type of man you were right to walk away.” My words are not meant to hurt, but me admitting the sorry truth. “I’ve tried everything to remain true to who I am and I’ve loved who you are. From day one, I have loved you, and when we found an us in all of this, I vowed to never let you down. Do you know how it felt to know I am the one to blame for you being like this? Do you know how hard it is for me to know you can’t face me doing my job now? Without you or the job, I won’t be surviving long.” It then dawns on me what this all comes down to and I don’t know what hurts more - the earlier heartbreak, or this moment of clarity. “Why don’t you seem to trust me all of a sudden?”

  “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s the other men I don’t trust.” He’s trying to make it right, I know it, but I can’t cave when I know, in my gut, this is only half the story.

  “No, it isn’t! If it was them, then your faith in me would outweigh it all. I would be the counterbalance!” I bellow back, unable to listen to him and digest his words properly. “How can I make you trust me, Jace? If you can’t now, you won’t ever trust me. You don’t know how much I hate being some man’s toy, how much it breaks me, because I feel like I’m already doing you a disservice every damn time I have to be with another client. You don’t know how often it eats away at me and how many times I’ve thought of running away just so I can get that one snapshot chance of a life with you where I’m free and I can love you how I want to! What do I have to do to make you trust me?”

  There’s a brief hesitation before he actually speaks, and his words are far worse than any silence he could have pushed between us. “I don’t know, Joely.”

  “You don’t know?” I ask him, the tears continually streaming
down my face, following the same beaten tracks down my cheeks. “What will it take, Jace? Will it take me running away? Will it take Clara finding out? Will it take publicly refusing a client? Will it take me disappearing for you to realize? Because you best believe it I know how to disappear without being found. I’ve been doing it for three years now, I can do it for another three if it will prove to you how much I would rather be your sordid little secret than a fucking Viper Girl!”

  “You really think I’d let you run?” he asks me, taking another cautious step forward. “Do you think I could ever let you leave me like that?”

  “I really don’t know anymore, Jace. I just want for you to trust me,” I say, my voice pleading with him to just believe me on this. There is no one else I trust more than him and there never will be. “You left me earlier and I’m pretty sure you were positive that you couldn’t do this anymore. So I don’t know.”

  I watch as he begins to pace. It’s an even rhythm, his steps all equal in spacing and stride. He stops near the roof edge and throws his hands onto his head, scrapping his fingers through his gelled hair, disturbing it all. I can feel the turmoil practically radiate off him and I want nothing more than to run to him, but we both need this. I need to know everything that is going on here. I need the God’s honest truth.

  “Talk to me,” I utter across the space to him. I don’t shout, I say it calmly, gently. “Jace, what really happened? What has changed?”

  “Everything,” he tells me rashly. There was no room for hesitation this time round. He then takes in a deep breath, exhaling deliberately in order to make the words happen, and they do. “I want to marry you, Joely Gilbert.”

  My blood runs cold at that admittance.

  “Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but when they called your name earlier and you stepped out, my heart stopped, Joely.” He hits his chest, right over his heart. “The sight of you stole every breath of air from my lungs and something connected together. You weren’t just Joely, the girl who fixed me because it was her job. You were Joely, the girl who fixed me because she loved me from the very moment she saw me and she’s the girl who’s going to marry me one day and make a future with me.”

  “And when you saw those men and Eli all over me,” I begin to say, unable to finish when I’m interrupted.

  “I realized my dream isn’t mine to have.” He pauses, his eyes dropping before he looks up again, his head bowed still. “Yet.” He lifts his head entirely and walks towards me. “Forgive me and my jealousy, Joely. I let that go to my head and the alcohol probably didn’t help matters much. I never meant to make such a mistake, but I did, and I will spend eternity trying to take it back.”

  “I don’t need eternity to forgive you,” I whisper back, believing my own words more than anything right now. “I just needed the truth from you.”

  He shakes his head in disagreement. I don’t understand why he’s being so hard on himself suddenly. He told me what was bothering him, he admitted it, and it’s something I never expected. “It’s not that simple. I need to work for forgiveness for what I’ve done.” His plea is heartfelt and I can feel he wants nothing more than to make this right. “Joely, I shouldn’t have behaved that way, especially if I’m not going to be professing how I want to marry you. I know we’re not ready for that leap, not with Delvine breathing down your neck, but one day, mark my words.”

  “One day,” I say, it’s all I can do to agree because I see that same dream with him. This time when he comes towards me I don’t shy away, ready to recoil because of the hurt he erupted into our perfect night. No, this time I welcome his hold. I fall into his arms and the cries that come from me are now cathartic. They’re heavy and lift the lock around my heart. He came back for me. He realized what was wrong and I can’t be angry with him. Not with him here, proving his remorse and building my self-worth up.

  I feel him release me and I crave his touch again. I don’t have to wait long before I feel his jacket on my shoulder and his arm back around me. He pulls me over to the cabana and lays me down. Then I’m in his arms, safe and protected under the stars.

  “You’re too forgiving,” he says to me, his tone calming and he’s trying to make what happened right from all angles. “I should be made to suffer for being a heartless bastard.”

  I sniffle and nod, but sit up to look to him; I need to have total eye contact with him. He has to understand how much I know and realize about this life and how it affects him. “I always have this little voice in my head asking how you would feel about what I’m doing. It never goes away, it honestly tortures me most nights, but it keeps me sane, it keeps me grounded. It reminds me that while all those men want nothing but some form of gratification from me, you want my love. You’re not in it to spend money and get a few hours of fun. You’re lifelong. It keeps me going, but I know full well how you must be feeling. It’s probably the same feeling I get when I watch one of the other girls try and entertain you.” I close my eyes, only opening them to watch myself reach up to toy with his undone bowtie. “I get so jealous that for one moment they will do something I can’t, or that they will do something better than I can and you’ll end our scheduled time slots.” I look up, my eyes watering all over again. “But then I remember you love me. That isn’t going to simply change. It doesn’t work like that. We don’t work like that.”

  “You’re right we don’t,” he concedes and smiles warily at me. “I was stupid earlier. The only one hurting someone in this relationship was me. I regretted it the moment I was picked up. I wanted tonight to be something special.”

  I fall onto my back so I’m staring directly at the stars above us. “I don’t know. I think it’s pretty perfect right now.” I then sigh heavily and look to him once more. “I called home this morning,” I whisper feeling like I need to find comfort in Jace. “My mom answered and begged me to come home. How do I tell her, her little girl’s a right screw up?”

  “You’re not a screw up,” he argues with me. “You got lost. We all have. Something awful happened in your life and you saw escape as the way to find peace. Phoning home is your first step to grabbing back onto the life you left. Your mom will want to hear from you again, but you take it one day at a time.” I know what he is saying is the truth, but the doubt resides so strongly in me over what happened it’s hard to forget. “Joely, had that never happened, I would never have met you. That’s a grave injustice to me,” he teases me and brings me back from that brink of depression. He’s right. Without The Viper Rooms, I wouldn’t have this life. I would be in a town that believed I was a reckless driver who stole a life. At least with this life, I have come to peace, for the most part, with what happened and I have Jace. I have found a new family in him and the Viper Girls. “How about we go back to our perfect, under the stars rendezvous?” he asks me, framing my face with his hand. “Nothing else matters right now.”

  I smile and snuggle in close. We don’t require words or actions. There’s not need to fill the moment with sex and futile words. We just need one another. We remain lying there for Christ knows how long. We don’t talk, we just stare at the stars as they twinkle in the inky black sky above us. It’s utter contentment that fulfils me. The ache in my heart is officially gone and I know I have Jace to thank for this. Just when I think I could stay here all night with him, the mood changes when we hear cars pulling up and I immediately sit up. I hear the giggle of a drunk Brianna and I know my night has officially ended. I turn to him and I see he knows it too.

  “You better go back,” he murmurs to me as he understands the protocol. Even though I am filled with reluctance to go, I know with the girls now streaming back into the apartment building, I need to be back downstairs. I hate that my life is all about what I need to do when I want to stay here in Jace’s arms and just forget the world.

  “I don’t want to go,” I tell him, muttering my words petulantly. “I want to stay right where I belong.”

  Jace lifts his left arm up, shaking his sleeve down his arm
to see his watch. The lights catch upon the Armani signature within it and onto the hands of the watch face. I suddenly realize we’ve been out here nearly two hours.

  “You’ll be back there in another seventeen hours.” He shifts on his side to look at me better and grins. “The countdown has begun, Miss. Gilbert.”

  I push myself up, knowing I can’t be here any longer with the potentiality of being caught so much higher. I’m one of the girls, I’m one of the leaders, I know how these evenings go. Most night’s after parties we wind up on the rooftop, more drinks poured, gossip shared. I can’t risk that happening again, so I plan to deviate everyone to my apartment if necessary.

  “I’ll see you in The Viper Rooms,” I whisper to him, leaning back down to kiss him. “Go home, Mr. Mason. If you’re late, I won’t be held accountable for your punishment.” We both know he’ll be on time, he always is. Clara has a strict rule that if a client is late, even by a minute, the power is in the Viper Girl’s hands. She does as she sees fit - punishment or cancellation.

  I take one more kiss and pull away entirely. Standing up, I feel my pajamas straightened down over my body and shrug off his jacket. I toss it back to him and leave him with a look of seduction.

  Chapter Nine

  “They told me you were ready, Mr. Mason,” I say as I slip my dress off. I don’t force it, it just falls to the floor and I’m left standing in my underwear while he lies before me, shirt open, his eyes already fucking me.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t keep me waiting,” he tells me and I feel the heat swirl within me just at the sound of his voice.

  It’s Saturday, my Jace ran evening shift. Here I am, at the start of his time slot, and already I’m feeling ready to be playful. He’s kept me going through the first hour with his looks and winks while I tend to other members. But now, after Eli pointed it out with an all knowing smile, I’m here with my man and ready to just have some fun.