Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(18)

My heart lurched into my throat, and all I could think about was what Jax had said to me. That there was nothing but trouble here.

“This is the last place I wanted you to be and, well, there are things you don’t need to know about. You don’t ever need to know about, but one thing ain’t changed, and that’s you, baby girl.”

My eyes popped open.

“You’re good to the core. Always have been, no matter what shit Mona put you through, even before the fire.”

A pang lit up my chest, licking through my body, and it spread across the scar on my cheek, and washed over the other scars—the worse ones. It was like it had just been yesterday. The fire.

“But you know there ain’t no helping your mother.”

“I know that,” I whispered around a sudden knot in my throat. “That’s not why I’m here. She did me wrong, Clyde. I’m not lying.”

He spared me a quick, knowing glance. “I know that and I believe that, but I also know that you’re here, and now that you know your mom has got herself in a mess, you’re going to want to help her somehow.”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“But it’s worth repeating,” he continued. “There ain’t no helping Mona. Not this time. The best you can do is get back to that school and don’t look back.”

A bowl of corn nuts sat on a scuffed-up oak table in the office situated at the end of the hall leading to the restrooms. There were two file cabinets behind the desk, and butted up against the wall was a couch that was made of leather and looked surprisingly new—a lot newer than the one I’d slept on last night.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to sleep in the loft upstairs.

I’d never run a bar before and I wasn’t perfect when it came to numbers, but after poring over the statements, receipts, and bills I’d found neatly organized, I knew two things.

First up, there was no way Mom had been keeping track of any of this during the last year. If you looked up the opposite of organized, there’d be a picture of Mom smiling happily. Someone else was keeping track of the books, and I seriously doubted it was Clyde. God love him, he was good at keeping things real, great at being practically the only positive role model around, and awesome in the kitchen, but running the financial side of a bar? Uh. No.

Second thing I learned was that the bar wasn’t bleeding money like it had been stabbed repeatedly with a wicked hunter’s knife. This piece of news confounded me. If Mom had blown through my money and potentially hers, I’d imagined the bar would be next on her list. Plus, it wasn’t in the greatest condition.

Well, on second thought . . .

I’d checked out the bar since I was alone when Clyde had headed into the kitchen to do some cleaning after explaining that my car, which was no longer in the parking lot, was down the street at a garage getting the windshield replaced.

No way did I even want to think about that bill.

Back in the day, before I’d left for college, Mona’s had been a mess. Bar top always sticky and so was the floor, but the origin of that stickiness was always questionable. Taps were broken. Kegs should’ve been eighty-sixed ages ago. Days-old lemons being used, fruit juice beyond the expiration dates, and a whole slew of other grossness went on. Mom had always hired her friends to bartend. Her friends basically being middle-aged men and women who hadn’t grown up and thought working behind a bar meant they got free booze. So cleaning was never high on the priority list.

Although the bar wasn’t looking like it was in its prime any longer; more like it was in its geriatric stage, it was cleaner than I gave it credit for yesterday. Behind the bar, the ice had recently been dumped and the ice well flushed out with hot water, preventing a slew of gunky bacteria growth to grow. I hadn’t seen fruit flies or small critter droppings, which were unfortunately commonplace in bars. The bar tops were freshly wiped down and the floor was also clean behind the bar; the bottles were stacked and organized.

Even the tables out on the floor had been cleaned, as were the ashtrays. So, while the bar might need a renovation, someone definitely cared about it, and I knew that wasn’t Mom.

My gaze flicked to the printed-out spreadsheet for last month—the spreadsheet stapled to a gazillion receipts—and I scanned the lines. Like the dozen spreadsheets before it that I’d found, all the way up to March of last year, everything was tracked—monthly bills, like electricity and other utilities, income coming in, food and beverage costs and breakdowns, and, most surprising, payroll.

Freaking payroll.

The reason why Mom always had friends working for her who were interested only in free drinks was that she could never make payroll. The idea of Mona’s making enough money to pay its employees on a regular basis had been laughable. Not funny laughable, but maniacal, slightly crazed laughable.

But Mona’s had been making payroll for about a year now and had employee names I didn’t recognize with the exception of Jax and Clyde. There was even some dude who worked in the kitchen on weekend nights, helping Clyde out.

Mona’s was turning a profit for the last four months. Nothing major, or to get overly excited about, but a profit was a profit.

Leaning back in the chair, I slowly shook my head. How was this possible? If Mona’s was making money, why was she stealing—

“What in the hell are you doing in here?”