Brutally Beautiful(66)

Armed with an entire pot of coffee, I walked through the dense evergreens that crowded this little part of the world, until I reached the bar. An early morning slideshow of images flashed through my imagination of the carnage and chaotic state of mess the bar must be in, and I cringed, hoping there were latex gloves I could use to clean. Darker images clawed at the back of my brain, juxtaposing themselves against the chaos, thoughts I didn’t want to be thinking, despite the clarity of them. Twisted white sheets, guttural moans and whimpers of two lovers; I didn’t want to visualize them, but visions of Kade and Natalie wrapped around each other were screaming in my mind.

Dylan already had the front door unlocked, and was standing in the middle of the barroom holding a mop in one hand, a bucket in the other, wearing a sheepish smile across his lips. “Morning, love. Where did you get off to last night?”

I wanted to grab the filthy mop out of his hands and sanitize it, but instead, I just slid my jacket off, hung it over a stool and started collecting the strange clothes and debris that was strewn around the bar. Feathered boas. Tassles. A riding crop. I completely passed over picking up the dirty looking G-strings. “Ugh. I hand a run in with an extremely drunk Francis and an angry Natalie, so I thought it better if I just left. Sorry.”

“No worries. Did Kade get to see you?”

“I bumped into him in the hallway last night, but I didn’t speak with him. Natalie needed him for something, I think.”

A strange smile played at the corner of his lips, “He was looking for you most of the night. He slept on the couch in my office.”

All I could think about was scrubbing the bar with bleach, so I shrugged my shoulders and held up all the costumes I collected to ask, “Where should I put all this stuff?”

“Just throw it in my office on the floor, or in my closet. It all needs to be cleaned,” he murmured, pushing the mop along the floor, trying to hide his smile from my eyes. Shit. Didn’t he just say that Kade was asleep on the couch in there?

Maybe he had lost it, drank too much of the Kool-Aid around here. I walked over to the entrance of the hallway and turned to face him. He was staring at me with a stupid knowing smile on his face. What it knew was beyond me. Maybe Dylan wanted me to walk in on Kade in some precarious position. Slowly, I backed into the hallway and made my way to the door of his office.

I was about to throw all the crap on the floor and run when I heard Fran’s voice in the barroom talking with Dylan, asking him if he’d seen me.

Crap. Now it was between hearing Fran’s excuses for drunkenly attacking me in the bathroom, opposed to sneaking past Kade asleep on the couch.

Kade. Fran. Kade. Fran.

All right, deep breath, there was no way I wanted to see Fran and listen to his whining and begging. In a rush of glittery costumes and feathered freaking boas, I dashed through the office door and searched for the nearest hiding spot. It was either under Dylan’s desk where I sure as shit couldn’t fit, or in his coat closet. Closet it was. I didn’t even look to see if Kade was asleep on the couch.

Diving in, glittery sequins and all, I yanked the door shut behind me. Total darkness consumed me and a lone hanger swung against the rod and whacked me in the eye. “SON OF A…” I grabbed for the door handle, and it wouldn’t budge.

Oh, just wonderful. I was locked in.

“Lainey? Lainey?” Fran’s muted voice called from the hallway. His footsteps clopped heavily against the floorboards and moved throughout the room. “Oh, Kade, hey. Have you seen Lainey?”

“No,” Kade’s rumbly voice replied from somewhere just outside the closet door.