Chapter 1: Jumping in
The stale heat of the apartment clung to me like a second skin, the silence after the divorce papers felt louder than any argument we'd ever had. My phone buzzed on the cracked kitchen counter, and I snatched it up, desperate for any excuse to escape the four walls that had become my prison.
It was Amanda's name flashing on the screen, and I didn't even let her get a word out before I said, "Yeah, I need out." My friend Amanda wants to go out for drinks, she yelled over the noise of whatever bar she was already at, and I was pulling on my boots before she finished the sentence.
The door slammed behind me, cutting off the hum of the empty apartment, and the night air hit my skin like a shot of something cheap and potent. I didn't look back.
I didn't look back.
The stairwell swallowed me whole, my boots hammering against the concrete steps with a rhythm that matched the frantic pulse in my throat, and when I burst through the lobby door, the cool night air hit my lungs like a shot of something cheap and potent—freedom tasted like exhaust fumes and the distant thump of bass bleeding from a bar two blocks over. I didn't look back.
I found Amanda tucked into a cracked vinyl booth at the back of The Rusty Nail, her eyes already glassy from two rounds of tequila, and she grabbed my wrist before my ass hit the seat. "Listen, there's a bikini contest at The Den tonight—five hundred bucks to the winner, and you're walking in here looking like you just escaped a cage, so get your tits out and make some money."
The dollar signs flashed behind my eyes like the neon glow bleeding through the grimy bar windows, and for a heartbeat, I saw myself parading across some sticky stage while a crowd of strangers howled. That's not who I am anymore—or who I ever was. "I just got divorced, Amanda, not desperate," I said, but the lie tasted flat on my tongue, because the truth was I hadn't felt wanted in years, and five hundred bucks was five hundred bucks.
Amanda snorted, rolling her glass between her fingers. "Girl, that five hundred bucks is looking at you like a lifeline, and you're gonna let a tan line stop you from grabbing it?"
The five hundred bucks burned in my mind like a dare I couldn't ignore, and I slammed back the rest of her tequila before grabbing her keys from the table. "Let's go." We stumbled out into the night, her laughter echoing off the brick walls as I peeled out of the parking lot, and within twenty minutes I was tearing through my closet like a woman possessed—rummaging past old sweatpants and remnants of a marriage I'd rather burn than keep, until my fingers found the neon-green bikini I'd bought for a Cancún trip that never happened.
I yanked the bikini off its hanger, the fabric cool and unforgiving against my palms, and Amanda was already grinning like she'd won the lottery herself as I tore through my apartment, grabbing a pair of cutoff shorts that barely qualified as clothing—and twenty minutes later, I was pushing through the heavy steel door of The Den, the bass hitting my chest like a physical weight, the air thick with cheap perfume and the metallic tang of desperation. I spotted the contest sign-up table shoved against a wall plastered with faded posters of past winners, their glossy smiles a warning I chose to ignore as I scrawled my name across the clipboard and handed it back to a pierced girl who barely glanced up before waving me toward the dressing room.
The dressing room reeked of hairspray and regret, and I was halfway into the neon-green bikini when a shadow fell across the doorway. Mason Cole leaned against the frame, forty-five years of rough living carved into his jaw, and said, "You're new—what's your name, sweetheart?"
I met his gaze dead-on, the neon-green bikini top clinging to my skin like it was already second nature, and said, "I'm Alecta. I'm here to win the contest."
Mason's mouth curved into something between a smirk and a warning as he stepped back from the doorframe and nodded toward the stage. "Then get your ass out there, sweetheart—the spotlight's already looking for you."
I TOOK A DEEP BREATH—MY LIQUID COURAGE AND VANITY PUSHING ME ON—I KNOW I HAVE A SEXY LOOK. I pushed through the curtain into the spotlight's white-hot stare, heels clicking across the chrome stage as the crowd's roar stripped away the last of my doubt.
I worked the stage like it owed me money, and when the votes came in, the pierced girl held up my number—SHE WINS. Mason was already waiting at the edge of the light, a business card pinched between two fingers, his voice low enough that only I could hear: "You ever thought about dancing here for real?"
I DIDN’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY AT FIRST. THEN HE STARTED TALKING ABOUT MONEY AND MY TALENT—two grand a week, private dances, a cut of the bar—and the cold edge in his voice made the stage lights feel like a countdown instead of applause.
His words hung in the smoke-filled space between us, and my fingers closed around the card before my brain could catch up.
It felt like a cigarette burn—that flash of heat, that instant of knowing I'd crossed some invisible line—and the cardstock bit into my palm as Mason's cold eyes tracked the motion, a quiet lock clicking into place.
"You'll come back tomorrow and do a shift," Mason said, not asking, already turning toward the bar like my answer was just a formality. I told him I'd think about it, but the way his fingers drummed the cash register told me thinking wasn't part of the deal.
"Two grand a week, cash, no house fees, and I choose my own music and private clients—or I walk." Mason's laugh was dry as bar ice, but he pulled a contract from under the register and we crossed out half of it before I signed my stage name in cheap blue ink.
I slid the signed contract across the sticky bar top and told Mason I’d take the shift tomorrow—I accepted. His grin cut through the neon haze as he pocketed the paper, and I already felt the stage lights burning a new name into my skin.
I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I’M GOING TO BE A TITTY DANCER. I’D HAD FOUR SHOTS. THE IDEA SEEMED ABSURD. BUT HERE I WAS.
I QUESTIONED MY SANITY. I’D JUST OBJECTIFIED MYSELF IN THE MOST DEGRADING WAY POSSIBLE, AND NOW I WAS TAKING A JOB IN THE FRINGE SEX INDUSTRY, USING MY BODY AS A COMMODITY.
Mason's hand closed around my wrist before I could turn away, his grip firm but not rough, and he pulled me close enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath and the old leather of his jacket. "Listen to me, Alecta—the men who walk through those doors will try to break you, and the second you let them see you're already cracked, they'll own you." The weight of his words settled into my chest like a cold stone, and I nodded because I had nothing left to say—not to him, not to myself—and I walked out into the parking lot with his warning still ringing in my ears, that, or the four shots, coaxed me toward the stage without a single look back. That stack of hundred dollar bills made me horny.
I stood in the gravel lot with Mason's card still grinding between my fingers, the promise of cash doing more for my pulse than the tequila ever did. Tomorrow I'd walk back through The Den's steel door as Alecta the dancer, and God help anyone who thought they could own what I was about to sell.
SHE TAKES THE STAGE.
The next night, I pushed through the steel door with my heart hammering against my ribs and my name already smeared in lipstick on the dressing room mirror.
First night dancing, and the dressing room smelled like cheap hairspray and other women's sweat, the mirror throwing back a version of me I hadn't met yet. I peeled off my jeans, hooked the neon bikini top around my ribs, and told the girl next to me, "I don't know the rules," while she glued a rhinestone to her nipple with a dead-eyed calm. Mason's voice crackled through the backstage speaker—"Alecta, you're up after Candy"—and my stomach dropped like a bad hand of cards. The stage lights were already bleeding through the curtain, turning the chrome pole into a cold, waiting spine. I walked out before I could think, heels biting the floor, and the first bass note hit my chest like a dare I couldn't take back.
The spotlight found me before my eyes adjusted, a white blade cutting through smoke thick enough to chew, and some faceless regular in the front row slapped his glass against the rail and yelled, "A REGULAR DEMANDS MORE."
I grabbed the pole with both hands, let the cold chrome steady me, and dropped low enough that the men closest to the stage stopped pretending they weren't staring.
My hips picked up the bass before my brain did, a slow grind that made the floor shudder under my heels, and I caught Mason in the back corner, arms crossed, jaw tight, watching me like he was waiting for the crack to show.
The money started landing—crumpled ones, a five, one sweaty twenty that stuck to my thigh—and every bill felt less like applause and more like a receipt for something I couldn't return.
By the time the song faded, I was breathing hard, skin slick, and already calculating how many more shifts it would take before I stopped recognizing the woman in the mirror.
I scooped the damp bills off the stage with the flat of my hand, the sweat-slick chrome warming under my palm as Mason watched from the corner, arms folded, nodding like he'd already spent the money I hadn't earned yet. The back hallway stank of bleach and stale beer, and I counted ones against the grimy wall until my fingers got bored, then shoved the roll into my boot before some other girl could eye it. My reflection in the dressing room glass looked like mine, but the eyes belonged to someone already deciding how far she'd go for a two-grand week. A fresh shift started on the floor, and I caught one face in the crowd that wasn't cheering—just watching, still as stone. HE WATCHES.