Page 103 of Off Limits
Her throat works. She puts down her beer which she’s barely touched. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars. Give or take.’
On the inside, I reel. ‘And you can’t quit?’
She glances back toward the house. ‘For a while, my daddy kept on telling me he’d win the money back. But then his health took a turn for the worse. And I didn’t have a choice.’
‘You’re being exploited. It’s forced labor.’
‘What would you have me do? Bake cookies and sell them by the side of the road? I don’t have that kind of money, Jake. If I do this, I keep my father alive. And one day, the debt will be paid.’
‘You’ve been doing it for, what, five years now? You’ll practically be thirty.’
‘You think I haven’t worked that out? Plus, every day, I wait for the moment where somebody recognizes me as a member of the CMC. Every. Single. Day. And every day I’m breaking the rules of my contract. And that doesn’t even include my relationship with you.’
I take a step back, tryna take this all in. There’s anger in her tone. She works in a strip club to repay her father’s substantial debt. She works as a waitress to earn a basic wage. She lives out her dream as a cheerleader for the Mutineers. I knew what she was risking when she agreed to date me, but I didn’t know the magnitude of it. What she risks every time she leaves the house. It makes me admire her resilience. It makes me love her more, and I think I’ve known for some time that I do love her. It makes me want to fight for her.
‘As a cheerleader, I make less than half what an NFL waterboy makes, per year,’ she states. ‘Did you know that? What is your contract worth?’
I quit pacing and swallow the thick lump in my throat. ‘I get it,’ I mumble, because I feel ashamed to say the figures out loud, despite it being comparable to what my contemporaries make or reflecting what I put my body through.
Serenity presses her fingers to her forehead. ‘No offense, Jake, but you’ll never get it.’
‘I’ll give you the money,’ I say. ‘I’d give you the money in a second.’
She looks up at me. Her eyes are filling up. ‘I know you would,’ she whispers. ‘But I can’t take it. I can’t be indebted to you like that. I couldn’t live with myself.’
‘Why the hell not? You’d never have to dance like that again. You could pay me back instead, not that I’d ever ask you to.’
‘No,’ she says again, her voice raw with emotion, and I know it’s out of pride.
‘You’ve done everything you can do,’ I argue, careful that her dad doesn’t hear me. ‘You’ve done more than enough for your father. Let me take that burden.’
‘Jake. I don’t need a hero. And we’re still getting to know one another.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘And what happens when you’re no longer crazy about me? And you’re down two hundred thousand dollars?’
‘I’m already on track to hit a thousand rushing yards for the season. I’ll get a general performance bonus. Serenity, I don’t care about the money. And for the record, I’m gonna be crazy about you ’til they put me in the ground, seventy, eighty years from now.’
‘You don’t know that. You didn’t know the truth about me until a few days ago.’
‘You could drive a garbage truck for all I care, or clean goddamned restrooms! I’m not gonna feel any different about you, whether you’re taking your clothes off for guys, or not.’
I’ve raised my voice. We both look back at the house, and we’re probably both thinking the same thing, worrying if Glenn Harper overheard me or not.
Serenity bows her head. ‘I’m not a damsel who needs saving. I’ve taken care of my own shit since I was seventeen.’
I don’t answer for a moment. ‘What are you saying?’
Once more, her voice shakes. ‘I’m saying I can’t carry on like this. I told Jewel yesterday that I need to quit the CMC. But if I quit, and we come out as a couple, I’m pretty sure people will quickly figure out who I am and what I do. And I couldn’t do that to you. The golden boy of the Mutineers can’t be seen going out with a stripper.’
Her words have got my heart slamming against my ribs, worse than if it’s a free-for-all on the field. The adrenaline is pumping. If I don’t act now, I could lose her. And I can’t lose her. I abandon my bottle of beer to the wooden railing and go to her.
I grab her hands and pull her to standing. Her thighs touch mine as I hold her close.
‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘If you can tell me you don’t care for me, then I’ll go.’
In the darkness and shadows, our faces are almost touching.
