raises a brow. “Oh, are we cutting into your beauty sleep, princess? You aren’t a guest. All the women pull their own weight around here, Emma.”
I sigh, but she ignores it.
“That is your name, right?” she adds, her tone oozing sarcasm. “Or is that one fake too?”
I recoil as if slapped. In the weeks since Spider had upended my life, things have been far from pleasant between me and Dee. She’s only talked to me when she has to, giving orders when I work the barroom or clean the rooms at Casper’s, but saying little else. I haven’t forgotten that she hit me hard enough to knock me to the floor the first full day I was there. After that first day, she has been cold but not mean. Today, she seems extra frosty, more like the day she hit me.
Old, familiar guilt for my having betrayed her tightens my chest. All that she’d done for me floods back, and I wonder if her renewed anger is because she’s found out that I’d been planning to escape again.
“Where’s Spider?” The idea of facing him after last night leaves me hollow, and I don’t want to be caught by surprise by him.
“None of your business. Nosy little thief.”
I say nothing, but the word cuts across my heart. You’d never know we were friends once.
“I guess you need fresh towels for a shower. I’ll go get you some,” she adds, her voice clipped.
Well, I suppose it was silly to expect her to tell me. “Thank you.”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, as if taking my gratitude for more sucking up. She leaves, and the door shuts with a snap.
At least she didn’t wallop me across the jaw this time.
In the bathroom, I notice there’s no window, unlike the one in Spider’s room. Not that it would matter if there was. I’m on the second floor. If it was difficult to run from Casper’s, it’s probably impossible to do so here, with so many more men.
I strip off Striker’s shirt. Brushing my teeth, it’s impossible not to notice the half-healed cuts in the shape of a spider’s web on my chest. It’s probably going to take forever for them to completely heal, and even when they do, they’ll leave scars that won’t ever fully disappear.
I’ll be marked by him forever.
I finish brushing and stab the toothbrush into the cup on the sink.
Questions bounce around in my head as I consider Dee. Had Spider told her what had happened after we left Casper’s? Is her renewed animosity toward me out of protectiveness for Spider? Or is it a more basic sense of loyalty to the club as a whole? I suppose it matters not. One way or the other, by going against a respected member of the club, I’ve lost what little respect I’ve gained since I stole those tips.
By the time I’ve turned on the shower and let the water heat up, Dee’s returned. She knocks on the closed door to the bathroom. I open it a crack and she thrusts towels into the opening along with a comb.
“There’s shampoo and soap in the shower. Hurry up. There’s work to be done. You’re wasting time.”
“Thanks,” I mumble.
She mutters a reply, but the running water drowns it out.
“There’s clean clothes for you out here,” she adds gruffly.
Once I finish washing with the same men’s shampoo and soap I used last night, I wrap my hair in one towel and dry off with the other. Then I walk out into the bedroom.
I give a start and clutch my chest. Dee is making the bed, fluffing up the pillows. I’d expected her to leave.
“Jumpy this morning, thief?”
I roll my eyes.
“Why are you doing that?” I nod to the bed she’s finishing up with.
There’s a pecking order among the women at the clubhouse, and I’ve long since picked up on Dee’s role in it—at our clubhouse, she’s the alpha female, in charge of the girls. Usually, the lower ranking girls clean the men’s rooms and make the meals. Women like Monica and Sassy and me. Besides, I’d have thought she’d want to spend as little time in the same room with me as possible.
She shrugs, straightening the papers on the desk and pushing the chair in. “Habit, I guess. I see something that needs taking care of, and I gotta do it. It drives Snake nuts.”
I blink at her. For a minute, she sounded like the old Dee, personable, talking idly about her husband as