Teach Me (5 page)

Seven

Lucas never comes back and I head to the club, irritated and worried and a little disappointed. For someone who “loves” me, he ran out pretty fucking fast just because I don’t want him to die. I’m not in the mood to dance, but I promised Leo not to fuck him over, so I am dressed and ready when he comes to get me. I didn’t give my notice yet. I figure I will tell him at the end of the weekend, since I only have one shift during the week. I don’t want to tell him tonight and have it be uncomfortable for days. Also, and I doubt Leo would do this, plenty of clubs have been known to give the dancers who are abandoning them their most difficult clients – and I am not in the mood to be groped by a bachelor party.

I do my number and my heart’s not in it, but not one guy watching notices. As always, they cheer loudly when I flash them my pussy at the end, and I walk out with a huge collection of cash. The weekends are always good for this.

Leo comes to get me about twenty minutes later. No private room bookings yet, but I do have a lap dance request. I get back into my schoolgirl
get up and go to my client. He’s sitting in the back, toward one of the bars, and he leans back in the chair when he sees me approach.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says. “Bring that sweet thing over here and come to Papa.”

Ew
, I think, although he is old enough to actually be my papa. I lean down and give him a great look down my shirt at my tits, and then I straddle him and start rubbing myself against his crotch. His bulge grows immediately, but it’s disappointing after days with Lucas. Besides, this guy is not getting anything else from me, but still, it’s more fun when they’re packing. I grind on him, but then he does the forbidden and squeezes my tits. I step back, off of his lap, and he whines, “Oh, come on. Just let me play with them.”

“You don’t get to touch,” I remind him. “The only way you get to touch is if you pony up a hell of a lot more cash – and we can take this somewhere private.” I hate even making the offer, but he honestly doesn’t look like he could afford a private room anyway.

“Bitch. You shake your tits at guys and think you can stop us.” He gets up and grabs me, wrapping one arm around my waist tightly, and shoves his face into my chest. I’m about to call for Leo when suddenly a fist comes from my right, makes contact with Papa’s face, and he soars across the floor. I look down at him, now several feet away and on the floor, and blood is pouring from his nose. It definitely looks broken.

“You fucking asshole,” Papa yells and stands up, going for the fist, which I know realize is connected to Lucas’s body. He can’t do shit against Lucas, but Lucas is wild. He pounds on the guy, even when Papa collapses to the floor and begs him to stop. The punches continue to fly, and I think Lucas might just kill him. Leo comes running, but no one can intervene. Papa is on the floor, broken and bloody, and Lucas will not stop.

“Stop,” I beg. “You’re going to kill him!”

“Good. He fucking deserves it for touching you.”

I reach out to grab Lucas’s arm, but he shoves me back and keeps hitting Papa. “Lucas!” I scream. “Lucas! Please stop!”

Everyone in the club has stopped to watch the scene. Even the music is on pause and I’m worried someone will call the cops. I can almost bet that Lucas is high and he will be arrested for drugs and assault if I don’t get him out of here.

“Please, Lucas,” I beg and finally, he slows. He looks down at Papa, who may actually be dead, and stops punching. Rising, he grabs me and turns to Leo.

“If you can’t keep
these scumbags from touching her, then she fucking quits.”

Leo doesn’t protest, just walks away, and I follow Lucas out of the club. I left some things in my dressing room, but I really don’t want to be here if the cops arrive. Given the state of Papa’s body, they will almost definitely be called. I just hope the guy is alive.

Out in the parking lot, Lucas is a mess, and he punches the hood of his car over and over until his knuckles are bloody.

“Look at me,” I demand.

He does and his eyes are blazing. He’s not only high; he’s out of his fucking mind.

“I hope that fucker is dead,” he growls.

“No. No, you do not, because you’ll fucking go to jail if he’s dead.”

“Why’d you walk out on me, baby?”

“
You
walked out on
me
,” I remind him.

“Because you were giving me all kinds of rules. I can’t follow rules. I need to fight and I need to win and I need any resource I can use.”

“Lucas, you are fucking out of control right now, because you probably went and used that resource this afternoon. Even though you don’t even have a fight this weekend.”

He punches the car again. “Did you really think it was cool to fucking remind me? Are you trying to make it worse?”

“No, but you have a problem and I need you to fix it.”

“I don’t have a problem, baby, except I need you,” he says and then he grabs me, pushing me down onto the hood of the car. His hands go everywhere, but I fight my way out from under him.

“Lucas, you are acting no different than that asshole in there and the cops could be here any minute. I’m leaving.”

I walk away and go to my car, wondering if he’ll follow. He shouldn’t be on the road like this, and the sudden realization makes me roll down my window. He’s still standing at his care, looking like walking aggression. “Get in,” I yell. He does and I bring his dumb ass home with me, thinking we can talk, but the second we’re in my apartment, he grabs me, force me face down onto the couch, and pulls my pants down. He spits on his hand and runs his wet fingers over my asshole. Then he lines himself up and digs his way deep into my ass. He grabs
two fistfuls of my hair and screams horrible names at me as he fucks my ass. It hurts, but what hurts more is how oblivious he is to me right now. I go from caring for him to hating him in a matter of seconds, and by the time he comes in my asshole, I don’t even want to look at him. I sit up and spit at him.

“Get out. And don’t ever fucking come back,” I tell him.

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t even look sad. He just zips up his pants and leaves me there on the couch, crying.

Eight

I am a wreck at school on Monday. I miss Lucas, but I don’t miss his violence or his temper. I know when he came down, he must have felt terrible, and he may have even texted me, but I refuse to check. I am done, until he gets his shit together. I’m not dealing with this. I have to call Leo to see if he’ll take me back, although I bet he won’t. The scary thing is that I won’t even be able to use him as a reference, and a lot of clubs want private shows for the managers before they’ll hire someone without experiences. And, from what I’ve heard, those shows are not about the dancing. I was so lucky in finding Leo, because I think he might even be gay.

My students piss me off more than normally, until the last class of the day, when I hear someone talking about Kade McNamara and the fights over the weekend. I try to pretend I’m not listening, but I only get snippet of the conversation. I am lucky when the bell rings and they’re still talking.

“Ms. Gomez, would you like to enlighten the whole class on what is so important that you can’t stop talking now that class has started?” Erica Gomez is the school’s gossip queen and I just know she will have no problem enlightening us all.

“So, Miss Lawlor, you may have heard that Tim Pollen – you remember him?” I nod and she continues. “Well, he started this whole tourney thing where guys fight for money. It’s intense, and it’s all these crazy, scary guys from the city. But he got Lucas Guerrero involved this summer somehow, and Lucas has been a star. He wins every fight Tim organizes for him. So Tim started recruiting more kids from here to bring into the group. He like manages them or whatnot. And Kade McNamara is the new star. I guess he makes Lucas look like a puppy dog.”

“Yeah,” interjects Billy Harvey, who is excited apparently to talk to a teacher about this. “And this weekend, Kade was up against some guy from the city who fights for like this badass dude there.” I raise my eyebrows. “Sorry. A tough guy. Anyway, the tough guy sent his best fighter and he challenged Tim to a big payout if Tim’s guy could win. And Lucas was supposed to fight, but Kade wanted the fight. I don’t know what he did-”

“I heard he sucked Tim’s dick,” Erica interrupts. “Sorry, Miss Lawlor.”

“Gross,” Billy says. “But whatever he did, Kade stole the fight from Lucas. And this weekend, he almost got killed. I guess the guy was crazy and high or something, because he was bleeding and cut, but he wouldn’t fall down and he just pounded on Kade. Kade’s in the hospital now with like crazy injuries. Guess Lucas is thanking his lucky stars that Kade stole the fight, huh?”

I nod, thinking about how lucky Lucas really is. If this guy beat Kade that badly, imagine what he would have done to Lucas. Lucas is tough and he’s big, but Kade is a giant and he’s solid like a wall. Lucas could be dead right now, and even after what he did Friday night, I still feel relief that he isn’t.

“You guys really need to worry about school and not this kind of nonsense,” I say in my best teacher voice and get the class back on track, but after school ends, I am going right to Lucas’s to give him an ultimatum. I feel so happy he’s alive, but I want him alive and present if he wants to keep going with me.

****

Lucas is sleeping on his couch when I arrive, but the door is wide open.
Fucking idiot
, I think. I kick him a few times and he looks at me, groggy, and then sits up.

“What time is it?”

“Like almost four o’clock,” I tell him. “And your door was wide open.”

“See much to take?” He gestures around the room and he’s right. His only television is about 12” big and is playing in black and white. I didn’t even know they still made black and white TVs.

“Get up, take a shower, and come back downstairs. We need to talk.”

“Wanna join me?” He is flirting, but I am not giving in that easily. Not this time.

“Maybe later. After we talk.”

He starts to make his way upstairs and I call out, “Oh, and brush your fucking teeth. You smell like shit.”

He grins and runs upstairs to clean up. I try to pick up around me, but the dinginess seems inherent in the place rather than something that can be scrubbed away. How does he live like this? And what does it say about me that I have been so busy thinking about the size of his cock that I didn’t realize how much trouble Lucas really is in? I start to feel awful about myself, but I try to cover it when he comes back downstairs.

He sits on the couch and I settle into the chair on the other side of the room. My stupid body can’t help but want to be against his, especially now that he’s freshly showered and smells so good, but we have bigger things to deal with at the moment.

“Have you heard about Kade?” I ask.

“No. Why would you come here to fucking talk about Kade?”

“Lucas, listen to me. Kade’s in the hospital. Because of this weekend. Things got out of control.”

“That was supposed to be my fight,” he says and I can’t tell if he’s jealous, smug, or scared.

“I know. Which means it could be
you
in that hospital bed,” I remind him.

“Are you saying you would care?”

“Of course I would care, Lucas.”

“Would you really? You made me get out and told me you were done.”

“Look,” I try to explain. “I can’t support the drug thing. I just can’t. I know you claim it’s not an addiction and it helps you fight and whatever, but that shit will kill you, Lucas. And if I fall for you, I can’t bear to lose you like that. I want you out of all of this. This whole world. And whatever that means for me, I will face it.”

“I can’t.” He says it like there is no debate, like we can’t work through it.

“Yes, you can.”

“You don’t understand. Even if I
could
or even if I wanted to, Tim would never let me out. My only shot is to win big – and then lose big.”

“What do you mean?”

Lucas leans forward. “If I win and make it big, Tim will promote me. I will be his star. If I can get several fights under my belt, and get into the big money, then I will be set. And then, if I want out, I just need to stop winning. Eventually, he will get sick of me losing and move on.”

“But you could be killed before that happens. Look at Kade.”

“Speaking of… maybe we should go see Kade. Because I can take that fight and Tim will pay me double if I can win it, now that Kade humiliated him by getting his ass kicked.”

Lucas’s logic is circular and stupid. If he takes that fight, he will die. But he won’t listen to me. I decide to go along with his stupid plan for one reason only. Maybe seeing how badly Kade is hurt will scare the shit out of him like it did to me. And he will get the fuck out. I would let him move in with me at this point, if it would get him off the fucking meth and away from Tim.

I agree to go to the hospital and I drive. I don’t think Lucas is high, but who knows? It’s sad that there is no one in the hospital visiting Kade and I almost feel bad for him, before remembering he is kind of an asshole. He’s not conscious and the nurses say that it could be a while before he wakes up. I hope Lucas sees Kade lying here, tubes in him and needing machines to breathe, and realizes how ridiculous everything about his lifestyle is. However, he seems merely agitated that he can’t get some pointers from Kade.

“He could have died,” I remind Lucas.

“Someone needs to win that fight. May as well be me.”

I look between Kade and Lucas and sigh. Lucas is half Kade’s size. If this is what the fight did to Kade, imagine what it would do to Lucas.

“I can’t support you in this,” I tell him.

“Too bad. I need you to come with me now, to help me talk Tim into a redo.”

“Lucas, I can’t help you get killed.”

He leans close and pulls me to him roughly. “I won’t get killed. But I can’t be what you want if I don’t fucking start winning again. And I just know that all your convictions mean nothing when you get wet enough.”

“That’s a shitty thing to say,” I tell him.

“Is it?” He asks as he slips his hand down my pants and fingers my clit. Jesus, I want him. Is he right? Am I willing to do anything, at the cost of his safety, if he just gets me horny? I try to back away, but he holds me tight and brings me right to the edge of coming.

“You come with me – and then you can come for me,” he demands.

I don’t know why I go. Because I’m weak? Because I care for him too much to let him go alone? I wish I understood, and I wish I knew why I can’t stay away from him and all his fucked up bullshit that was going to bring the world down around me.