Kane’s metal twin bed with its single pillow sat in the corner against two walls, making me feel like this place was a prison even before he’d locked me in here. No knick-knacks sat on shelves. Only a single dresser stood on the wall opposite the bed, but even that had nothing sitting on top of it.
My curiosity about Kane and all of this made me want to snoop, so I opened the top drawer of the dresser and looked inside. All I saw were the usual socks and men’s underwear, although the guy seemed to like black a lot, if this drawer was any indication. I opened the second drawer and found shirts neatly folded. The drawers below that one were very similar, with both of them filled with Kane’s long sleeved T-shirts I’d seen him in at work. Lifting one to my nose, I inhaled the fresh smell of laundry detergent.
I headed toward the closet, hoping to find something to tell me more about the man who I now considered my jailer. Opening the door, I found just a few dress shirts like the one I wore and maybe a half dozen pairs of jeans and pants. It was the least cluttered closet I’d ever seen in my life. But on the floor sat a box, and crouching down, I saw it contained old records like the kind my parents used to love listening to. I thumbed through the albums and saw all those bands from the 60s and 70s the classic rock stations liked to play.
Nothing about his clothes told me much of anything about Kane, other than he definitely wasn’t like his brother Cassian. There was a man who knew how to dress to impress. Always in expensive suits and silk ties, he looked powerful.
Not that Kane didn’t look powerful. I doubted I’d ever forget the moment as I stood up on that stage and opened my eyes to see him staring up at me and then the next minute him throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me out of The Carousel Club.
Thinking about Kane as some rescuer would only get me into something I didn’t need. Angry at how easily I could forgive him for basically ruining my only chance at that club, I slammed his closet door shut and stalked away toward the bathroom. He wasn’t a rescuer. He was just like every other man.
Not to be trusted.
I stared at the tiny bathroom window he’d mentioned as he listed all the rules of this prison and saw he hadn’t lied. Squeezing through the space would be difficult. I could probably do it, but it would take some work. I stood on the toilet lid and looked out to the street below. Four floors would be a drop to my death without anything to hold on to, and I saw nothing to help me down the side of the building.
I was trapped.
For a moment, I stood there staring at that tiny window and wanted to cry. It was like a symbol for my life. I could see a way to escape, but I couldn’t get out. I felt like the punchline of some cruel joke. Would I never find the way out of my life? Was I destined to spend every day trapped in one way or another?
I walked back out to the kitchen hoping I wouldn’t find the typical bachelor refrigerator filled with milk past its expiration date, some kind of rotted meat, and too many bottles of alcohol. If I was going to be stuck in his crappy apartment, I planned on eating what he had. Feeding me was the least he could do for keeping me here.
To my surprise, I found food—real food like normal people ate. In fact, I found the kitchen stocked with everything needed to make practically any meal I’d want. There in that tiny apartment that looked more like a jail cell than a home he had a place that felt warm and welcoming. Not the décor, which consisted of the same boring white painted cinder block walls and old wood floor, but what he hid in the refrigerator and behind the cabinet doors.
The image of Kane as someone who’d care enough for anyone to feed them lingered in my mind as I made myself a meal of spaghetti. What was this guy’s deal? He didn’t even try to hide his dislike for me in the interview, making up his mind about me not dancing at Club X before I even hit the top floor. Then weeks later, when he stopped down at the bar, he seemed to want to talk to me like we were friends, but why?
“I’m good enough to bartend but not good enough to dance,” I muttered to myself as I washed my dirty dishes and placed them in the dish rack next to the sink to dry.
That must have been it. He didn’t think I had the right stuff to dance at his precious club. But why then had he come to The Carousel and taken me from that place like he felt bad about not hiring me to dance for him?
I couldn’t figure him out. He hated me from our first meeting and then one night he decided he needed to save me from the ugliness of some strip club across town where he didn’t think I deserved to be.
Why did he care at all?
The question rolled around in my head as I returned to snooping around my captor’s apartment. Did he have a girlfriend? I imagined he must. The man may have been strange, but he was stunning. Well over six foot with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare right through you, he was the type of man women noticed. Add to that the tattoos on his arms, which gave him a badass look, and the fact that he said practically nothing, even when he was being nice, and I couldn’t imagine how women didn’t fall at his feet.
If he did have a woman in his life, she didn’t spend a lot of time at his apartment. The place showed no sign of any feminine touch at all, and I found no clothes a woman would wear stored anywhere in his dresser or closet.
So if he didn’t have a girlfriend, did he rescue me because he wanted me? No, that couldn’t be it. I’d worked at his club for weeks and only once had he even bothered to speak to me. Not that I gave him much reason to after pulling my nasty bitch routine on him.
Jesus Christ! I must be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I’m sitting here locked away in the guy’s apartment wondering if he wants me to be his girlfriend and actually thinking I like him!
Like him would have been a stretch. I barely knew him, and what I knew I wasn’t too sure I appreciated. Sullen and brooding most of the time, he definitely had a domineering thing going on. Not that I didn’t like a man taking charge, but driving across town to yank me off the stage at another club and carry me out of the building was definitely a bit much.
Plopping myself down on his couch, I tried to figure out what all this was with Kane. The guy was a puzzle. Hated me from the minute he met me but rescued me. That didn’t make sense. He had seemed nice part of the time on the drive there. Well, when he wasn’t chasing me down and carrying me to this place to be kept prisoner for God knows how long.
I didn’t want to think about this anymore. Turning on the TV, I sat watching an MMA wrestling show for about three minutes before I began desperately searching for the remote. I didn’t need to see people beating the fuck out of each other. My life had enough of that, thank you.