Heat: Dark Love (Dark Saints MC)

1. Valerie

ValerieValerie Parker stretched her arms over her head, the motion sending her slightly-too-tight shirt a few inches up over her stomach. It exposed the tan skin there in a way someone might describe as sexy, not that that had happened in a while. She didn’t do boyfriends. Especially now that she bounced from bar to bar. Bartending had been her thing since freshman year of high school when she was just 15 – God knows how she’d managed to get employed at all, much less in one of these dumps – and the appeal decreased as the years went by…

Not that there had ever been much appeal to start with.

She looked around her. It was just past 5 in the evening now, so the nightlife scene wouldn’t be coming to life at all for a few hours. At least, it wouldn’t if this was any other city. But it wasn’t, and patrons were already trickling in, and, to be honest, she was sick of all of it. But more than anything, she was sick of working at some shoddy bar a few blocks off Main called Lanterns.

This bar didn’t even have much of what its name advertised. It was a dark, gloomy place on a dark, gloomy street, and not many people even knew it existed. There were no social media sites up for it, none at all; not even some crappy review site where people basically extort businesses. Lanterns sat down a pot-holed street that could be described as “dim” in the best conditions, and the street posts leading to it had worn down paint. It was hard to get here, after all. Most people wouldn’t even know this bar existed unless they wanted to go looking for it.

But why would they want to go looking for it? Valerie shook her head, pulling her dark brown hair out of her loose ponytail and wrapping it around again for the eighth time this hour. It had only just turned 5 in the evening – some people might even still call it the afternoon, but those weren’t the sort of people who frequented this place – and the bar was already starting to get crowded.

Of course it was. The only people who occupied this joint belonged to the Dark Saints. Sometimes a fresh person would walk in. That didn’t happen often. The newbie would inevitably recognize what had happened – by the sad or angry or sad-angry looks on everyone’s faces, the excessive leather, the bad tattoos, and the overly-shined motorcycles taking up the entirety of the street out front – and leave immediately.

“Aye,” she whispered to herself. She hated working here. There was only so much she could do to avoid throwing herself into her job every day, and the hours she worked there added up to a number that ended up being “too much” in her head instead of any kind of numeral. “Whatever.”

She wouldn’t have to stay here forever. There were other bars to go to.

She could bounce whenever she needed to.

It wasn’t the bar that bothered her so much as it was the people who went there, and the lifestyles they led. She had no interest in it; honestly, the obsession with money, power, and “f*****g as many bitches” as they could – to quote a phrase she had often heard working behind the bar – disgusted her.

Ignoring the regulars (read: the only effing people who walked into this trash dump), the bar wasn’t actually that bad. Sure, it was sad and decrepit, and everything in here needed to be thrown out. And sure, the bar needed a boss that actually gave a flying F about who went there, and how many times fists collided with flesh, and about the actual reputation of the place.

But then again, who would care? The only people who knew about Lanterns were the exact type of people who enjoyed going there. It was a freaking conundrum.

Valerie’s eyes went to the couch at the far left of the bar, pushed up against the wall. It was a light brown made much darker by years of use. The boss didn’t bother changing out furniture anymore; as he said, “it just gets ruined anyway.” Fair point. But…she gritted her teeth. Did no one around here even pretend to put in any effort?

Nope. The TV hung up a few feet above the far left of the bar didn’t even get reception to any channel anymore. But when had it? Not any time since she’d been here. Yet it still had people dutifully staring at it. They – three dudes in maybe their 40s who looked like they had similar enough crises that they all ended up decked out in leather, colorful variants of the same star tattoo, and sitting in a dive bar at 5 something on a Tuesday – had that glazed over, asshole look on their face that said that anyone who talked to them would be met by a stream of curses and turning the volume on the TV up (if there had been any show to watch in the first place).

Valerie sighed for as many times as she had in… just forever. Her eyes went to the far right of the bar. There were seats and tables there, which was at least remotely normal. Maybe in the past this place had pretended to be a restaurant? She didn’t know, and didn’t really care to figure out if that was the case or not, truthfully. People littered the seats there, too, and they all looked the same.

Of course they did.

It was a club. The Dark Saints Motorcycle Club. Or, as she liked to think of them, the “I’m just a brat but I threaten people and think it makes me significant in some way” man-children.

She noticed them. She noticed all of them, and every little flaw in this place. Yeah. She had to get out of here. Too bad her experiences were all in places like this, and no decent place – like an actual restaurant – would hire her to be the bartender. And too bad she couldn’t just quit; she had to make rent somehow. She looked behind her.

The back of the bar was the only place in this joint that was in remotely good condition. It wasn’t in its best condition, but Valerie made the most she could of the materials back there, and in the supply closet just behind her. She sighed, glancing at it, thinking of how many times idiotic drunkards had tried to get in there, thinking she was just being a b***h and hiding a “public” bathroom from them. There was a piece of paper on it now because of that, and the sight of it bothered her. (“Notice: this is not a bathroom. This is a supply closet.”) Other than that, though, the rest of the back was organized.

Shelves behind her held the booze, the brands getting fancier and more costly the higher the eye traveled up the three shelves there. Beneath those and to either side of the shelves were a bunch of storage bins, chock full of extra straws (did anyone here even use straws?), jars full of olives and stuff like that, umbrellas for martinis and s**t (no one ever bothered with these, either), and other stuff. In the back, in the supply closet was a fridge full of cold beers. Most people just ordered off tap, however, and that was directly in front of where Valerie stood now.

Beneath the bar top, there were various bins. Garbage bins, empty bins, bins full of things that were actually useful. Small cleaning supplies she could just pick up, so she didn’t have to go into the actual supply closet and fight with some kind of mop there. She bent down, her hand going towards that area, and she grabbed a rag.

Yeah, no one there noticed her. It didn’t bother her much; not that she wanted their attention anyway. It’d be nice to be treated as a person sometimes, but what could she expect? She hated every one of the men there. There were rarely women in the bar, so she didn’t include them in her line of thought, but she hated all the ones who did come, just the same.

Her eyes went to the wood of the bar boards in front of her. It was clean, like it had been clean when she washed it over again two hours ago. She’d come in at 2 P.M. She wouldn’t leave until 4 in the morning. It was one of the joys of being the single bartender bold enough to come into a place like this, especially as a short woman in her 20s. She brought the rag to the boards, running it over the thick indentations in the wood from where some wannabe-tough-guy had dragged a knife against it. There was way too much s**t carved into that bar.

She brought a hand to her temples. If anyone tried doing that when she was there to see it, she might just have to stab them back. She didn’t have time to deal with any of this. But she had to.

Her nose twitched; the place smelled like diesel, as usual. It made sense. These jerks liked to rev their engines as they pulled into and out of the lot, and it left literal clouds of smoke all over the place whenever they did it. She bet these people, if they could even be called that, put too much oil all over everything on purpose.

Whatever.

She kept cleaning.

No cleaning was ever enough cleaning. It wasn’t so bad when they were there. The men were quiet enough when they were not fighting, anyway, it’s just that they always left everything f*****g filthy. Cleaning up the same mess every night got old after the first two nights, and it had been far more than that number of shifts for Valerie.

She looked at the small watch holding tight to her wrist. 8 P.M. She could’ve guessed that by the loud chatter going on as more people flooded into the bar, their voices loud and drunk-sounding even though this place hadn’t actually been open to customers until about four hours ago. Or was it only three? She wasn’t sure anymore, she just unlocked the door when people showed up. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to, but she was also technically not supposed to use her curves to get tips out of people, either.

Her hands went to her chest and she adjusted her bra. Her entire wardrobe was based off the premise of getting tips by looking hot, but not looking hot enough to attract the attention of a potential creep. It was a fine line, and she hated having to walk it. The tips her outfits got her did her good, but there wasn’t much in the tip jar now. She removed the money anyway, putting it in a bigger jar she kept beneath the counter.

The stools in front of the bar were getting full now, too. She shook her shoulders in something that might resemble a shimmy, if you looked at it from a certain angle and ignored the lack of bounciness or happiness to the movement, and mentally prepared herself for it.

Her time to shine.

“Hello,” she smiled.

Eyes went to her chest and then loosely to her face, but always ended up looking back at her breasts before moving away. Sometimes people put money in her tip jar, but for the most part the rest of the night passed uneventfully.

“Beer.”

“Regular tap.”

With every order of something on tap – what the hell was a regular supposed to be? It varied from person to person, and she never bothered asking any of them what they thought something like that was supposed to mean – she just slid a glass across the bar. Those were kept under the bar, too. Every time they wanted a refill on tap they were supposed to tell her, but they all liked to act like they owned the place, and that included the tap. They’d reach over the bar top for a refill, but she didn’t stop them. She was constantly behind the bar. She could just see who went to the tap and who didn’t, and add it to their tab at the end of the night.

Hours passed.

She checked her watch.

Did she say hours? She meant half an hour. It was about 8:30 now. The lights in here seemed like they got dimmer whenever more people entered. Maybe that was because the crush of bodies blocked off the light from the lamps in here. The lamps put on all of the tables were the main light source in this place; sure, there were some lights hanging off of the ceiling, but not many. And of the ones there were, they were too few and even more far between.

Whatever. Got to find a way to pass the time.

“Tap, please.”

“Beer.”

“Whiskey on the rocks.”

All of the orders blended together, and by the time Valerie looked at her watch again it was nearly 3 in the morning. The witching hour. Or was that the devil’s hour? She didn’t remember. She didn’t really care about that either, all that really mattered to her was how filthy the bar had gotten. She hadn’t looked around the room in a while. Her attention had been on making sure no one scammed her out of one or maybe three free beers. She didn’t mind it personally, but that added up and that ended up being a lot of cash. Just because she never saw her boss didn’t mean she could just do whatever and hope it was okay. This was still a biker club’s bar, and the man who ran it was no different, probably. Well, most likely. How could he be any different when this was what he was interested in attracting?

Her muscles were too tense, and she could feel the back of her neck knotting up. Her hand went to rub the tension away, and then her eyes went to the room again. The people from just a few hours ago had left the couch vacant, and there was no one there now. That didn’t mean there was nothing, though, and Valerie hoped that the amber liquid seeping into the cushions was beer and not piss.

Ugh. She rolled her eyes. There were, of course, a few empty beer bottles rolling around on the floor, and if those didn’t get picked up soon, someone was going to slip on them, fall, and then break their neck. Not like it’d matter. It was a bad enough bar, after all; a death or two probably wouldn’t be looked into much, and if one less of these people quit showing up all the time, all the better. Still, she would need to get those later.

But then her eyes skimmed through the room, and she saw the upturned table and the two men about to slap each other with…chairs? Oh, for f**k’s sake. As long as they cleaned it up after themselves.

She snorted. Not likely. And then, ignoring that, she went back to looking around the bar, trying to think of something she could do. She didn’t want to have to deal with the couch. She didn’t want to have to deal with any type of stain at all, actually, and if there was anything else she could preoccupy her time with, she would –

Shatter.

Her head turned up at the sound. It sounded like someone had managed to get a hold of a plate; she didn’t remember giving out any food orders, but she might have done so earlier. Everything blended together after a while. Her eyes went back to the table she’d seen earlier, and she registered the mess that was there now. There looked like crumpled fries under the feet of the two men fighting. Yup. Definitely a food order.

Fights were so commonplace here that she wasn’t worried about that – who cared if they injured themselves, anyway? They chose it when they put their fists up. She was more concerned about the mess. This shift didn’t end until 4 in the morning, and that was coming up any minute now. (Okay, any thirty-some minutes from now, but still.) If she had to stay late to clean up after some morons’ mess, or stay late and wait for an ambulance to show up, she was going to make sure neither of those fools survived to make their way on to the emergency room.

But that’s when he caught her eye.

She hadn’t seen this one before. He had to be the same as all the others, but…