Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning by Karina Halle Page A

was looking. I wondered if it had anything to do with the phone call from earlier.
    Then another thought flashed through my head. One that made me perk up a bit and then feel guilty for doing so. What if Jenn broke up with him? Or visa versa? What if Dex was a single man now? I mean, the strip club is usually the first place they go after a breakup…
    “What?” he asked lazily.
    “Nothing,” I said. I pulled out my phone and looked at the time. It was getting late and we did have a ferry to catch in the morning. I could do well on little sleep, but not when combined with a hangover.
    “You want to go?”
    I nodded. “I had fun though.” I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful. It was my own idea that we hang out outside of work…although I didn’t in a million years expect that we’d go to a hockey game and a strip club in another country. “Obviously you had more fun than me. Though you weren’t in the bathroom all that long.”
    I expected him to laugh at that or protest. He was watching me closely instead. I took my sight off him and watched the stripper on the stage. I didn’t want him to read me anymore. It didn’t seem fair.
    “I hope you remember what I’ve said,” he said earnestly. He finished the rest of his drink in a few gulps, got out of his seat and walked around to my end. He held out his hand for me.
    “Everytime I think of strip clubs, I will think of you,” I joked, taking his hand and letting him pull me up.
    He pulled me up so I was right up into his chest. I was expecting him to take a step back but he didn’t. I could feel the bottom of his scruffy chin grazing the top of my head. He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back just enough to get a better look at me.
    “I hope next time you feel – well, retarded – about yourself, you’ll remember that I think you’re…”
    I looked up into his eyes. They were drunk, yes, but still absolutely mesmerizing.
    He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he said, “Sorry I licked your face.”
    He turned and started to make his way out of the club. I followed in a hurry, feeling the eyes of the patrons and waitresses staring at me. We must have seemed like quite an odd pair.
    We went back to the hotel but I didn’t fall asleep for at least two hours. My mind kept going over the events of the night. Creepy Clown Lady was a definite cause for alarm (or panic, or madness) but it was Dex’s words that kept resonating throughout, digging deeper at my heart and causing it to flutter with random palpitations. Did he really mean what he said? And if he did…what were we doing? I didn’t want him to go back to his hotel room, I wanted him in this big empty bed, beside me. I wanted to put more dirty and obscene thoughts in his head. I wanted to feel that he wanted me, not to just hear it.
    Did I see a glimpse of the real Dex tonight? Or was that someone else, just a mask to cover up what was really going on, what he really wanted to hide.
    I didn’t even think about checking my phone once.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    “Oh, by the way, if Jimmy asks about those porn charges, just say it was you,” Dex said with a sly grin while sticking a cigarette in his mouth.
    I shook my head, not willing to go to bat for him over that and not at all surprised that he had racked up quite the adult movie bill after last night.
    It was 10 a.m. and we were on the upper deck of the ferry that was taking us from the mainland to Vancouver Island, where we had to pick up the boat.
    The morning had started out in a perpetual raincloud. I eventually fell asleep last night and woke up to a wake–up call and the overall fuzziness of “what the hell did I do last night?” Of course, I didn’t do much of anything. It was more of what I saw and that all came flooding back to me in a haze of stale Jack Daniels and Coke. I think I saw enough boobs to last me a lifetime.
    We got in his car and headed south out of the raincloud. As soon as we reached the