Babes Stripping For Love

A couple of weeks ago Lexie didn’t think that her new life would be compromised, not in the near future. She thought she’d have time at least until Harley finishes kindergarten. She thought they were safe. Well, she felt like they were safe. He was not supposed to be out yet. She imagined she’d have years before she needed to start watching her back.

Lexie planned that they were going to pack up and move before the new school year started. She was thinking three towns over. Being a runaway, she learns not to get attached to her environment. Still aiming for big cities where she and her son Harley can blend in perfectly. The homeschooling system can be easier to manage in bigger cities. The key was knowing someone that can fake their paperwork. No one would think twice about finding out that their neighbor has a school-age kid who wasn’t at school during weekdays. Harley still needs to play with kids his age, she wouldn’t dream of keeping him hidden all day.

“Can I be Cody again when we move? Mama always calls me that, I know you’re my new mommy, but I miss my mama.” His sad eyes looked at Lexie, they started getting teary and she rushed to hug him, telling him that she misses her too. “You can go back to Mara, you have a cool name, it was better than Lexie.” He scrunched his nose in disdain.

“I’m sorry, baby, not for the next town. But I tell you what, how about you pick out your name? It can be from the characters of the books or cartoon shows you like?”

“Really? I can be Pooh?” The little guy sounded so excited that she couldn’t help but laugh and that got him to laugh too, thinking he just made the funniest joke.

“Pooh huh? And what name should I get?” She grinned, teasing the little guy, secretly wanting to shoo his tears away.

“Ooo… you can be Robin! like Christopher Robin, I know a girl named Robin.”

They both giggled and settled into a relaxing conversation. “Let’s see, how about you be Christopher and I can be Robin.” The little boy laughed and told her that he liked that.

Lexie was a runaway, maybe even a fugitive, she was not sure. She didn’t stick long enough for her stepdad’s legal status and the social service. Her son was actually her half-brother that she took from step-her dad after he beat up their mom. Harley was almost four when it happened. He had been crying for hours when Lexie found him hugging their mom’s dead body. Her stepdad slumped drunk off his ass with a broken bottle in his hand smeared with blood.

Their mom’s blood.

She knew her stepdad was trouble the day her mom told her that she was pregnant with his baby and that he was going to marry her. Lexie and her mom used to be happy, though they did struggle financially after her father’s early death. Life had been tough on them, but it gets tougher the day her stepdad shows his true colors.

Lexie stopped wearing shorts and tank tops around the house, no matter how hot the weather was or even if the air conditioner was broken. The douchebag would gaze at her in a predatory way, more time using being drunk as his excuse. Lexie stayed out of the house for as long as she could when her mom was still alive. She had been thinking about leaving her mom and her new husband. But when he started abusing her mom, Lexie realized that she couldn’t, she needed to take care of both her mom and her younger brother.

The day of the incident she had called the cops and told them what happened. And since they live on the bad side of the town where crime rates were the highest, domestic abuse was everywhere, and because her mom was already dead it took a while for the cops to reach them.

The EMT arrived seconds after the cops. They removed her mom’s body from the kitchen floor then hauled her still drunk step-dad into the back of the police car after taking pictures and did a sloppy job of dusting for prints from the cheap liquor bottle and bagged it in an evidence bag.

They have given a preliminary conclusion that the husband did it. It was that fast and that easy, it didn’t settle well with Lexie. They had told her to stay put, that someone from social service will call and come by in a couple of hours. The cops stated that because Lexie was eighteen, meaning that it was okay for her to take care of her little brother while waiting for the social workers to decide what they were going to do with Harley.

She didn’t miss the snarky mumbling of the officers as they look at their surroundings. Small, cramped house with peeled walls. Kitchen appliances from twenty years ago, and a television that looked like it belonged in a museum. Everything screams poverty, a typical reason to induce domestic abuse. They will probably send both of them into the system if Lexie was below eighteen.

Realizing that they might have taken her brother away she needed both of them gone. It was time. Lexie had been saving her money, waiting until one day her mom would open her eyes and see that he was a bad man. That it was not okay to be pushed around and be his punching bag.

That was exactly what they did two years ago. They packed up and left. Lexie managed to relocate both of them to a city where she worked as a waiter, bouncing around a couple of diners before she decided to be a dancer at Babes to gather more money and eventually move on to the next city, hoping to get a better job.

What Lexie didn’t dare imagine was having friends. Good enough friends that she would be appointed as one of the bridesmaids. Yes, Lexie was getting closer to Charlotte. Her old life was far in the back of her mind. Finally able to appear as a shadow of their past, though she hoped to be forever gone, she knows that she still needs to be cautious.

Getting the call from her neighbor, tipping her that her stepdad was out was a big wake-up call. Mrs. McNally, her nosy ex-neighbor told her that he got out based on a technicality and stupid damn luck. She told Lexie that he had a public lawyer assigned to review his case and that guy managed to find a loop in his case that sets the guy free. And now he’s on a mission to find both of them.

Since the call from Mrs. McNally, Lexie had been jumpy, and on that same day, she packed their go-to bags the moment she arrived at their small one-bedroom apartment. When she picked up Harley an hour later from Jade’s place she decided that she was not going to go to work and will need to call Jojo, their office manager to rearrange her schedule.

The next day when she danced at Babes, she kept on lurking out to the audience. Lexie also peeked at the CCTV, checking out her client before entering her private booth. Her emotion was all over the place and by the end of the week she was tired.

Too tired that when the day of the bridesmaid’s dress fit-out came, she broke down when a call from an unknown number managed to rattle her. The caller said nothing but creepy deep breaths that spooked her to tears.

“I n-need t-to go, H-Harley,” Her hands were shaking when Dee held them and Bree was telling her to sit down.

“What’s the matter, Lexie? Talk to us,”

Lexie couldn’t reply when suddenly she was hyperventilating. Cassidy was giving her water but she couldn’t even hold the glass, then she could hear Charlotte start calling someone. All Lexie could do was just sit there, crying, trying to calm herself down but couldn’t. She can’t, not until she gets Harley and herself out of town.

During the chaos, she saw him. Finding Keegan was a big surprise to Lexie. She wasn’t sure whether it was a good one or a bad one.

“Keegan?”

The man nodded as if he knew that Lexie was not her real name. He recognized her. Somehow fate had made her find him four years too late. Lexie did appreciate that he didn’t reveal her real name since he definitely heard Charlotte call her Lexie.

Keegan was twenty-one at that time, too old for the sixteen years old Lexie, so he said. He was visiting his grandparents and by the end of the summer, he decided to leave town and back to his college life, abandoning their young love easily. She had confided in him. She had told him about her stepdad, but he left anyway. That day she learned a very valuable lesson. She would never trust anyone. Ever again.

“You know him?” Charlotte was a bit taken aback but Lexie stuttered her reply.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“I… um… we…”

“We dated, a while back.” He lied easily. It was many years ago and they barely kissed. He was adamant to keep the thing between them platonic, telling her that she was too young. Yet, she was falling helplessly in love with him every time they met behind her house and he took her out for a movie and an ice cream to take her mind off her family problems.

When he held her hand and ushered her to his car, she knew that she was dangerously close to another heartbreak.

Just like he had done years ago.