Chapter 1
KYRA
I’ve overextended myself today.
That’s the polite way of saying I’m running on fumes, nerves buzzing like exposed wires beneath my skin, my body protesting in dull aches and sharp flares that I’ve learned to ignore. There are days when exhaustion settles in gently, like a blanket I can pull over myself. Today isn’t one of those days. Today it’s more like being hunted by time itself, always a few steps behind me, jaws snapping at my heels.
It started early. Earlier than my body prefers. Earlier than anyone who works nights should reasonably be awake.
The elementary school sits three blocks from my apartment, a squat brick building that smells perpetually of floor cleaner, old paper, and something faintly sweet—glue sticks or crayons or the residue of childhood itself. I’ve walked past it a thousand times without thinking much about it, just another place full of people who don’t know me and never will. Today, though, I walked through its doors.
Third grade.
The teacher was sick. The office secretary recognized me from the after-school program—recognized my face, not my life—and asked if I could step in “just for the day.” Just for the day, like it was nothing. Like it wouldn’t rearrange my entire internal rhythm.
I said yes anyway.
I always say yes. It’s a bad habit, rooted deep in survival. When you grow up without anyone to fall back on, you learn quickly that being useful keeps you fed. Keeps you seen. Keeps doors from closing too fast.
The kids were loud. Bright. Chaotic in a way that felt almost violent to my senses at first. Twenty-three small bodies packed into mismatched desks, voices overlapping, emotions swinging wildly from delight to devastation in seconds. Someone cried because their pencil broke. Someone else laughed too loud at nothing. Someone stared at me like they were trying to peel back my skin and see what was underneath.
That one made me nervous.
Kids do that sometimes. They look at you like they know something, even when they don’t have the language for it yet.
I stood at the front of the room, hands folded, smiling the soft, careful smile I reserve for spaces like that. The version of me that doesn’t swear, doesn’t roll her eyes, doesn’t let the sharp edges show. I wrote my name on the board in blue marker.
Ms. Adley.
It looked strange, seeing it there. Formal. Temporary. Like a costume I could step out of at the end of the day. Which, I guess, it was.
The hours crawled. I read aloud. I explained fractions. I mediated arguments over whose turn it was to line up first. I watched them move through the world with an ease I never had, protected by routines and parents and the assumption that tomorrow would look more or less like today.
I wondered, not for the first time, what it would’ve been like to grow up that way.
The thought didn’t linger. I don’t let those thoughts linger.
By the time the final bell rang, my throat was raw and my patience threadbare, but there was a strange warmth in my chest, too. Something almost dangerous. Something that whispered about different paths and quieter lives and versions of myself that had never learned how to dance for survival.
I shut that voice down immediately.
After the school came the bar.
The bar is familiar in a way the classroom never could be. Low ceilings. Sticky floors. The smell of old beer soaked into the wood no matter how many times it’s cleaned. Neon signs buzzing softly like they’re alive. This place doesn’t ask me to be gentle. It asks me to be fast, sharp, and smiling just enough.
I tied my hair back, swapped sensible shoes for boots with better grip, and slid behind the counter like muscle memory taking over. Orders came rapid-fire. Whiskey. Beer. Something sweet and pink. Something strong enough to make them forget.
I poured. I wiped. I laughed at jokes I’d heard a hundred times. I dodged wandering hands and shut down bad attitudes with a look that promised consequences. There’s power in that, too—being underestimated and dangerous all at once.
People think bartending is easy. They think it’s just drinks and flirting and loud music. They don’t see the way you learn to read people in half a second flat. Don’t see how you clock the difference between drunk and angry, between lonely and entitled. Don’t see how you memorize exits and keep track of who came in with who and who’s been watching you just a little too closely all night.
By the time my shift ended, the sky outside had darkened into something thick and velvety. Night pressing in. My shoulders ached. My feet screamed. I counted my tips, tucked them away, and told myself I could rest later.
Then came the last shift.
The one I don’t name out loud unless I trust the person I’m talking to.
The one I lie about if I don’t.
I prefer to call it “hanging out with my friends.”
People don’t react well when I tell them I’m a stripper.
Of course they don’t.
There’s always a pause. A flicker behind their eyes. Judgment dressed up as curiosity. Concern that’s really just disdain. Like suddenly every other thing about me gets rewritten through that lens. Reduced.
I’ve learned to anticipate it. Learned how to redirect the conversation, how to make a joke of it, how to shrug like it doesn’t matter. Most days, it doesn’t.
The club sits on the edge of town, tucked between a shuttered warehouse and a tattoo parlor that never closes. From the outside, it’s unremarkable. Easy to miss. From the inside, it’s a different world entirely.
Dim lights. Heavy bass. Air thick with perfume, sweat, and something else—anticipation, maybe. Hunger. Not just the obvious kind.
This place is where I learned how to move in my body without apologizing. Where I learned how to look someone in the eye and take control of the space between us. Where I learned that confidence can be built, piece by piece, even if it starts as an act.
As a girl who’s had no family or pack for the longest time, it’s what pays the bills.
It’s also what raised me.
Not in the way people like to imagine. No dramatic rescues or found-family montages set to music. Just a group of women who taught me how to tape my ankles properly, how to spot a problem before it exploded, how to hold my head high even when the world wanted me bent.
Friends. Sisters. Protectors, in their own way.
I gained the most experience here. The most confidence. I learned my limits and how to push them without breaking. Learned how to survive being seen and unseen at the same time.
There’s a strange anonymity in it.
Put on enough makeup. Not enough clothes. A new name.
People stop recognizing you as a person with a past and a future. You become a moment. A fantasy. A projection.
It’s easier than being real.
Onstage, I am Divinity.
Divinity doesn’t flinch. Divinity doesn’t doubt. Divinity knows exactly where to put her hands, how to tilt her chin, how to own every eye in the room without letting any of them truly touch her.
Divinity is powerful.
Divinity is safe.
When the music hits and the lights warm my skin, something inside me settles. Like a part of me that’s always pacing finally sits down. The world narrows to movement and rhythm and breath. I exist entirely in my body, not my thoughts.
That alone is worth something.
But when the night winds down and the makeup comes off, when I’m standing in the locker room under harsh fluorescent lights, there’s always a moment. A pause. A breath where the layers peel back and I remember who I am underneath all of it.
Kyra Adley.
My real name.
The one that never belonged to anyone else. The one I kept when everything else fell away.
I look at myself in the mirror—tired eyes, smudged mascara, strength held together by stubbornness and habit—and I think about how many versions of me exist in a single day. Teacher. Bartender. Dancer. Survivor.
No pack. No family. Just me, stitching together a life from whatever I can reach.
I straighten my shoulders. Wash my face. Change my clothes.
Tomorrow will come whether I’m ready or not.
And somehow, I will be ready anyway.
The next morning doesn’t come gently.
It never does after a night like that—after my body finally collapses into sleep somewhere around dawn, muscles still humming, brain refusing to shut all the way off. I wake to light stabbing through my blinds and my phone vibrating itself half off the nightstand.
At first, I think it’s an alarm I forgot to silence. Then it vibrates again. And again.
I groan, roll onto my side, and fumble for it with clumsy fingers, one eye still glued shut. The screen lights up my face, too bright, too cheerful for how I feel.
Chloe: Rise and shine, Divinity ✨
Liv: Tell me you’re awake
Dani: Don’t ignore us, gremlin
I let my head fall back against the pillow.
Of course it’s them.
I scroll. More messages stack beneath the first wave, timestamps creeping earlier and earlier, like they’ve been coordinating this ambush since sunrise. Or maybe since last night, while I was asleep and defenseless.
My stomach tightens.
There’s a particular tone they get when they’ve all decided something together. A kind of manic optimism, wrapped in affection and bulldozing confidence, like if they just push hard enough I’ll realize they’re right.
They’re rarely malicious.
They’re also rarely wrong.
Which is exactly why my chest feels like it’s caving in.
I type back anyway.
Me: I’m awake. Barely. Why are you all yelling at me before coffee exists
Three dots appear almost instantly. On all three threads.
Chloe: Because Quincy cornered me last night
Liv: Because you’re being wasted on the main stage
Dani: Because we love you and also because rent exists
There it is.
I sit up, dragging the sheet with me, hair a tangled mess around my shoulders. The room smells faintly of detergent and last night’s perfume. My body feels heavy, like gravity’s been turned up a notch just for me.
I already know what they’re going to say.
I just wish—stupidly—that maybe this time it would be different.
Me: No.
I send it before they can build momentum. A flat, immediate response. A wall.
It doesn’t slow them down at all.
Liv: Hear us out
Me: No
Dani: Kyra
Me: Absolutely not
Chloe: At least read what I’m about to say
I close my eyes.
Being onstage is already nerve-racking enough.
People think because I look composed—because Divinity owns the space, because I move like I know exactly what I’m doing—that it’s easy. That I don’t feel every gaze like a hand pressed too close to my skin. That I don’t catalog every reaction, every shift in the crowd, every flicker of attention that lingers too long or sharpens into something dangerous.
They don’t feel the adrenaline humming under my ribs before I step out. The way my pulse spikes when I cross the floor of the club, weaving through bodies slick with alcohol and want, men and women alike watching like I’m a prize that might suddenly decide to bolt.
Walking through bars filled with hungry, horny people is already a test of control.
I can handle that because there’s distance. Lights. Music. A stage between us. Rules everyone understands even when they pretend they don’t.
Private rooms erase that distance.
That’s the problem.
Lap dances—private shows, whatever euphemism Quincy wants to dress them up with—mean enclosed spaces. Locked doors. Fewer witnesses. Expectations that slither instead of announce themselves.
It’s not that I don’t trust my ability to say no.
It’s that I don’t trust what happens after.
I’ve built my survival around margins. Around visibility. Around never being alone in a room where someone else thinks they own me, even for the length of a song.
My phone buzzes again.
Chloe: Quincy is pissed, K
Liv: Two girls quit this month. He’s scrambling
Dani: And you’re one of his top earners
That makes my stomach twist harder.
Top earner. Like it’s a compliment. Like it doesn’t come with strings.
I swing my legs out of bed and pad into the kitchen, phone still in hand. The floor is cold. The apartment is quiet in that hollow, mid-morning way—everyone else already gone to work, already plugged into lives that run on normal schedules.
I pour myself coffee, black, too strong, hands shaking just enough that I notice.
Me: That’s not my problem
Liv: It kind of is if he decides to stop scheduling you
Me: He wouldn’t
Dani: He absolutely would
I lean against the counter and stare at the wall while the coffee steams.
Quincy.
Even thinking his name makes my shoulders tighten.
He’s not a monster. That’s the frustrating part. If he were cruel or overtly threatening, this would be simpler. Lines would be clearer. But Quincy smiles too much, talks about “opportunity” and “growth,” couches pressure in business language and concern.
He never asks outright.
He nudges.
He complains—to everyone else.
Apparently, he’s been complaining to them.
Chloe: He asked me why you’re “not stepping up”
Me: I do my job
Chloe: I know
Liv: We all know
Dani: But he doesn’t care about fair, Kyra. He cares about filling rooms
I take a sip of coffee and immediately regret it. It burns all the way down, sharp and grounding and unpleasant.
A break.
That’s what this morning was supposed to be. A rare pause. No school. No bar. No club. Just a day to sleep, reset, maybe feel like a person again instead of a series of performances stitched together.
Instead, my chest feels tight, like the walls are inching closer.
Me: I don’t want anyone seeing me up close like that
There. I send it before I can talk myself out of it. A sliver of truth, exposed.
The replies take longer this time.
When they come, they’re gentler.
Liv: You’re already seen
Me: Not like that
Dani: We’d never let anything happen to you
Me: You can’t be in the room with me
That’s the part they never quite understand.
Onstage, I belong to myself.
In a private room, I belong to the fantasy someone else is paying for.
That distinction matters.
I scroll back through the messages, through years of shared jokes and bad selfies and mutual support. These women are my friends. My pack, in the only way I’ve ever really had one. They’ve watched my back. Pulled me out of situations before they got ugly. Taught me how to protect myself without turning hard.
They think this is them doing that again—pushing me toward more money, more security, more leverage.
All I can see is risk.
Chloe: Quincy said if you don’t start doing privates, he’s going to “reconsider your future here”
The words sit there, heavy and ugly.
Reconsider.
My jaw tightens.
That’s the threat. Softened. Polite. Wrapped in managerial concern.
I feel that old, familiar flare of anger—the kind that’s never explosive, just sharp and cold. The kind that reminds me how often survival has come with conditions.
Step up. Be more. Give more.
I exhale slowly through my nose.
Me: I need time
Liv: How much
Me: I don’t know
Silence stretches.
Then:
Dani: Just think about it today. Please.
I stare at the phone until the screen dims.
Think about it.
Like it hasn’t already taken up residence in my head, pacing back and forth, listing pros and cons, calculating how long I can afford to say no before the consequences start stacking.
I think about my rent. My savings. The way everything I’ve built rests on precarious balance.
I think about locked doors.
I think about the stage lights and the safety of distance.
I think about how tired I am of being brave in ways no one ever sees.
I set the phone face-down on the counter and wrap my hands around my coffee mug, letting the heat seep into my palms.
For now, this is my break.
Just me. My apartment. The quiet.
And the knowledge that it won’t last.
