I'd heard that leaving your past behind you was enough to get rid of it. Let bygones be bygones.

Not in this story though.

Because for bygones to be bygones, you had to leave the remnants of it behind you. In the past. Bygones couldn’t be bygones if you kept running into them every now and then.

I had silently crouched on the grass for five long minutes, counting every second of it. I was too numb to move and speak. When I moved back to the car, Maeve didn’t follow me. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t look upset or surprised or guilty that I had found out. She looked like she…like she was done.

There was no use of forcing her. She wasn’t mine anymore.

She was never mine for fuck’s sake.

I climbed into my car and drove away, leaving her standing there in the middle of the park, not sure of the destination I was heading to.

Approximately four hours ago, when I had received that unknown call and heard an unfamiliar voice, I should have ended the call. Should have smashed that goddamn phone against the wall. Because if I had, none of this would have happened.

I wouldn’t have had heard anything Maeve's step brother, Devin had to say. I wouldn’t have had to hear that Maeve, my impossible client, my girlfriend, the woman I fell in love with, was a…a p-prostitute.

If I was spared a few more minutes, I would have tracked that motherfucker down and plucked every goddamn tooth from his mouth with my bare hands. Because that’s what I felt in the first few minutes after hearing the term he'd referred to her as. I saw red.

No one, and by that I meant no fucking person in my sensible radius could say such a thing about Maeve and get away unharmed. Alive.

But when he had mentioned something about Blue Heaven, and about a girl that had caught my eye, I had momentarily stopped barking at him to recall the origin of that name from my memory. And I had found it buried under a pile of garbage in my head.

Blue Heaven was a club and bar which was very famous in the area around the final year of my medical school, which was years back. But I remembered that brief phase so vividly. The pressure of studies and stressful environment had spared me no other way to drain the anxiety, other than drinking.

My visit to Blue Heaven was supposed to be just a one-time thing. I was out of alcohol, and the nearest bar that I could find was Blue Heaven. But what I had not expected was to come across the specialty of that club which had made it the news of the city.

They had free stripping shows every evening.

The performers were just in their ‘moment’ when I had first entered the club. Each one of them—males and females— wearing a mask over their faces. Just a mask, nothing else.

The urge to divert my gaze was strong enough to make me stir away from the crowd which had gathered at the little stage where the naked bodies were wrapping their limbs around the poles.

I'd looked over heads and shoulders to spot the bar, but even at the bar, there were female dancers, entertaining the men seated at the barstools.

It didn’t even feel legal, but it felt like the only place where my anxiety had failed to follow me.

That was the first time I had seen her.

A lean figure, wearing the same black mask that set over her nose perfectly, limbs wrapped around a pole sticking out from the middle of the bar counter. She worked her almost naked body to the soft, sensual music in a way that had most of the men swaying to her rhythm. She'd worn a one-piece costume that gripped her body from all direction, covering all exciting bits, but showing enough pale skin to keep everyone on the edge of their seats.

I had wondered why she wasn’t naked like the rest of the dancers. Maybe she wasn’t a stripper?

Men around the bar counter had bundles of fresh, just-withdrawn bills aligned between their fingers. Every time she bent to blow a kiss, several bills flew her way and scattered at her feet. And she walked over them with a breath-taking elegance.

It might have been a mere fragment of my imagination, but I thought she had double glanced my way when I'd ordered a drink for myself and wandered away from the counter.

I hadn't planned on going there again. But against that better decision, I did.

The second time I had a few of my friends with me. They helped me to not feel out of place in the intimidatingly large crowd. And when we had settled into one of the booths for a drink, my eyes had loitered far away to the bar counter, in hopes of spotting a dark head, long legs and a black mask.

She was there, wearing the same costume, draping herself against the pole. Like it was her lover; grinding her ass against it, pushing it up between her breasts. As if she longed to be touched by more than just the steel cold poles. By alive hands.

That was the second day that she had made eye contact with me, and held it. That alone had urged me to come back the third day, and the fourth, fifth, sixth…

Every day, I went to college, worked my head off afterward, came to the club and searched for her eyes. And whenever I'd try to find her, she was already looking at me.

That was all we did. Looking at each other from afar.

On the seventh day however, I had caught hold of one of the waiters and asked him about her. All he had done was grin at me with a suggestive glint in his eyes, and said, “You can book private shows. But you’d have to take a VIP membership.”

At that moment, I was eager to have her to myself, by any means possible. Her entertaining other men whose tongues were dangling out of their mouths was like a pinch to my skin.

Next day, I didn’t take my friends. I didn’t sit in a booth. I was shown to a room. A dimly lit blue room. When my eyes had adjusted to the light, I saw a silhouette standing on the little raised platform set in a corner of the room, clutching the silver pole with her hands. Somewhere around the room, a soft music was caressing my ears.

I could make out the familiar form of her long legs, messy wavy hair, and the mask that sat on her face in a dark contrast against her fair skin. If anything, the blue light made her look more ravishing than she already was.

Taking a seat at the only couch set in the middle of the room, I had taken a few seconds to admire her form. She wore something different that day. A black two piece, that closely resembled a bikini, but covered a little more than that. Even after I sat down, she hadn’t moved.

“Are you nervous?” I was stunned by how soft my voice had come out, contradicting the straining of my jeans at my crotch.

A shiver had visibly rippled through her body, her head slightly tilting to suppress the tremor. Leaning back, I'd crossed my ankle over my other knee and watched her from the distance.

“Start.” I'd sounded firmer. She didn’t budge, and I found the urge to see her move agitating inside me. “I don’t have all night.”

After a handful seconds, I'd heard a long breath being drawn in, then she pushed away from the pole.

More than mesmerized by her moves, I watched as she circled around the pole in a familiar manner, then wrapped one leg around it. Stabling herself on the other feet, she leaned away from the pole, the narrowing arch of her spine, pushing her breasts up in sight of my attention. My cock had twitched alive.

That was the first day I had her to myself for an entire evening.

All she did was dance. All I did was watch.

The second day also, I had her to myself. But unlike the first time when I'd entered the room, she was already clinging to the pole, her high heels drawing my attention just for a brief moment. When I was sat at the chair, she had confidently made her way toward me, circled the couch without actually touching me, then went on head with her dance.

The third day she'd danced for me, I was a little tipsy, and she had made her teasing circles around me twice. Only, the second time, I had grabbed her wrist and pulled her down into my lap.

I expected her to jump right off, curse me off or call for security, but all she did was straddle my leg, sitting on one thigh and kneading my knee with her soft fingers, wiggling her ass against my crotch.

“Clients aren’t allowed to touch you, isn’t that right?” I'd asked her.

She just kept kneading my knee like a sweet kitten and brushing back against my clothed erection, as my cock strained against the zipper.

“Rules,” she had muttered before sliding off my lap and heading to her dance pole again.

Rather sober on the fourth day, I had sat back with a shitty mood for something that had happened in college. When she'd made her circles around me, she'd looked disappointed that I didn’t grab her this time. So, she readily came and slid into my lap, sitting with her back toward me and hands braced on my knees. Kneading.

Her torturous ass-wiggle had sent jolt after jolt of shocks against my cock until I was muttering curses under my breath, hands balled into fists on either side.

I couldn’t touch her. Rules.

But when she leaned back into my chest and practically sat over my cock, I had lost it in that moment.

I had wrapped one hand around her breasts and held her to me, absorbing her gasp, before settling her down onto the couch beside me. More than readily, she propped up on all fours, pushing her ass against my crotch.

That night I had fucked the girl in black mask with dark hair, breaking whatever rules they had, not just once, but thrice. And even after that, she looked eager for more, moaning against my ear and biting down on my shoulder.

But I knew once would not be enough.

The next night, I fucked her again, and it was much more intense with her mouth wrapped around my cock. She didn’t seem like she knew what she was doing, but her inexperienced mouth was what made me come hard.

That night, I thought I had seen her eyes turning glossy, but I had not understood why.

Had I hurt her? Did she not like it? I hadn't asked her anything, because she'd never spoken to me. Just left a kiss against her temple and left.

I had found a rather disappointing answer to all my questions the next day.

She had quit her job.

And realization washed over me like a fucking hurricane that I did not know her name, or what she looked like without the mask, or how she sounded when she wasn’t moaning. I only knew what she felt like, and I couldn’t forget it for days after that.

But she'd fixed something inside me before leaving. I had not drowned myself in alcohol ever again. I was doing okay. Just fine.

That was until today, now, as I drove through the night traffic of Vancouver, without any idea of where I was heading.

I recalled everytime I had sensed a familiarity with Maeve. Like I knew her, once, a long while ago. My gut feeling wasn’t lying to me then. And it wasn’t lying to me now when it screamed at me to drive away from her. As far away as possible.

But somehow, amidst the angry haze of the moment and stirring anger, a small voice inside my chest was begging me to turn around, go to her, and take her in my arms. Where she belonged. It begged me not to hold her past against her, not to punish her for something that had been already done and forgotten.

But I was not doing any of that. There was no intention of holding her past against every single moment I had spent with her. It wouldn’t have mattered to me even if she was a... that, what Devin had mentioned over the phone.

This feeling of betrayal was rising inside me because she did not consider me worthy enough to know about her past.

Fuck, a past of which I was a part.

What was tearing at my heart was the fact that she had returned thete. She went back to that place, again. Got naked for people, again. Broke my heart, again.

She had decided that going back to that place was better than staying with me. I was not enough for her.

God, how many more times would I be forced to acknowledge that fact? That I was never enough for anyone. Not even for my beautifully scarred Maeve.

The images of her entertaining other men bore into my chest like a knife in my heart, making my knuckles pop against my grip on the steering. Every time I imagined hungry eyes hovering around her almost naked body, that knife twisted painfully in my chest, digging deeper and deeper. Killing me.

I wanted to spare myself the pain of heartbreak all over again. Which was why I decided to go with my gut instinct and drive away.

Because I knew that voice in my chest would only lead me back to her. And I was not ready for that.