Bad Bets (Bad News Series Book 3) *Under Major Edit*

Chapter 9

Walking into the club tonight came with a little difference to the usual. Jay and Matt both had their girls and George was also joining the group, diving straight into begin his aim of getting back the money.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jay tensed his jaw as he saw Steph approaching them in show attire.

“Getting ready to go on stage.” She answered briefly. “Hi, I’m Steph.”

She then held her hand out in the direction of Nessa and Juliet, shaking their hands in the least welcoming way possible.

“Steph, don’t.” Jay warned, pure anger in his eyes at her stupidity.

Pursing her lips, she smiled at him before turning and walking away, leaving Jay cursing under his breath.

“I’ll be right back.” He turned to Nessa before she grabbed his arm and stopped him from going any further.

“No.” She hissed. “Not until you explain.”

She had been patient enough listening to Jay’s brothers fill her head with information about Steph and Jay and how he had been spending a lot of time with her, now she wanted answers. Apparently they had history and she wasn’t prepared to be clueless in the backseat throughout this trip.

“Explain what?”

“The history! Between you and Steph.”

Sighing Jay relaxed his shoulders, before looking over to where Jess was now trying to prevent Steph from getting up on the stage.

“I use to leave the gang and come out here in the summers, then I met Steph. End of.”

Nessa raised an eyebrow as a signal for him to continue and she could tell he was extremely reluctant to do so.

“She was a mess and stripping for a small living, she was on the way to getting herself killed… So I brought her this club.” He said simply, like it was a completely normal thing to do, while Nessa looked at him with pure shock in her face.

“You brought some stripper a club?”

He was trying his best to end the conversation there but that wasn’t going to happen.

“She wasn’t just some random stripper I found on the street. I had good reason to.”

He didn’t need to explain himself for Nessa to know what he was referring to.

“I thought you said us was your first serious relationship? That before this, all you did was fuck around.” She questioned watching the stress in his eyes.

“I lied. This is my second, Steph was first.”

Trying to keep cool and calm yet she was anything but on the inside, she took a deep breath before asking the question she didn’t actually want to know the answer to.

“If you were so in love, what ended it?”

“Prison.” Jay answered sounding completely cool about it. “I got the money to buy her this place by gambling, I won a lot at once and pissed the guys off who ran the casino. They ended up getting me thrown in prison for fraud, even though it was bullshit.”

“Prison?” Nessa’s mouth fell open.

“Jess and Steph helped get me out and then I came back home to Brighton. Mine and Steph’s relationship was toxic Nessa, it was dangerous.”

Even though she had just gotten a full explanation to the questions she had been dying to get answers, she didn’t feel any better. In fact, she felt about ten times worse.