Then the pain hit me again. A wave of it. It stemmed from somewhere close, but I couldn’t pinpoint the location. I turned in a circle, but saw no one.
“You okay, hon?” Cookie asked me, taking my arm again. And again the concern she felt welled up inside her. I didn’t quite understand her. Why she felt so strongly about me. Why she was so caring.
“You’re always so nice to me,” I said. Out loud. A little surprised by that fact.
She squeezed my hand. “We’re besties, remember? Of course I’m nice to you. Otherwise, I’d be the suckiest BFF ever.”
I chuckled softly for show, but she meant it when she said we were besties. With every fiber of her being. And that niggling suspicion was back stronger than ever. We’d only known each other a month. Damn it. She was clearly one of those needy psycho chicks who boiled rabbits on the stoves of her enemies.
Oh, well. I’d enjoy her friendship while it lasted. But I mentally crossed bunnies off my shopping list.
When we walked back into the café, we had several new customers. We’d only been out for, like, thirty seconds. Weird how quickly they accumulated.
I had just hung up my coat when Dixie called out to me. “We have a couple of deliveries. Just waiting on fries for one.”
She wore a grin that stretched from multi-pierced earlobe to multi-pierced earlobe.
“You seem chipper.”
“I had a very productive morning.” Her face flushed and an excitement rushed through her as she packed up one of the orders.
“Clearly. I was wondering where you were.” She’d been gone all morning. Now I wanted to know why.
“I hired a new cook,” she said, her eyes a-twinkle. “He starts tomorrow. First shift.”
“What?” Sumi’s tiny head popped up, the pass-out window framing it almost perfectly, except she was too short so we couldn’t quite see the bottom half of her face.. “I’m first-shift cook. You can’t do this to me.” She waved a spatula. “I’ll sue!” Pretty brows slid fiercely over almond-shaped eyes, her wrath thoroughly incurred.
I never let my guard down around Sumi. The fact that she was vertically challenged meant nothing. She could kick my ass in a heartbeat. That woman had a temper. And she was quick. Limber. Horrifyingly good with knives.
“Oh, hush,” Dixie said, clearly not as fond of her faculties as I was of mine. “He’s going to be more of a” – she folded the top of the bag and stapled a ticket to it – “I don’t know, a specialty cook.”
“Cool,” I said, more interested in our customer base. One of our three-meal-a-dayers had shown up right on schedule, but with the eleven o’clock hour came our second-shift tag team, and my section was now officially split in half.
Francie and Erin were already busy taking orders.
I only had one customer in my section so far. I glanced at him. He was one of them. One of the three. They came every day like clockwork. Morning, noon, and night. Cookie and I had started referring to them as the Three Musketeers, for lack of a better descriptor. Though that would imply a friendship among them, and as far as I knew, they’d never even spoken.
The first one, a handsome ex-military type with fantastic biceps, always sat in my section. In the same booth when possible, but always in my section. He wore a khaki jacket that complemented his burnished mahogany skin and close-cut black hair. His eyes were silvery gray. Sharp. Capable of amazing things.
Garrett settled into his usual booth, then glanced up at me, offered me a whisper of a smile, opened a copy of the latest Steve Berry, and began to read.
“Looks like you’re up, sweetie.”
I leaned toward Cookie, and we both took a moment to admire the view.
“He looks like he’d have great abs,” I said, deep in thought. “Doesn’t he look like he’d have great abs?”
She let a slow breath slide in through her teeth, and we watched for the sheer pleasure of watching, the way you would a sunrise or the first pot of coffee brewing for the day.
“He certainly does,” she said at last.
I grabbed the carafe and headed toward him.
As though on cue, Musketeer Number Two walked in. A rascal named Osh. He was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, with shoulder-length hair the color of sunlit ink, though it was perpetually sheltered by the charming tilt of a top hat. He tipped it toward me before taking it off and finding a seat. Never one to sit in the same place twice, he decided to take a seat at the counter and flirt with Francie a bit.
I could hardly blame him. Francie was a cute redhead who liked to paint her nails and take selfies. I would take selfies, too, if I had someone to send them to. I used to send them to Cookie, but she had to ask me to stop when they got a little too risqué for her taste. It was probably for the best.
Osh flashed Francie one of his dazzling smiles, causing her to almost drop the plates she’d just taken from the pass-out window. The little shit.
The first time he came in, he ordered a dark soda. When Cookie asked which one and listed what we had, he shook his head and said, “Any dark soda will do.”
From that moment on, we mixed it up for him, gave him a variety of drinks even between refills, a game he seemed to enjoy. Though not as much as flustering the servers.
Francie giggled and rushed past him with her order. At least she was semi-nice to me. Erin, on the other hand, hated me with a fiery passion. According to gossip, she’d asked for extra shifts, but when yours truly showed up, frozen and homeless, Dixie’s generosity turned into a hardship for Erin and her husband. I’d basically taken any hope she had of extra shifts, and with it, any hope of friendship.
Garrett’s shimmering eyes held me captive as I walked toward him, the silver shards sparkling atop the deep gray of his irises. They were warm and genuine and… welcome. I shook out of his hold and offered my best dollar ninety-nine smile.
“Anything besides coffee, hon?” I asked as I poured a cup without asking. He always wanted coffee. Hot and black. There was something fascinating about a man who drank his coffee hot and black.
He pulled the cup toward him. “Just water. How you doin’ today, Janey?”
“Fantastic as ever. How about you?”
“Can’t complain.”
A man I didn’t recognize spoke from the next booth over. I could feel impatience wafting off him. “Hey, honey,” he said, jerking his head up to get my attention. “Can we get some of that over here? Or is that asking too much?”
A spark of anger erupted in my current customer, but on the outside, Garrett’s expression remained impassive. It held no hint of the slightest concern.
Definitely military. Probably special ops.
“Sure thing,” I said. The tight-lipped smile I offered the jackass and his friend hid my grinding teeth. I poured two cups as they leered at me, taking in every curve I had to offer. “I’ll get you some menus.”
Technically, they were in Cookie’s section, but I didn’t want her to have to deal with them. She’d had a hard enough day. When she started over, I shook my head and nodded toward another couple in her section who looked ready to order.
“I just want a cheeseburger and fries, sweet cheeks,” the first one said. “He’ll have the same.”
Apparently all the guy’s friend could do was leer.
“Rare,” he continued. “And no rabbit food.”
“You got it,” I said.
“You gonna write that down?”
“I think I can remember. I have an excellent memory.” Ironically, I did. When it came to orders, anyway.
“You get it wrong, and Hershel is not going to be happy.”
I could only assume his friend was Hershel. Either that or he referred to himself in the third person, which would make him even more of a douche. But the name embroidered on his oil-stained shirt read MARK.
His friend’s shirt had the same logo and read HERSHEL. They worked at the same trucking company. Truckers were usually the nicest lot, but every barrel had its bad apples. Judging f
rom the dark oil stains they shared and the thick odor of diesel wafting off them, they were probably mechanics.
I stepped back over to Garrett. “What’ll you have, hon?”
He was seething underneath his GQ exterior but graced me with a smile nonetheless. “I’ll have the special.”
“Good choice.”
I took his menu, trying my best to show him that I was unaffected by the little truckers that could. I couldn’t help but notice the knife he had sheathed at his belt. I didn’t know what he did exactly, but I knew it had something to do with the law. Not a cop, per se, but something similar.
The last thing I wanted was trouble, however. No one needed to risk his safety for me. No one needed to defend my honor. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I had any. I had forgotten my life for a reason. What if that reason was bad? What if it was unthinkable? Heinous? Evil?
A wave of nausea washed over me. I hurried to the service station and tapped in their orders, but a familiar feeling, one I could only describe as a panic attack, had already hit me square in the gut. I’d been having similar attacks off and on since Day One. It was the sensation of loss, an utter and devastating loss, that brought them on. That tightened around my chest until my lungs seized. That burned my eyes until I went blind.
Shaking uncontrollably, I dug my nails into the counter, leveraged my weight against it, scraped and clawed against the black veil that kept my past hidden. Something was behind the curtain. Something I had to get to.
A feeling of urgency spread like wildfire. I had forgotten. I had left something behind. My most prized possession, only I had no idea what it was.
My teeth welded together and my lids slammed shut as I fought to get through the veil, determination and desperation pushing me to remember. Driving me forward.
The room spun, and I could hear my own heartbeat carpet-bombing my rib cage, my own blood flooding my veins until even the edges of my mind darkened and closed in on me.
“You okay, sweetie?”
Startled, I lifted my lids to see Cookie, my brows cemented together, my breaths coming in quick, short bursts. I felt the dampness of the attack slicken my skin, and my wet palms slipped off the counter.
“Charley!”
Five.
“Come here,” she said, hauling me to the storeroom in the back.
I didn’t miss the fact that she’d called me Charley. She’d done it before. Four times, actually. It was either a term of endearment where she was from, or she was accidentally calling me by the name of someone else she knew. Probably her dog.
She sat me on the cot I’d slept on for over a week before I found an apartment I could afford. This was my home away from home away from home. Wherever that third home was.
She wet a towel and pressed it against my forehead, over my cheeks and mouth, and down my neck. “You’re okay,” she said, her tone soothing, her voice so familiar.
The spinning slowed, and my heart rate decelerated to a normal speed. A normal rhythm.
“You’re going to be fine.” She wet the towel again to cool it off, then placed it on the back of my neck. “You haven’t had one of those in a while.”
I nodded.
“Can you tell me what started it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice hoarse. Then I looked up at her. I wanted her to understand, to be completely aware of what she was getting herself into. “I don’t think I’m a very good person, Cook.”
She knelt in front of me. “Of course you are. Why would you say that?”
“I think I’m being punished.”
“Punished?” My statement shocked her. “Punished for what?”
“I’ve forgotten something.”
She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “You mean, besides your entire life up until a month ago?”
“Yes. I mean, no. No, this is something… something much more important. I feel like I went on a long trip and I left my most precious possession behind. I abandoned it.” Tears stung the backs of my eyes, the evidence slipping past my lashes and down one cheek.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She pulled me into a hug. The soft warmth of her body was a welcome reprieve from the sandpaper world around me. “You have amnesia. Nothing you did could have caused it.” She sat me arm’s length. “You remember what the doctors said, right?”
“No. I – I have amnesia.”
After chastising me with a pursed mouth – that’d show me – she said, “You remember exactly what they said. This could have been caused by any number of things. You just have to give it time. This did not happen because of anything you did.”
She couldn’t possibly understand how wrong she was, but it wasn’t her fault. What I did was on me. I would have to figure it out and make things right. I had to.
3
You can’t make someone love you.
You can only stalk them and hope for the best.
—INTERNET MEME
The storeroom door opened and Erin stood on the other side, her aura a dark shade of red. Not that I needed to see her aura to know she was angry. It hit me like a heat wave. “You both have customers.”
“Sorry,” I said, rising unsteadily to my feet, but she was gone before I got the whole word out. I helped Cookie up, then went to the utility sink and splashed water on my face before checking my watch.
“He should be in any minute now,” Cookie said, brushing herself off.
I turned back to her. “Who?” When she offered me a sympathetic smile, I said, “Doesn’t matter, anyway. He never sits in my section. He always sits in yours. Or Francie’s.” I tamped down the jealousy that bucked inside me. I had no right to be jealous. It wasn’t as though he ever talked to me. Or looked at me. Or, hell, acknowledged my existence in any way whatsoever.
“Maybe he’s just shy,” Cookie offered. “Maybe he likes you so much he’s afraid to make the first move.”
I snorted, dismissing the notion entirely. He didn’t strike me as the shy type. “Anyway, how do you know that’s who I’m waiting on?”
“Hon¸ every female in the café is waiting for him.”
My skin flushed again. Francie was so hot for him, her adrenaline spiked tenfold every time he walked in. Her aura turned red as well. A pinkish red. And for a very different reason.
“True. But he’s so angry all the time.”
“Angry?” She tugged at the stray wisps of chestnut hair that had escaped my hairclip, placing them just so. “What makes you say that?”
“He glares at me.”
“He glares at everyone.”
That was true, too, and it made me happy inside.
“His middle name is Alexander, by the way.” She said it as though it were a test of some kind. As though she expected a reaction out of me.
And boy, did she get one. I couldn’t have fought back the telltale signs of surprise if I’d had an Uzi at my disposal. Or a rocket launcher.
Reyes Alexander Farrow. I liked it.
“How do you know his middle name?”
“I saw his driver’s license.”
Her answer caught me off guard, and I flinched. Not because she’d managed to see Reyes Farrow’s license, a fact I was a tad jealous of. I flinched because she’d just lied to me. Why would she lie about something so mundane? What did it matter how she found out Reyes’s middle name?
“Do you think it’s odd how many great-looking guys come into this place?” she asked, changing the subject as she always did when she was being less than 100 percent. Almost as though she knew I could sense her deception and thought that veering off topic would dilute it.
Either that or my guilty conscience was getting the better of me. It was wrong to spy on people, and reading their emotions was tantamount to spying. But they were just so there. People’s emotions. So in my face. It was impossible not to read them.
“Odd? Maybe. But a slew of great-looking guys walking in pretty as you please? Hell, yes. And then some.”
She chuckled and ushere
d me out. “You have an excellent point.”
Before I got two steps into the café, Dixie waved me to a stop. “Can you take this over, Janey?” she asked, shoving a to-go order into my hands. The ticket had the name Vandenberg written on it. “Erin ran the other order to Mrs. Udesky.”
“Um, okay.” No idea who Mrs. Udesky was.
“I’ll cover for you.” She nudged me toward the exit, her gaze wandering to Garrett until she lost all control of the grin she was trying to suppress.
“But just so you know,” I said in warning, “stalking is a crime.”
She gaped at me. “I’m not stalking him. I’m waiting on him. And if our conversation happens to turn toward the romantic variety, who am I to argue?” She leveled another lustful gaze his way. “The things I could do to that man given half a chance.”
I giggled and started for the front exit.
“Hey, sugar,” Osh said from behind the counter, his flirtatious grin transmissible. His hair hung in a shining mass to his shoulders, the cut blunt, the color so black it almost looked blue against his pale, perfect skin. I wondered what he was. Mostly because he had no soul. The color that did surround him, though soulless so not really an aura, was a smokier version of the unique bronze of his irises.
I found it mesmerizing. I found him mesmerizing. So much so, I stopped and stared for several awkward seconds. Awkward to me, anyway. I got the feeling from the playful tilt of his mouth he was quite used to that kind of captive attention. The key word being captive.
“Hey, back,” I said.
His expression toppled dangerously close to vulgarity, diluted only by the appreciation glittering in his eyes. As comely as the kid was, he only pretended to be arrogant. He was not. Far from it, in fact.
I’d figured out fairly early there were two kinds of beings in this world: those that belonged and those that did not. Garrett, for example, was the former. He was human through and through. As was Mr. P, which brought up the question of why the demon was inside him. Osh, however, was a different story.