Chapter 5
Bee
So, the bangs situation got out of hand quickly.
The intention had been long, wispy bangs to frame my face. But every time I checked my progress, they were uneven. Then, with each adjustment, I was forced to go shorter and shorter. Then I started pulling hair from the top and sides to try to even it out.
Everything happened so quickly.
Now I had half a bowl cut and half long—a blender-made mullet. I could fix this. I had to fix this. I continued to cut at the stubborn mass sticking out of my head, tongue peeking out of my mouth in concentration. There was a soft knock on the bathroom door.
And there was still that whole complication. I thought he would have forgotten about me by now.
He knocked again.
“Who is it?” I yelled.
There was a brief pause. “Still me.” Then another pause. “Owen.”
I frowned at my reflection. “Boo. I thought you left.”
Of course, the one time somebody actually seemed to notice me …
“Nope. Still here,” he said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Well, I heard you. I have to bring you down. Benny Jr. says so,” he added, like a sibling telling their mom.
I sawed at my hair with the scissors I found in my mom’s travel souvenir room, aka my former bedroom. They were rather frail decorative things with “Tijeras, New Mexico” on the side. They weren’t ideal for cutting through my thick brown locks, but needs must and all that.
I didn’t respond to Owen. Maybe if I stopped talking, he would give up. Another chunk fell into the sink. This was going from bad to worse. At least half a GP more needed to be cut. I wasn’t sure when I decided to just chop it all short, but that was the new plan. I knew I had a ton of hair. It was a whole thing every few days to wash and deep condition it—a routine I’d been doing for years. The silver lining in my accidental hack job was that I’d have less hair to maintain, which would free up so much time for activities.
“Bee. We need to go.” It was cute how he tried to put authority behind his voice.
Owen wasn’t the big, tough guy the town thought him to be. He scared me less than Slippery Slopes’s resident guinea pig gangs that loitered in town and chattered when you got too close.
Once, about two years ago, Owen was passing by Grizabella’s when one of the new foster kittens bolted out the shop door. I shouted after her, unable to leave the café unattended. Without hesitation, he stopped what he was doing and went after her. For over an hour, I watched as he patiently chased her around the gazebo in the center of town, cooing softly, half hunched with large hands cupped. When he eventually returned to the café, covered in scratches and sneezing, she slept soundly on the torn shoulder of his shirt.
A regular ruffian would never.
While I appreciated his stern voice, I didn’t feel threatened at all.
“No, thank you,” I called back to his demand.
“Bee,” he groaned. I was fairly certain the soft thump was his forehead hitting the door. “We have to get out of here. The weather is dangerous. The road back is already closed. We need to get in the tram before that closes too.”
When he said my name, little hairs prickled on the back of my neck. Owen was the definition of the strong, silent type. Handsome too. Always had been. With his big muscles and kind blue eyes. He didn’t have the short, neatly trimmed beard back in high school and wasn’t quite as chiseled, but he had always been large. He was a grade older and hung with the jocks. Of course, being the nerdy girl who somehow talked too much yet not enough to make any impact, I was ignored by his ilk. But I’d always liked how his eyes crinkled when he smiled. He didn’t seem to smile much anymore, though, when I spotted him around town.
His deep, rich cadence now had a surprisingly tingly effect on me.
More surprising than that, though, were the tingly sensations when he scooped me into his arms. Maybe it was the adrenaline of self-defense, immediately followed by the relief of hearing his voice and not that of a violent attacker, but being held in his steel-banded embrace had made all the tiny little cells of my body vibrate. His large hand splayed almost all the way across my upper ribs and chest. He held my boob for half a second, and if it wasn’t for his instant regret and the blush that spread over his ears and cheeks, I might have assumed he wanted a little taste of Perkins. But sadly, he had been equally shook by the accidental boob squeeze. It hadn’t bothered me as much as it probably should have.
Lord, I was starved for attention when light, accidental manhandling revved my engine.
If ever there was a reminder that NYNB all went for the greater good, it was that whole exchange with Owen and his capable hands. The plan was in place, and Mother Nature herself wouldn’t stop me.
“I promise I’m not going to steal anything. I mean, what sort of criminal would that make me if I stayed after I cased the joint?” I narrowed my eyes. That wasn’t the right expression.
“Do you mean robbed?”
“No,” I snapped. I had meant that.
“Cased means to scope out the target before a heist,” he explained.
Gah! What did he know anyway? “You can go now, Owen. Bye.”
“I wish that was true. But I can’t leave until you do. And you can’t spend the night here. It’s an insurance liability,” he explained.
Another jagged chunk of hair dropped from my fingers. The left half of my hair was meant to match the right, but the dark length was a little longer.
I tilted my head to the right.
Perfect .
“Pfft.” I called to Owen, “Like Benny Jr. pays for insurance.”
Owen pushed open the door slowly.
“I’m decent,” I said as he gave me plenty of time to stop him. I wasn’t actually decent under this coat, but he didn’t need to know that.
I met his gaze in the mirror, and his eyebrows just about jumped off his forehead when he took in my hair despite his best effort to quickly lower them. With the trench coat, the half- chopped hair, and the weapon-wielding, this looked like the prologue of a thriller.
“It’s not that bad,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You winced.”
“I didn’t wince.” He wasn’t able to meet my eyes.
“There was a definite wince. Plus, this is just temporary until I can see Tess at Slippery Snips. She’ll even it out. Also, it’s just occurring to me that is a terrible name for a salon.”
“It really is.”
“I’m just getting a head start.” I snorted. “ Head start. Feel free to get out of my hair . I’m on fire.”
His mouth opened, and a question started to form. Thinking better of it, he shook his head. He repeated this two more times.
“We have to go,” he finally said, holding my gaze in the mirror so intensely I had to look away. “This weather is serious.”
“So go. Save yourself.” I lined up the next bit of hair. It took some sawing to cut through. A tiny twinge of guilt lanced me as I acknowledged that this was a predicament for Owen. I could go back without a fight, but it wasn’t just me. It was the statue too. We deserved better than this. He didn’t have a life of unending anonymity sprawling in front of him.
Also, he had really nice hair.
“I feel you wincing again,” I said.
“You’re just … are those scissors meant for hair?” His face was contorted in pain.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t.
“Bug bomb,” he said, snapping his fingers as he paced the short spaces in front of the stalls. The floor shook with every step, jostling my unsteady fingers.
“What?” I sighed, setting down the crap scissors to turn to him, hand cocked on my hip. “Stop pacing.”
He stopped.
“A scheduled bug guy is coming. The whole building is getting fumigated. We gotta go.”
Gosh, he was precious when he was full of shit. “It’s the dead of winter. Find me a single bug.”
“There are bugs in the winter,” he said flatly.
“It’s the holiday, and I can promise you Hank at Bug Busters is not working. Nice try, though. Much better name for a business.”
“We really love alliteration in this town.”
“I’m not leaving, Owen.” My legs widened, and I set my stance. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He scrubbed at his face, mumbling something about jobs and women and Benny Jr. When his hand dropped again, his handsome features were twisted up with worry. Was he that bothered by a bad haircut? His gaze moved over me, flicked to the bag, and then back to me. Assessing. He was calculating how much energy it would take to heft me up and throw me over his shoulder. But he wouldn’t do that.
He wouldn’t throw his weight around like he was all muscle and brute masculine strength—like I was just a rag doll to be put in whatever position he needed.
When did it get so hot in here?
“Just know that I don’t want to do this.” He took a steadying breath.
I took a step back. “Well, then don’t. Benny Jr. isn’t the boss of you.” I pinched my lips. “I mean, I guess he literally is, but you have free will.”
The determined set of his shoulders and the frown pulling at his mouth told me he wasn’t listening, or at least didn’t think the free will part to be true.
I wasn’t going down there without changing my life. I would not go back to being set furniture in somebody else’s movie.
I picked up the scissors again, gripping them with all my might as I thrust the rounded down edges in his direction. He plucked them like a dandelion and tossed them into the overnight bag.
“Sorry, Bee. A job is a job.”
He stepped closer until I was backed up against the bathroom sink, cold ceramic digging into my lower spine. He loomed over me, smelling like cold air and manly shampoo that probably had an anchor on the bottle or at least a topless mermaid. His heat seared up my front as he overtook my entire vision until it was just his stupid, handsome face. He kept his hair short so the sandy brown hairs weren’t more than a centimeter long, and I wondered if it would tickle to run my palms over it. His full lips were usually set in a firm line and now was no different as his blue eyes moved over me. His darker beard was trimmed and tidy but only added to his attempted aura of intimidation. My hands gripped the sink basin, and I leaned back so that he wasn’t the only thing in my field of vision.
“Last chance to walk out of here with me.” His deep voice curled through me like wisps of perfumed smoke, intoxicating and heady.
I lifted my chin and held his stare. “Not. A. Chance.”
His gaze moved over my features and lingered a moment on my lips. Awareness passed through my body. Was it my imagination, or was he totally checking me out? I didn’t have a ton of experience with these things, but there was a vibe here. Maybe this was part of my transformation? Maybe this newfound confidence made me infinitely more alluring. I’d been waiting patiently since high school to have my glow-up. Perhaps all it took was a hack job of a haircut and a total personality overhaul.
At some point in my internal musings, he’d moved even closer. The arch of my spine smoothed out as my shoulders relaxed, and I stopped pulling away. There was hardly half a GP between us now. His heat was palpable, his blue eyes narrow rings around blown-out pupils. Were we about to kiss? Should we kiss? For the story?
I could make room for this on the agenda.
He swallowed audibly in the whispered space between us. The hum of the heater went away, along with the whistling howls of the snow through the tired, creaking vents. Only a low-level buzz of electricity vibrated between us. I felt powerful. Fearless. His gaze moved to my hairline before coming back to meet my eyes. Sure, I wished my hair wasn’t currently half cut, causing a mullet effect, but other than that …
“You really aren’t afraid of me at all, are you?” he said, head dipping ever closer like this mere GP between us kept him from understanding me.
This time, my gulp filled the quiet space. I shook my head slowly once, watching closely as he pulled in his lips to bite at them briefly. “Nope.”
My nipples hardened along the fabric of my bikini, making me hyperaware that only a few very thin layers separated us.
“Hmm.” He stepped back. “You probably should be.”
I let out a breath from my stinging chest and had no warning for what happened next.
In one fell swoop, I was scooped up and thrown over his shoulder. (I was right about that.)
I yelped and kicked my feet wildly.
I hated being manhandled like this.
At least ninety percent of me hated being manhandled like this.
Seventy-thirty max, definitely, sort of hated it.
“Put me down!” I yelled.
“Sorry, Bee.” Without any effort, still while bracing me on one shoulder, he bent and grabbed my overnight bag and carried me out of the bathroom. “I did warn you.”
“But my hair …” I whimpered.