13. Nova
Chapter thirteen
Nova
One Month Later
“ N ova, order up,” my uncle calls from the kitchen of the dive bar he and my aunt own in a little town in Texas.
I walk over to grab the basket of food from the kitchen window and smile at my Uncle Hollis before turning and walking over to one of the guys sitting at the bar with his friends.
“Cheeseburger and fries for you,” I say, setting the basket of grease in front of the man who looks like he should be watching his cholesterol rather than scarfing down an order of fries. “Need anything else?”
“Your number.”
I don’t even attempt to hide my eye roll. “Give it up, Dale. You’re old enough to be my dad.”
“You can call me Daddy,” he replies with a half smile that’s partially hidden by his unkempt mustache.
“And you can go—”
“Dale, you better watch your mouth before my niece shoves that burger down your throat. Or before I call Shelly and tell her you're hitting on my bartender. Again. I don’t think your old lady would take too kindly to you sexually harassing Nova,” my Aunt Trina calls from the other side of the building. I swear that woman has the hearing of a bat.
Dale suddenly has a nervous look on his face. “Sorry, Trina,” he calls back to her.
No apology for me though.
This asshole is only sorry he got caught, not that he’s a fucking pig with the manners of a feral tomcat.
I walk back to the other side of the bar and feel Dale’s eyes on my ass the entire time.
Gross.
When I left New Orleans almost a month ago, I showed up on my aunt and uncle’s doorstep, and my aunt welcomed me with open arms and one of her hugs. You know, the kind that suffocates you but makes you feel safe and loved at the same time. The kind that makes the noise from the rest of the world fade into the background. Although, I suppose that could be caused by the lack of oxygen to the brain.
Aunt Trina is the kindest woman I’ve ever known. Unless you get on her bad side, then watch out. She’s a Texas tornado wrapped in a five-three body. Trina is my dad’s sister, so she knows all about the bullshit Cooper and I had to deal with growing up—my dad in and out of jail and my mom floating from one asshole boyfriend to the next. Cooper and I didn’t have a stable home environment after my dad started hitting the bottle when he was laid off from work. Especially when my mom ran off with the first in a long life of loser boyfriends. She’d always come back and beg my dad to let her come home and be a family, then six months later, she'd run off again. The only person I had to depend on was Cooper, and that fucking MC in Massachusetts took him from me.
The one Cillian apparently does business with.
My aunt and uncle didn’t ask questions about what brought me to Texas. Aunt Trina saw the exhaustion written all over me and ushered me into the house, feeding me and sending me to bed. When I finally rose from sleep the next morning, they offered to let me work in their bar until I figured out my next move. I had a nice little nest egg, even after leaving half of it for Harper when I bailed on her, but money goes quick these days. Once I can unload the jewelry Cillian and I made off with, I’ll leave here, find some quiet little town, and open up my own beach bar. A place where guys like Dale will get a swift kick to the balls if they harass me or any of my employees. But it’s going to be awhile before I step foot back in New Orleans. Unfortunately, that’s where all my contacts are who can get me the best price for things that may or may not have been acquired by less than honest means.
After I cash out Dale and his buddies and they leave me a whopping seven dollars on their sixty-dollar tab, Trina flips the open sign around and starts sweeping the floor.
“Closing early tonight?” I ask.
“It’s been a long day. I don’t think closing a little early on a painfully slow night is going to make any difference.”
That’s the nice part of her owning a bar in a small town. She can say screw it and shut it down whenever she pleases. And considering my tip jar only has about forty dollars in it, I’m inclined to agree. I make a fraction of the money here that I would if I were still in New Orleans. But at least there’s no threat of Cillian finding me after I ditched him in the hotel bar, took the jewels and his car back to my place, then cabbed it to a town about an hour outside of the city before hopping on a train to Texas.
When he said the name that’s become synonymous with the worst day of my entire life, I thought I was going to pass out. I fucking hate Ozzy and that club. I hate Cash for coming down to New Orleans to visit and convincing Cooper that he could set us up for life in Massachusetts. Who the fuck wants to live there anyways? It’s winter like seven months out of the year or some shit. But Cooper wanted to make a go of it since he really didn’t have anything going on where we were, and he always looked up to Cash. Cooper liked the idea of being part of a family who had your back when shit went south.
Well, where the hell were they when he was shot and killed? They had him out there by himself, protecting some chick from her crazy family, and look what happened to him. He shouldn’t have been there. He should’ve been with me, safe and sound, where none of that shit would have touched him.
“You look like you're chewing on something tough over there, girl,” my aunt says when she walks up to me as I’m wiping down the beer taps behind the bar.
“Got a lot on my mind.”
Trina sits at one of the stools and taps the bar. “Pour me a shot of whiskey and one for yourself. Let’s have a chat.”
Though I groan inwardly, I don’t dare let it show. I’m not about to slap her in the face for her hospitality, family or not. Pouring us each a shot—mine tequila, because I can’t even stand the smell of whiskey anymore, let alone the taste—I walk around the bar and sit next to her. Trina sips the drink and lets out a long exhale before my uncle peeks his head from the kitchen window.
“I take it I’m driving you two lushes home?”
“Mind your mouth and get back to cleaning that damn kitchen, Hollis.”
My uncle blows my aunt a kiss and ducks back into the kitchen.
“So, my sweet niece. You gonna tell me what brought you to my doorstep, or are you planning on living in my guest room for the rest of your days?”
“Sorry if I’m an imposition,” I grumble while staring at the tequila in front of me.
“Those words never left my mouth, Nova Reed. If you’re running, I think I deserve to know from what.”
Though Trina and Hollis don’t judge me, and they never judged Cooper for what we did with our lives, I’ve never exactly told them how I survived in New Orleans. I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say when I finally unloaded what was still inside the black duffel under the twin bed in their spare room.
“I thought I could trust someone and, as it turned out, I couldn’t. He has…connections…that I don’t want any part of.”
The question that plagued me from the second I heard Ozzy’s name was, did Cillian respond to me because he knew I was Cooper’s sister? Was he sent to keep an eye on me by his buddy Ozzy?
On more than one occasion, Ozzy tried to reach out and send me money. I had to change my phone number—because fuck him . He doesn’t get to ease his conscience with blood money. He and his club are the reason my brother was taken away from me. I can chalk up Cillian and me meeting in New Orleans that first time as a coincidence. I doubt he expected to get pickpocketed at a bar. But he said he was there on business both times he came to New Orleans and was never forthcoming with what that business entailed. Could I have been that business? Maybe getting me to trust him was a way for Ozzy to get to me. If Ozzy thinks he can make it right by handing me a wad of cash, he has another thing coming. I don’t know what it would take, but that sure as shit isn’t it.
“Is this person dangerous?” my aunt asks.
“He can be, I suppose.” I never thought Cillian was dangerous to me. At least not physically. Emotionally? Well, that’s another story. When he told me he had to leave the next day, I could barely feel anything past the lump in my throat from the idea of not sleeping next to him. It was crazy and fast, but I thought the connection we had was real. It was so easy to fall for him. And now, looking back, maybe he made it a little too easy.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes, I’m safe.” I don’t believe Cillian would hurt me.
“Is your heart safe?”
Isn’t that the million-dollar question?
I let out a long breath and take the tequila shot in front of me, wincing as the burn travels down my throat. “I thought it was. But I’m beginning to think I was an idiot.”
Before that phone call I overheard, Cillian was gearing up to talk to me about what the future entailed between us. I could tell he wanted to continue what we’d started. And though I hate the idea of being anywhere near Shine, Massachusetts, I would have thought about it. Maybe I would’ve even given it a shot if things worked out that way. But then his damn phone rang…
“We’re all idiots when it comes to matters of the heart, sweet pea. But if whoever you ran from is worth it, doesn’t it beg the question, what if you misunderstood the situation?” Trina smiles as she sips the whiskey in front of her. “I’ve known you your entire life, and one thing I’ve always loved about you is your fierce heart. But at the same time, I’ve always worried about your tendency to act first and ask questions later. You feel things to the extreme, sweet pea, on both sides of that pendulum swing.”
When it comes to Ozzy and the Black Roses, I have a long-standing hatred of him and the club. First, Cash convinced Cooper to leave everything behind and follow him to Massachusetts with the promise of family, yet he left me in Louisiana. Granted, I wasn’t ready to pack it up and move up north, but still. Then, when they got my brother killed, Ozzy wanted to give me some cash as though that was going to make up for losing Cooper. And to top it off, Cillian works with them and probably knew exactly who I was—if not at first, definitely by his second time in New Orleans.
At the time, the idea that this was just an unhappy coincidence was a little out of reach. After all these weeks, I honestly don’t know if I overreacted—like Trina says I have a tendency to do. I’m still pissed—once again—I trusted a man who very well could have been lying to me. The last time I trusted a man with my heart, he was caught fucking another girl on the couch I paid for. I never wore my pain like armor. I simply walked away. But this time feels different. This feels like a betrayal that cuts deeper than some asshole cheating on me. The pain in my heart is just as present and piercing as the day I left New Orleans. And when I’m hurt, I run. But now, I’m sitting next to my aunt, wondering if I misread the situation. The second that thought crosses my mind, I think about what it felt like to hear Ozzy’s name fall from Cillian’s lips and the blinding anger returns. That damn pendulum is swinging hard.
Trina correctly reads the obvious apprehension and lack of assuredness I had when I walked into her house a month ago. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all make mistakes, especially when emotions are running high. And if it isn’t perfectly clear, I’m happy you decided to land here so you could catch your breath and sort it out. Your uncle and I love you and only want what’s best for you.”
“I know, Aunt Trina.”
She sends me a warm smile and squeezes my arm before standing from the stool. “Alright. I’m going to finish up here and take Hollis home. No matter what he says, driving after dark is hard on his old eyes.”
“I heard that,” Uncle Hollis calls from the kitchen.
“I wasn’t trying to be quiet,” Trina yells back then turns to me. “You can go ahead and get out of here if you want.”
Since coming to Texas, I’ve been using my aunt’s old truck. The thing is a beast, but it’s reliable, which is more than I can say for a lot of other shit in my life.
“I’m going to take a drive. I’ll see you at home.”
Trina’s eyes are soft when I stand to leave. She knows she hit the nail on the head, and I need some time to think about what she said. Time to face what could have been a horrible misunderstanding that I made worse by bolting. Honestly though, I don’t think I would have been able to have a rational conversation at the time. I’m not even sure I can make sense of it now, but if I have any chance of moving forward, I need to untangle all this shit.
My drive takes me out to a little lake Cooper and I used to swim in when we were kids and would come visit my aunt and uncle during the summer. So many good memories flood my mind when I get out and have a seat on the hood of the truck. The moon is reflecting off the still water as my eyes fill up with tears.
“Why did you have to leave with him?” Talking out loud to my brother, who isn’t here, feels strange, but these questions have been bottled for so long. “You should have stayed. Why wasn’t I enough of a reason for you to stay?”
A tear falls down my cheek. Though it’s not the first I’ve shed when thinking about my brother, it’s the first time they’re followed by a deep sense of anger and betrayal.
“You left me alone to find a new family. I didn’t want you to go. I asked you not to. Why wasn’t staying enough for you?”
The tears are falling faster now as I look toward the dark sky. “Fuck you, Cooper. You should have stayed, you selfish asshole. And fuck you, Ozzy, for not protecting him. And fuck you, Cillian, for making me fall for you and lying to me!” I yell into the ether, and then press my head against my knees and let myself just fucking sob. There’s no one here to try to make me feel better, no one to rub my back and tell me it’s okay, and no one to judge the absolutely unhinged shit spewing from my mouth. “Fuck you all!”
The vibration of the phone ringing next to me startles me out of my mini breakdown. Raising my head to look at my phone, I see Harper’s name on the screen.
“Hey, Harper.”
“Nova,” she says in a frantic whisper. “I think I’m in trouble, and I’m really fucking scared.”
My back immediately goes ramrod straight. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. I heard Tony talking on the phone, and he was telling someone he’ll have me at the dock tomorrow night. Said something about there being a full cargo for the buyers in Russia. Me and seven other girls.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Tony, your boyfriend?”
“Yes,” she hisses into the phone. “He thought I was asleep in my room, and he was on the phone with someone. I heard him say, ‘Massimo promised the Russian buyers a full stable.’ What does that mean?”
What in the actual hell?
“Harper, get out of there. He’s talking about shipping girls to Russia. That’s what a stable is.”
“What the fuck?”
“Do you know who Massimo is?” I ask.
“It’s his boss. I’ve heard Tony talk about him a couple of times with his friends.”
I remember Harper saying that Tony is from somewhere up north, but he would come down for business all the time. That’s how they met. He was here on a business trip with a few colleagues, and they came into Geraldine’s a few months ago. Harper thought his East Coast accent was sexy.
“Where is Tony right now?”
“He’s outside having a cigarette.”
“You need to get out of there, Harper. Tell him you got called into work or something.”
“He’s going to want to come. He likes hanging out when I’m there.”
I’ll just bet he does.
“Tell him you’ve been getting shit for him hanging around or something and get somewhere public. Text me when you get there so I know you’re safe.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to meet you at Geraldine’s, okay?”
“Okay. Shit, I gotta go. I heard the door.”