Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Jude
T he afternoon lull at Diner mirrored my thoughts—largely empty.
Catherine bussed a table that’d just emptied out. She’d already brought my coffee and pie. I hadn’t taken a bite yet.
I shouldn’t have come today, maybe, but I always came here on Mondays and had afternoon coffee. I brought Omi—my grandma—when she was up for it. They had a sugar-free banana cream she loved. She’d smile and act like it was the best part of her week sitting here with me. She always made me feel like I was right where I should be when I sat with her. The sense maybe I didn’t belong never once crept in when I sat across from her.
I nudged the sugar-filled version of the same pie in front of me. I loved pie, but my appetite had flagged so much lately, I only ever managed to eat what would literally sustain me. Taking pleasure in food felt like a memory .
Pleasure in almost anything felt distant lately, but memory had provided some sanctuary. And showing up here, reliving the time I spent in this place with someone who simply loved me… it ached, but like a bruise I couldn’t stop pressing on.
Catherine sank into the booth across from me and heaved a sigh before gazing at me through her long, dark lashes. She had fair, freckled skin and a kind face. She was hardworking and endlessly helpful. And she’d never been scared of me, so that was something.
The first time we’d ever spoken to each other outside of a morning breakfast order was at Tristan’s wedding, when we were paired together to walk down the aisle as part of the bridal party and later for pictures. An oddly intimate thing I’d never thought much about since I’d never been in a wedding until that day. Despite my reputation for being a jerk, she hadn’t shied away, only greeted me with a softness and gentle grace I hadn’t expected or deserved.
Certainly a treatment I’d never received from… some people. But maybe I’d brought their way of dealing with me on myself. Either way, Catherine’s gentleness had, on occasion, made me wish for more of the same from… people.
“How are you, my friend?” she asked, glancing at the uneaten pie.
That it’d sat there for five full minutes and hadn’t diminished, let alone vanished in seconds, was sign enough of my state.
“Fine.”
She raised a brow. “I can see.”
I shrugged a shoulder—or, if I didn’t, I thought about it. Sometimes, I felt like I expressed myself overtly when really, things stayed internal. Locked up in this head and heart with no outlet. More lately .
“Anything interesting going on at work?” she asked, knowing full well there was only so much I could tell her about any given assignment anyway.
I grunted. More was simply too much.
“Whoa, whoa. Give me a minute to breathe here, friend. That’s far too much at one time.” She winked.
“Ha.”
She chuckled and gave me the soft, empathetic smile that’d cut through my sharp edges months ago. How someone hadn’t snatched this woman up was beyond me. In another life, maybe a different version of myself would’ve been that person.
“Tell me about you,” I said, not wanting to dwell on me. I wouldn’t tell her about the assignment with Pop, and anything else was… too exhausting.
She huffed but the reluctant smile told me she’d give. If Catherine was anything, she was humble and the least self-focused person I’d ever met. She gave endlessly, worked tirelessly, and it could get maddening to witness when she exhausted herself. She would never hint at needing help, nor would she tout her accomplishments unless I pushed her. We’d been back and forth about it enough that she finally gave in without my browbeating her to share her victories.
“The business is coming together. I’m picking up more work and my Instagram is growing well.”
She read my scowl right and laughed. “I know what you think of social media, but it’s making me money, so can we agree it’s a good thing?”
“You get money from Instagram?”
Her grin widened. “I can recommend products I use and like and then when people use my links, it gives me a tiny percentage of the sale. It’s not much yet, but the last check I got was enough to buy a full load of the cleaning products I used on a deep clean in the Ridge.” She raised her eyebrows a few times.
I dipped my head. “Nice. Good work.”
She beamed. “Thanks. It’s small and kind of silly, but it’s making me happy.”
She glanced to the counter of the diner and just past it, presumably toward her boss, the chef.
“I’m glad.”
She nodded, accepting my comment, then sobered enough that I braced for her compassion.
“Anything I can do?”
I instantly shook my head. If only this situation I’d found myself in could be helped, but the only thing I’d figured out was to dive head-first into taking an out-of-town assignment with Pop. Beyond that, there was no helping some things.
She reached out and squeezed my wrist lightly, then released. Just a quick contact, a gesture of care, and she stood. “Keep me posted. I’ll see you Friday?”
She meant at Craic. Sometimes, I went for happy hour, but if I did, Pop left. Fair enough since we couldn’t manage to stand in the same room, let alone at the same table very well. But not this week, regardless.
“I’ve got work.”
“Ah. Okay then. Next Monday? Rick said he’s going to do apple cinnamon.”
She meant pie. “Sure.”
She greeted a couple who stepped inside right as she left the booth, and I tossed a twenty on the table, wishing I had any desire for a few more bites of the nearly untouched pie, and snuck out. She’d be mad at me for not waiting for change .
Go ahead and get mad.
A gust of brisk mountain air swept by me. The sun was setting, and the late afternoon already felt like evening. Or maybe everything lately felt like the sun was just about to go down and stay there.
I’d embraced that for a while—I’d let life exist in the sneaking dusk. But now, through the dark of the night, I could imagine seeing a glimmer of dawn. And as best I knew how, I was walking toward it.
“Hey, man.”
Kenny jogged toward me as I reached the parking lot, his boots crunching fallen brown and burnt orange leaves. Since Diner and Saint Security were practically next-door neighbors, I hadn’t had to come far.
I notched my chin up at him.
“You okay? You going to handle things with Pop?”
He’d been in the meeting, so he knew as well as I did what I’d signed up for. He’d also seen us butt heads over the years enough to know just how antagonistic things could get between us. For a peacemaker like Kenny, a man whose sunshine personality had literally garnered him the nickname Barbie back in the EMU, I was fairly certain it killed him to know we didn’t get along and there was nothing he could do about it.
There was nothing I could do either. It wasn’t my problem she’d decided to make me the worst person in the world—that all her ruined plans piled on top of me instead of the reality she refused to acknowledge.
I’d never thought of myself as a particularly hateful person, but when she made it clear she genuinely blamed me for everything she’d lost, and actively, truly hated me?
I embraced it .
Why fight? Why beg someone bound and determined to dislike you to do anything else?
So I’d spent the last few years of active duty avoiding her—easy enough since we were on different teams after things blew up with her ex. And here at Saint, for the most part, we’d stayed apart.
Until this assignment.
Yes, it’d be a test of sorts. Yes, a small red flag was waving in the back of my mind, suggesting this was a bad idea. But I had nothing to prove to anyone, and I needed the change of scene. And in some way, this was me, walking toward the horizon in the east, trusting that sometime soon, the sky would lighten and the sun would rise.
I’d never see it if I stayed buried in darkness by choice. So I was summoning all the will I possessed to move and make a different one.
So…
“Yep.”
He crossed his arms. “I know you’re particularly tight-lipped right now, and I can respect that.” His expression darkened, and he swallowed. “But I gotta have more from you. ‘Yep’ is not gonna cut it, and we are going to discuss how you’re not only going on your first out-of-town mission since arriving here but also, you’re going with she who shall not be named.”
I scoffed at the moniker. He’d started acting like I thought of Pop as Voldemort. He had no idea all of this had started because she’d started thinking of me that way and I’d surrendered to it.
The other part of his little speech… I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand. I’d fallen into monosyllabic responses at best these last few months and I’d never been what anyone would call loquacious. That wasn’t me. The people who sp ent time with me, the people who were the family I’d chosen, they accepted me this way.
That said, for all his persistent cheeriness, he did love me. I knew that. And he had a point—if I wanted to climb out of this pit I’d been in, one small thing I could attempt would be upping my communication. It was facile and shouldn’t matter, but in my gut I knew.
Making the effort might matter.
So, I tried for more than a grunt.
“It’ll be good to get out. We may not get along personally but we’ll handle this professionally.”
His mouth stretched into a skeptical swoosh. “That easy?”
A grunt was all he’d get this time because I didn’t need to explain myself, nor did I need him winding me up about something that wasn’t going to change. Pop and me… we might’ve gotten along like sage brush and matches, but professionally, we were damn good operators. We could function the way we needed because I’d taken the job and she would never ever back down from doing her best, especially when faced with a challenge.
“You know she tried to change it, right? She asked Wilder and Bruce to?—”
“Yeah. Tracking. And they said no. So here we are.”
I’d seen the wide-eyed look of disgust and even the tremble of her lips, the fury that’d knit her brow, and no doubt a sense of betrayal had struck her. It was nothing new when it came to how she reacted to me—my nearness, my manners, my existence.
But what was new was this thing in me… the only thing that’d made me feel alive in a while. It was the offer I’d made to take the assignment. It was the low-key feeling like something was waiting—in the night, after dark, long after th e sun went down. It was the closest to anticipation I’d had in what felt like years, and so I wouldn’t worry about how much she didn’t want to work with me.
She’d rise to the occasion because her grit and sense of duty and unending need to stand firm against me wouldn’t let her back down.
So for now, I’d just keep walking toward dawn and see what happened.