Chapter 3
Maisie
When I first started working at the diner, Nico had me serve the smaller tables near the front counter, where he could see me from the kitchen and intervene if I needed help.
He didn’t seem to notice any of my bruises, and neither did Lina, his thirty-two-year-old daughter.
They just got to work showing me how to use the cash register, take orders, and clear tables without making multiple trips to the same table.
I will be forever thankful to them for not asking questions I wouldn’t have known how to answer.
I had tried concealer. Layers and layers of the camouflage stuff that I’d picked up at a CVS. The sales assistant said it was good enough to cover up tattoos, all while she avoided telling me I looked like a raccoon with my two black eyes.
My concealer had been thick, but my bruises were dark and at the stage when they get bad before they get better. The more I applied, the more the makeup drew attention to the puffiness and the swelling from my finger-shaped bruises from Derek yanking me around.
It happened in Nevada.
One night, I went to work at a hotel. I came back later to find Derek had broken into my motel room and was waiting for me in the dark.
As bad as my bruises were when I started at the diner, they weren’t nearly as bad as they had been in Oregon.
My face and neck were out of bounds. His parents and people from church would have seen those.
Every other part of me was open to abuse, and he was never shy about dishing out a punch or a kick when I didn’t live up to the perfect wife he’d dreamed up in his head, a vision I could never achieve.
Sundays were always the worst.
We’d come home from church. He’d have smiled at everyone, kissed the back of my hand, and kept me tucked up against his side, playing at the perfect husband.
But when we went home, the pretense slipped.
He didn’t have to go to work, and everyone was busy with their own families, so it was just us.
No buffer between him and me. From midday until eleven at night, when he went up to bed, I had hours and hours of second-guessing myself, terrified that one word I said would set him off.
I could never do anything right. His frustrations always blew over on a Sunday when I had no reason to leave the house to escape him.
I hated Sundays.
The bell chimes over the door, yanking me back to the present.
Lina serves tables near the entrance, where large groups of tourists and families sit. Her section is always loud, full of laughing or, in most cases, crying kids and overwhelmed parents trying to quiet them so they don’t disturb everyone else.
I was beyond grateful when Nico had me take the smaller tables, thinking I’d lucked out with a great boss who wouldn’t push me into overwhelming situations before I was ready to handle them.
As a red-faced toddler screams on table fifteen, my gaze lands on the brown-haired college-aged guy leering at me from my section. I wish I were dealing with the baby, not him. Give me twenty screaming babies, but not him.
Lina bumps her shoulder against mine, and I startle so badly that if I’d been holding something, I’d be wearing it.
“Sorry. Want me to go?” she asks, her eyes sliding from me to the guy who had alarm bells ringing in my head ever since I showed him to his table minutes before.
He’d been staring at my ass the entire time.
I felt it. He’d surprised me by not trying to grab it.
After thrusting a menu at him, I’d babbled about being back in a couple of minutes to take his order, and I’d all but run away.
Since then, I’ve been hiding out behind the counter, making it look like I’m waiting for food to come out when in reality all I’m really doing is delaying the inevitable.
He looks nothing like Derek to be triggering my need to run this badly.
Dark hair to Derek’s blond. Brown eyes to my ex-husband’s jade green.
Even their builds are different. This guy is lean and barely six feet tall.
Derek is nearly six-two and has shoulders that belong on a football player because he used to be one.
The biggest similarity between this man and my ex-husband is that both are betas.
It's his energy.
Some people throw out an energy that you don’t like, can’t trust and want to run as far away as your legs will carry you to get away from them.
The second he’d walked in, dressed in blue jeans and a football jersey, sliding his sunglasses from his face as his eyes scanned the room, something about him repelled me.
But I’d still done my job, gone over, since that’s what I’m supposed to do when someone who doesn’t know where they want to sit hovers by the door.
I’m supposed to show them to a table, hand them a menu, and tell them I’ll be right back to take their order after they’ve looked it over. Not abandon them.
“Maisie?” Lina prompts. “I can deal with him if you want.”
“The lunchtime rush is about to hit,” I remind my coworker. “And your section is packed. I’ve got it.”
She gives me a long look, ignoring the burger and fries sitting on the front hatch that Winston had put down, glanced between us, and disappeared back into the kitchen without reminding us to stop talking and do our jobs.
“I can take one more table,” she says.
She probably can. Lina has been working in the diner since she was in school, when she used to help her dad on the weekends. She could handle all the tables with no help from me, but that isn’t fair.
“I’ll be okay. Promise,” I reassure her, pasting on a reassuring smile, when she lingers. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
When she still doesn’t move, I give her a gentle nudge, prompting a grin. “Okay, okay, I get the message. Holler if you need help, okay?” She grabs the burger and fries from the hatch and sets them down on her tray.
As she hurries to one of her tables with her tray, I take a breath for courage and release it in a quiet sigh. Smoothing the front of my apron nervously, I head to the table of one and hope for the best.
“Hi, I’m Maisie. Are you ready to order?” Nervous but determined to do my job, I pull my notebook from the large front pocket in my white half-apron. With my pen in my right hand, I’m ready to jot down his order and make a hasty escape.
I handed him a menu before I left him alone to decide what he wanted to order.
I’ve been away much longer than I usually am.
Typically, I’m back in a couple of minutes, at least to get drinks if my customers haven’t decided on food yet, but with this guy, I was hoping he wouldn’t like anything on the menu and leave.
He licks his lips. “I was wondering when you were coming back, gorgeous.”
I shift from foot to foot, my white tennis shoes squeaking against linoleum. “Did you want to start with a cup of coffee? We have a couple of slices of cherry pie left. The rest’s sold out for today.”
His gaze dips, and not to the tiny notepad and pen I’m gripping so tight my fingers hurt. As the tip of his tongue wets his lower lip, the contents of my stomach curdle.
“What I had in mind was something not on the menu,” he says with his eyes on my breasts.
I should have let Lina handle this. She would have been brisk and firm, gotten his order, and not taken any abuse or unwanted flirty behavior, all while keeping a convincing smile pasted on her face.
Not me.
Ever since I left Oregon in my rearview mirror, I spend my time balanced on the edge of running and hiding.
Derek did that to me.
Years spent walking on eggshells. Of not knowing what word or action would set him off that day.
I would apologize for no reason. I would control every aspect of my body that I could, terrified that the one word I said would be the wrong one.
And I was conscious that no matter how hard I tried, I would always mess up.
There are some situations that I can manage. This is not one of them.
I retreat from his table. “I’ll come back.”
He’s grabbing for my wrist when a man inserts himself between us.
“Yeah, you need to go.” It’s less of a suggestion and more of an order delivered in the tone of a man who does not intend to repeat himself.
My heart was pounding so hard against my chest that I almost didn’t hear him. Recognition comes slower.
He’s standing in front of me, slightly to the side, so when I take in his profile, I’d have known who he was even if I’d missed his scent.
Knox Winter. The alpha from table five, with a gray-green stare, who smells like praline and green apple.
With a sneer, my customer surges to his feet and gives Knox an ugly look up and down. “Who are you? Her boyfriend or something?”
Knox gets in his face. “Or something.”
The diner is pin-drop silent.
For two beats, nothing happens.
“I was just talking to her,” the guy eventually says, edging back a half-step.
“Wrong.” Knox’s bark has the guy recoiling and me jumping. “You were leaving. Right fucking now. You can walk out, or you can go headfirst through the window.”
Proving he’s no idiot, and with half an eye on Knox, the man grabs his sunglasses from the table and bolts out of the diner. He never looks back.
Knox turns around to look at me, blind to the silently staring customers. “You okay?” he asks me softly.
Not really.
“Fine,” I lie, hoping he missed the tiny tremble in my voice.
When the corners of his eyes tighten slightly, I figure I need to do a better job at lying or avoid guys with penetrating stares like Knox.
My knees tremble more than they should for nothing to have happened. The guy didn’t even touch me, yet I’m all shaky and hot, struggling to draw enough air into my lungs.
“Come with me.” His hand is a whisper on my lower back as he guides me to Nico’s office at the back of the diner, where Nico, standing behind the counter, is pointing to.