Chapter 2 #2
"Give me another twenty minutes." The lack of any emotion in his voice brings me back down to earth, and I turn around, robotically going back to the safe space behind the counter before I look at what's inside my pocket.
"Holy shit." My mouth drops as I pull out hundred-dollar bills. Five in total.
Laurie snatches them out of my hand and looks at Achilles's table.
"He can stay the whole fucking day if he wants." My boss snorts.
"Put that shit in the tip jar," Lena orders him, as if she's the one who owns the place.
She practically runs it, to be fair.
Twenty minutes later, Achilles checks the door again, then his phone. He presses it to his ear, throws his head back, and huffs. Running a hand through his black hair, he looks around the room, and he finally gives up.
I stand still, watching him as he exits, desperate to run after him.
"Fuck," I puff out, struggling to breathe. "Achilles Duval was at The Basement. I can't feel my legs."
"For heaven's sake," Colin says, exasperated. "Just go. Ask him on a date or something. Fate clearly put you in each other's way for a reason."
I give him a you can’t be serious look. "All your fate talk makes you sound a bit insane."
"Yeah, 'cause imagining a fake relationship with him is so sane."
"At least he doesn't know about it," I throw back.
"Just go say hi in the parking lot. Tell him thank you for the huge tip or something."
Hope blooms in my chest. Fuck. I want to. I want to run after him and start a conversation. It could lead somewhere.
My body twitches, and Colin notices right away. "Nyx, go. You've got nothing to lose."
I take a step toward the door, and he nudges me to keep going. There’s so much adrenaline running through me that it feels like a life-or-death decision.
Fuck it.
I jog to the front door, open it, and stop dead in my tracks.
"Chase," I choke out.
It's worse than a freezing shower. I completely forgot about my boyfriend. The real one I've been officially dating for two years, who I've known for four, not the music celebrity I’ve developed such a huge crush on, who I was about to throw my entire relationship away for.
"Hey, babe."
Chase is a big guy, but because you need to take stairs to come down to the diner, he's a couple of steps above me, making him look more impressive than usual. He walks down and kisses the top of my head, and my heartbeat doubles.
"Can you bring me a turkey club and a Coke?"
He walks past me, joining his friends at their usual table without another word.
Snapping out of my jarred state, I walk back to the counter, leaving behind my one and only chance at talking with Achilles Duval.
The casual "Hey, babe" resonates in my head as I put his order in, my nerves simmering. He's so unaware of what I almost did.
He's mid-conversation when I bring him his drink, but he stops to give me a kiss on the cheek and a thank you, calming me down a little.
"How are you?" he asks, wrapping an arm around my waist. "Busy this morning?"
I shake my head. "Same as usual, but something did happen."
His bushy eyebrows raise above his dark eyes before he looks at his friends, as if they should’ve updated him on anything that happens to me. He's a bit older than them, the head of their little group, and he's five years older than me.
"What's that?" he asks seriously, his voice lowering. "Anyone bother you?"
"No." I chuckle, feeling warm all over. I can't control that I like his possessive side. "Nothing like that. But I received this."
I pull the envelope out of my pocket and show it to him.
He takes it, looks at the front and back, and hands it back to me. "Aren't you gonna open it?"
The disdain in his tone isn't the only thing that tells me how much he hates SFU. It's in the way his upper lip curls too. Chase thinks those people are worse than the devil. Too rich. Too privileged. Like they owe us something because they've got so much, and we've got nothing.
In a sense, he's not wrong. But I'm allowed to want to leave this side of town. I'm allowed to want better things for myself no matter how desperate he is to stay in this shithole.
"Not yet. I need a bit of time." And I put it back in my pocket.
He raises a surprised eyebrow. "That's stupid. Just open it, Nyx."
"My whole future is in the envelope. I need time," I insist, hurt by being called stupid in front of his friends.
"Mine too."
Completely speechless, my mouth drops open.
"Don't you think I want to know if my girlfriend is about to abandon all of us?"
I swallow through the sudden dryness in my throat. That's his way of telling me he cares. But it's a shitty way to do it.
"I'm not abandoning you."
He brings me closer to him, his hand still around my waist. "Then stay. Don't even open it. You belong here, Nyxie."
He rarely says that nickname around an audience. It's reserved for our one-on-one time. It doesn't lessen the blow, though. He's putting himself and the town he loves so much before my need to get out of here.
"But it's my dream," I rasp. "All I've ever wanted was to play the violin at SFU to see where it could take me."
His dark gaze explores my face, and I see the cruelty there before he speaks again. "Ever thought it could take you nowhere? You might be good here because, well, it's here. The world is different out there. Competition is fierce."
The ball growing in my throat and the tears forming in my eyes make me miss the approaching hand, and I don't realize what's going on until Bennett snatches the envelope out of my apron.
"What the hell? Bennett, give it back." I reach for it, but Cash grabs it, observing the back.
"Even their logo is fancy." He snorts. "What's a North Shore girl going to do in such a fancy school? You might be a good girl, but you're not on their level."
Bennett's eyes light up. "Do they have a uniform?"
"Chase." My voice is strong, but my pleading eyes tell him what he already knows. That he's the only one who can stop this mess. "Do something."
Just because he loves feeling powerful in a town where he holds no power, he indulges in his friends bullying me for a few more seconds before he says, "Alright, enough. Give it back to her."
They don't. They give it to him. Because they have no respect for the girl who was never part of their gang.
The good girl they think is going to snitch to their old leader.
The North Shore is crowded with badass women who could punch the lights out of a grown man because that's what survival taught them.
I'm not one of them, and everyone knows it.
I've always been too busy taking care of my dad to partake in anything in this town.
Mainly, I spend too much time daydreaming to get out of here to hang out on the streets with all of them.
And since the gangs have been dissolved, it makes me a target in my own town.
I'm easy to toy with. The only protection I have is Chase.
Sometimes I wonder if that's why I put up with his behavior.
As I get more and more hopeful for another life, I've been wondering if that's what our love is. Just me needing protection and him needing his ego stroked. Lena’s right; that's how it all started.
"Here," Chase says, almost with disgust, as he gives me the envelope back. "Your ticket to get away from me."
"You guys are assholes."
I snatch it out of his hand, tears already starting to roll down my cheeks as I stride toward the back door.
"Order for—"
"I'm taking my break," I nearly bark at Stephen as I walk past the kitchen.
I wipe my tears with my forearm, crushing the envelope in my fist. Going through the emergency door, up the stairs, I then push the metal door that leads outside.
There's nothing at the back of the building but trash containers, a few broken appliances we can't use anymore, and overflow parking spots in case the front gets full. It never does, so no one parks here.
Except today.
There are two expensive-looking cars parked right next to each other.
A town car that I'm sure has a chauffeur at the front and a black Range Rover.
Those cars do not belong here. And neither do the man and woman standing in the middle of the lot.
The woman is wearing a long beige dress that looks more expensive than my car.
Her heels are the opposite of what anyone would wear here, and she's got a light sweater around her shoulders with the sleeves tied in a knot at her chest in that way rich people do.
And the man with her? Achilles Duval.
They didn't notice me, nor did they hear the metal door slamming behind me because they're having a full-blown argument.
The woman is much older than him, although she's clearly aged beautifully.
Her light blonde hair makes her look different from Achilles, but the steel eyes are exactly the same, and when I understand that they're arguing in French, I put two and two together.
That's his mother. The one he had gone to live with in France after a messy divorce with his father.
Well, according to the internet.
"Laisse moi la voir," Achilles says angrily as he steps toward the town car. But his mother gets in the way, her back to the car and pointing a finger at him.
"Je t'avais prévenu que tu ne verrais que moi. Un pas de plus et tu ne la reverras jamais, Achilles."
I tilt my head to the side. I'm not catching anything but the way she said Achilles. In French, she pronounced it completely differently. Like Ah-sheel. Without the "s" at the end.
"Maman," he hisses low. "Tu ne me laisse déjà jamais la voir. Bouge."
The woman shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. "Tu m'as promis que tu mettrais une fin à tout ca. Tu m'as promis que tu reviendrais."
"I'm trying!" he hisses in English. "Have some faith in me. Give me some fucking time. And laisse moi la voir."
Sobbing, the woman takes a step back. "Non. C'est trop dangereux."
"You already brought her here. At least let me say hi. Maman, s'il te plait."