Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Fiona
By closing time, I had wiped the same section of counter three times.
I realized it when I caught my reflection in the dark window over the sink and saw myself staring at absolutely nothing with the rag motionless beneath my hand.
“Productive,” I muttered.
The shop had emptied almost an hour ago, leaving behind the strange quiet that always came after a busy day.
The music was off. The lights in the front windows made the glass reflect the room back at me, and every little sound seemed louder without voices filling the space.
The walls settling. The faucet dripping once before I tightened it.
My keys scraping against the counter when I reached for them and missed.
I blamed Jasper.
It seemed fair.
Two nights had passed since his phone call, and I could still hear pieces of it at inconvenient times.
His laugh when he caught one of those stupid little breaths I apparently made.
His voice dropping when he talked about me wearing his shirt.
The way the teasing had shifted when we started talking about that kiss, becoming something quieter without either of us deciding it should.
I had told him I wished he were here.
That part had replayed more than everything else.
Not because I regretted it. I didn’t. That was almost the problem.
Last year, Jasper had been this outrageous biker I met at Christmas who flirted as easily as breathing and seemed perfectly comfortable walking into a room as if everyone in it should naturally be happy to see him.
I had expected him to become one of those people I remembered because the meeting itself was memorable.
Instead, he had somehow worked his way into everything.
My phone. My mornings. My worst days. My good news.
The stupid thoughts that weren’t important enough to tell anyone else.
And lately, my future.
I folded the cleaning rag and set it beneath the sink, then checked the register one last time even though I’d already closed it out.
The ‘future’ conversations had started as jokes.
At least, I thought they had. Nebraska winters.
Christmas decorations. Whether I would survive living somewhere that apparently considered temperatures below freezing a perfectly reasonable way to conduct winter.
Then there had been the imaginary house, built piece by piece through texts until I knew things about a home that didn’t exist. Where the kitchen would face.
The kind of porch I wanted. Whether Jasper should be trusted with landscaping decisions simply because he owned a landscaping company.
He said yes.
I said absolutely not.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, children had slipped into the conversation too. Never in a way that made my heart pound because he was asking me for something. Jasper didn’t do that. He teased. Asked questions sideways. Let me answer as much or as little as I wanted.
Did I want children someday?
Yes.
How many?
I didn’t know.
Did I want a house full of them?
Maybe.
Would he spoil them?
Obviously.
Would I let him?
Probably not.
He had laughed at that.
I hadn’t told him that every time he talked about some distant imaginary child, another child stood directly in the middle of my thoughts.
Charlie.
My hand stopped on the light switch near the back room. That was the part of the future I couldn’t imagine past. Jasper knew there were things I hadn’t told him. He had never pushed. Maybe that should have made telling him easier.
It didn’t.
How did I explain that I had given birth when I was fifteen? That the little boy I called my nephew in photographs wasn’t technically my nephew at all? That Frank and Claudia were raising my son because I had loved him enough to know I couldn’t give him what he needed?
The words changed depending on the day. Sometimes they sounded reasonable. Sometimes they sounded like a confession. Sometimes I imagined Jasper going quiet, and that was the version that scared me most. I could handle anger. Questions. Shock.
I wasn’t sure I could handle him looking at me differently.
My fingers tightened around my keys.
“Not tonight,” I whispered.
I switched off the last lights in the back, leaving only the security lights glowing through the shop. There was no point borrowing pain from a conversation I hadn’t even had yet. Besides, Jasper was in Nebraska. I missed him enough without inventing ways for him to reject me from so far away.
I checked the front door twice after locking it, tugging the handle harder the second time because my mind was still nowhere near what I was doing.
The November air hit me the moment I stepped around the side of the building, cold enough to sting my cheeks and make me pull my coat tighter around myself.
My car sat alone behind the shop beneath the weak yellow light over the back entrance.
I had crossed maybe half the distance when movement near the dumpster caught my eye.
My steps slowed.
There was nothing unusual about shadows behind the building. A stray cat had scared me more than once, and people occasionally cut through the lot on their way to the next block. But this was Rosewood.
I almost kept walking.
Then a man stepped into the light.
Recognition came slowly enough to make the memory feel wrong at first. The gas station. The man who grabbed my wrist after I made it clear I wasn’t interested, and somehow managed to make a public place with people all around us feel smaller than it was.
My fingers tightened around my keys.
He smiled, and something in the expression made me stop.
“You remember me.”
The parking lot suddenly seemed too empty as he took another step out of the shadows.
My car was behind him and to the left. I could see it clearly. Twenty feet, maybe less, but it may as well have been a mile if reaching it meant moving closer to him before I could get away.
I shifted backward instead.
His eyes dropped to my feet.
The small movement in his gaze changed everything.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, unable to hide the fear in my voice.
His mouth twisted. “You don’t get to tell me where I should be.”
The keys dug into my palm.
The shop door was behind me. Locked. I fumbled with the keys as I tried to find the shop key by feel, not wanting to draw his attention to what I was doing.
I took another step backward, but he moved at the same time.
I barely had time to turn before his hand closed around my upper arm.
Pain shot through me when he yanked me toward him. My keys slipped from my fingers and struck the pavement, the metallic clatter startlingly loud in the empty lot.
“Let go of me!”
I shoved at his chest and twisted hard enough to wrench my shoulder, but his grip only tightened. My free hand caught the side of his face, nails scraping skin, and the instant he cursed, I thought I had made enough space to get away.
Then my back hit the brick wall.
The impact knocked the breath from me.
For one second, there was nothing except pain across my shoulder blades and the shock of cold brick through my coat. Then his body crowded mine, and the panic that had been hovering somewhere outside me rushed in all at once.
I pushed at him and he caught my wrist. His face was so close I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“No.”
I turned away when he tried to force his mouth against mine, the rough scrape of his cheek against mine making my stomach roll. One of his hands grabbed at my coat, and something inside me tore loose.
“No!”
I fought without thinking, bringing my knee up.
My heel scraped uselessly across the pavement.
I clawed at his hand, his face, anything I could reach.
For half a second, I got my wrist free and swung at him, but he caught it again and shoved it back against the wall hard enough to send pain ricocheting through my fingers.
“Stop fucking fighting me.”
The words barely registered.
Nothing existed beyond getting away.
I could hear myself breathing, too fast and too loud, could feel the brick grinding against my shoulder as I twisted. His hand dragged at my clothes, and fear became something almost physical inside my chest, crushing everything else beneath it.
Then an engine cut through the silence.
At first, the sound seemed too far away to matter. My own pulse drowned most of it out, until headlights swept across the wall and spilled over us.
The man holding me looked toward the entrance of the lot.
The expression that crossed his face terrified me.
Then I saw the motorcycle.
Jasper.
For one suspended second, everything inside me stopped.
How was he here?
He was supposed to be in Nebraska. I had talked to him two nights ago and told him I wished he were closer, and now he was coming toward me so fast my mind couldn’t catch up with what my eyes were seeing.
The motorcycle fell to the ground as Jasper jumped off before the engine stopped.
I had never seen Jasper look like that.
No smile. No teasing glint in his eyes. Nothing of the man who could turn almost anything into a joke because he liked hearing me laugh. His face had gone frighteningly still, his attention fixed on the hand holding my wrist and the body pressed against mine.
The man loosened his grip when he turned toward him.
He never got the chance to do more.
One moment, I was pinned against the wall, and the next, the pressure vanished so suddenly my knees nearly buckled. Cold air rushed over me as Jasper ripped my attacker backward by his jacket.
I sucked in a breath that hurt.
Jasper drove him into the building hard enough that the impact traveled through the brick beneath my palm.
“The fuck did I tell you?”
His voice frightened me almost as much as his expression.
He wasn’t shouting.
There was nothing uncontrolled about it. Every word came out low and deliberate, as though the rage underneath was being held in place by force.
The man stared at him. “You again.”
Jasper hit him.
The sound made me flinch.
I stared at them, trying to understand words that didn’t seem to fit anywhere.
You again.