Chapter Five
Margo
Ifelt him before he came through the door.
If I was being honest, I felt him the second his Jeep pulled around the street corner.
I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. He parked in his usual spot, under the streetlight just across the street, and seeing the outline of him was nearly enough to bring me to the ground.
I wasn’t ready for this—to be in the same room with him after he’d treated me like an afterthought.
Not when I still wanted him. Not when I knew that it would take months—probably longer—a questionable amount of cookie dough ice cream, and at least twelve more shower cries to get over him.
Now he was here, twenty feet from me, wearing a black Henley, jeans, and a suede jacket that wouldn’t look good on anyone else but him.
He could pull it off because he was Hayes.
Between his short blond hair, sharp jaw, straight nose, and his dark emerald eyes, Hayes Mitchell was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
This was a truth I’d accepted years ago: I was a mess—in all areas of my life.
From a very young age, before she died, my mother told me that good things don’t happen to Bennett women, including finding good men.
The women of the Bennett family never ended up with good men.
That was our curse. My grandfather was an abusive, unfaithful alcoholic.
My father and uncles were alcoholics and drug addicts.
All my ex-boyfriends were scum bags. Hayes was different.
Hayes was untouchable, until he wasn’t.
I didn’t belong with a good man like him.
I deserved scum, because that was who I thought I was at my core.
I’d been fighting to change that for the last few years, to give meaning to my name, to prove that I could be something other than a train wreck, a shit show who could never seem to do anything right.
Hayes gave me a taste of something I never thought I could have: perfection.
Then he tore it out of my grasp, leaving me cold, confused, and alone.
Hayes wasn’t supposed to be the kind of man who fucked a girl and moved on.
He was supposed to be the kind of man who disappeared the next morning to grab bagels from your favorite bagel place by the docks, the kind of man who came back and found you wrapped up in the sheets, the smell of his cologne lingering on your skin, the taste of him still on your tongue, and smile at you.
He was supposed to be the kind of man who couldn’t break a woman’s heart.
That’s who I imagined him to be the second I pressed my finger into his chest and demanded him to bring my best friend back home safely.
That’s who I needed him to be when he found me curled up on the floor of that god-awful fishing shed and told me that everything was going to be okay, that nothing would ever hurt me again because he wouldn’t allow it.
And yet?
I gave him my heart, and he held it in his hands and shattered it within a matter of hours, leaving me to rot in the middle of my own destruction. He broke his promise.
“Margo?”
I jumped, snapping out of it, my skin on fire. My eyes left Hayes to find Dominic still standing beside me, his dark brow slightly furrowed, head tilted to the side. My stomach plummeted to the floor.
Oh, shit.
Dominic Edwards was the weapons coordinator at Red Snake Investigations. According to Carrie, he was a damn good one, but that wasn’t why I was scared shitless. Dominic also had a doctorate in psychology.
“You okay?” he asked me gently. “You went somewhere else for a minute.”
Yeah, I’m currently drowning in the memories of how one of your best friends gave me the best night of my miserable life and because of that, I’m being forced to face the feelings for him I’d been blissfully ignoring for the last year.
A fake smile, one I’d practiced for an hour in my tiny bathroom mirror, stretched across my face then. “Yes. Sorry, it’s been a long day. What were you saying? Something about Seattle?” I rushed out before lifting my glass of white wine to my lips.
Dominic’s indigo eyes flicked to the wineglass and then back up to me. “I asked how your mid-terms went. Carrie mentioned they were today,” he said slowly, his face relaxing again.
My shoulders sagged, the arm of the black sweater dress I convinced myself to wear sliding off the right one.
I was too overstimulated to bother with it, trying my best to appear normal, happy, and carefree.
“It went very well. One of my professors asked me to be project lead next semester,” I blurted, immediately regretting it.
His handsome face broke into a smile that could rival Hayes’, his perfect white teeth practically shining in the cozy light of Carrie’s living room. “That’s amazing, Margo. Congratulations.”
I shifted on my feet, suddenly uncomfortable.
Out of the corner of my eye, Hayes moved, going farther into the living room, holding his hand for Michael to shake.
My lips parted as he flashed the sheriff a smile—the same smile he would always give me when he popped into Rossy’s after my kidnapping.
Crisp, bright, and groundbreaking. After the first “pop in,” Carrie told me he was just checking on the three of us: me, her, and Sarah.
Neither of them knew how much I used to look forward to his smiles, his random check-ins, and his usual coffee order.
Large Americano with three sugars. In a burgundy to-go cup, never white.
Fifteen months ago.
The bell above the door rang, but I was too busy to greet the person entering, my hands flying around the espresso machine, customers impatiently waiting for their orders at the end of the corner.
Ten minutes ago, Rossy’s coffee bean grinder jammed after nearly half the town of Astoria’s business district decided it was the perfect time to stop in for their afternoon coffee.
“Welcome to Rossy’s Books!” Sarah called out from the register.
Carrie was somewhere in the stacks, helping a customer find a book on pasta.
“Margo, can you make mine a double shot of espresso? I just got called into a meeting.”
As I got the brews going, I looked at Dave over my shoulder, giving him a single nod.
He was the regional manager at our local credit union and the sole reason I was able to get my apartment, helping me figure out how to meet my landlord’s insane credit demands.
“Sure thing,” I said, ignoring the glares coming from the two tourists sitting by the pickup station.
“I thought Rossy’s was supposed to be chill,” the blonde said as I poured the second vanilla latte, drizzling the foam in a heart at the top.
Eyes on the coffee, I moved to the counter, slapped a lid on it, and slid it over the surface.
“Vanilla latte to-go for Brad!” I called, turning back to work without completely registering the new person standing at the counter.
Five coffees and a handful of glares later, the last customer at the pickup muttered a hurried “thanks” before scuttling off, and the mid-afternoon rush was finally done.
My shoulders sagged as I looked over at the register, silently checking in on Sarah and Carrie.
They were chatting with customers and packing books, the chaos now gone.
I checked my watch, noting that it was only a quarter past two.
We wouldn’t have another push of customers until after school, and tonight was poetry night.
It was only the third one, but the last two had both had a good turnout.
The locals seemed to like having an opportunity to read their art to one another while Rossy lingered in the shadows with his cup of tea.
Speaking of.
My eyes scanned the store, going to his usual spot by the window, then to the small bench on the back wall. When I found him, my brows snapped together in confusion. What the hell was he doing up there?
Rossy was in the children’s nook, sitting in a hot pink chair at the kids’ table, hunched over his leather journal, his pen sailing across the cream paper. I smirked, shaking my head, knowing that he probably hadn’t even noticed the rush.
“The world could be on fire and that man would still be lost in his manuscript,” I muttered, yanking the towel off my shoulder.
“Glad to see your attitude is still alive and well,” a deep voice drawled.
My eyes cut to the left, finding Mr. Perfect, a.k.a. Grayson’s right hand at Red Snake Investigations. A.k.a. the man who’d saved my life three months ago. I blinked, and when he didn’t go away, a small smile appeared on his face, blinding me. “Hi, Margo.”