16. Hayden
16
HAYDEN
I sighed heavily, letting the groan of the diner door cover up my frustration. A fishy sort of smell lingered in the small, grubby space, and I approached the counter, wrinkling my nose at the unpleasant odor. I had to clear my throat to get the attention of the bored waitress scrolling on her phone.
She finally glanced up. “Oh shit. Hey. Sorry. What can I get you?”
It was clear she wasn’t used to having people to serve. The place was deserted. And I couldn’t blame people for not wanting to eat here. What was that smell?
Nevertheless, I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “Was just wondering if the manager is around?”
Her eyebrows dove together, and her demeanor completely flipped to defensive. “Why? You want to make a complaint or something?”
I shook my head quickly. “No, no. Nothing like that. I just wanted to see if there was any work going here. I’m a…chef.” I practically choked on the word I’d never been mu ch good at using, but chef did sound better than cook. If I was going to get another job, I needed all the bonus points I could get.
She gestured around the empty restaurant with her overly long, fake fingernails. “A chef, huh? Well, la di da. You want to cook for all our customers?”
She had a point. I pushed back off the counter. “Thanks anyway.”
“You ain’t even going to buy a coffee?” she called after me.
But I pretended I didn’t hear. For all I knew it was the coffee machine producing that foul odor.
Getting back into my car and switching the engine on, I sighed. Fuck Simon. The job in his kitchen hadn’t exactly been my dream, but it had been a damn sight better than any of the other places I’d tried to find work. No one in Saint View seemed to be hiring, and I couldn’t blame them. The people in this area didn’t have a lot of disposable cash, and times were tough. Eating out was one of the first things people cut from their budgets.
There were a few other diners on my list, but it hardly seemed worthwhile bothering. What the hell else was I going to do though? If I couldn’t get a job cooking, my next attempts at finding a job would have to be cleaning toilets.
I could go back to the Sinners. Back to selling drugs. Running guns. Back to holding women against their will because some fucking asshole with a higher rank said I had to.
Or I could go to Luca and ask if his job offer was still on the table. The thought of a salary with six figures and a part share in the ownership had kept me up all night, fueled with confusion.
And regret.
I wanted to turn back the clock and change my mind.
I found myself rolling down a familiar street I’d avoided for the last five years because it brought back too many memories. I forced myself down it now, forced my foot to stay on the gas and my fingers to keep the wheel straight.
If I was thinking of accepting Luca’s offer, then I needed to be reminded of why I’d left the world he controlled.
I parked a couple of houses down from the decrepit building we’d once used as a clubhouse. It was in even worse shape now than it had been back then. Windows smashed or boarded up. The lawn full of weeds and so overgrown it was probably waist-high. Porch sagging so bad I’d bet the boards wouldn’t even take my weight.
It was clear nobody had occupied the house for some time. Same with all the surrounding houses. The street was deserted.
I got out and wandered along the cracked pavement to stand by the rusted mailbox, barely clinging to the pole it was mounted on.
My blood pounded in my veins. My fingers shook with the memories being here produced.
On autopilot, I followed the path, overgrown with weeds up to my knees. The first bedroom window had once been covered by dirty, cracked glass, but now that was in shards, crunching beneath my boots.
The room beyond was where I’d delivered a baby girl five years ago .
Where I’d held her panicked mother’s clammy hand, looked her in the eye, and told her she was going to push and get that baby out.
It was also the room I’d kept five women in against their will, because I’d had no other choice.
Caleb and Luca had owned me. They’d owned Kara and the other women. Caleb had threatened my family until I’d been nothing but his puppet, doing whatever my master told me.
But Hayley Jade and Kara had been the beginning of my undoing.
In trying to save them, I’d gotten shot and almost died myself.
It had been worth it. Knowing they’d spent the last five years away from all of this, out of this shithole town, and safe with Kara’s family, had been the only way I’d gotten through the days. I’d only let myself ask my brother about her once, and when he’d reported that she’d gone home, I’d tried to put the woman and her daughter out of my head.
That hadn’t worked. I thought about them daily. Wondered if she’d married. Wondered what Hayley Jade would look like, now she was older.
I couldn’t forget the little girl who had been named after me.
Nor could I forget her mother.
A tiny, out-of-place noise shook me from my memories.
Instinctively, I reached for my gun, only to remember I hadn’t carried one in years. Shit. Coming back here unarmed had been stupid.
I froze, scanning my surroundings. The street was quiet. Nothing but the rustle of a gentle breeze that stroked the long grass, and the distant sounds of traffic on the main road in the distance.
I squinted, slowly swiveling in a circle.
Something had made that noise.
It came again, along with a scrawny creature who crawled out of the long grass to wrap her way around my ankles.
“Fuck, cat. You scared the shit out of me.” I breathed out slowly, letting my blood pressure come down before I squatted to stroke the kitten.
I withdrew my hand quickly, the animal covered in fleas. The kitten scratched its itchy spots against my boots and mewled insistently.
“You’re probably hungry, huh? You’re definitely in need of a bath, though I’m sure you won’t like that… Oh, fuck.”
A second and third kitten made their way out of the long grass and joined their sibling, scratching themselves on my shoes.
I groaned. “Seriously? I did not have kitten rescue on my bingo card for the month.” I shrugged. “Suppose I didn’t have getting fired on it either. Or arrested. Or offered the job of my dreams only to refuse it.”
The cats ignored my bitching and started up a chorus of noise, each one seemingly competing with the others for who was the hungriest.
“I hate cats,” I told them. “I think I’m allergic to you guys.”
They didn’t care.
I squinted at the wall of grass around us. “Don’t you have a mom somewhere to look after you? ”
But if they did, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. They clearly had empty bellies. One had a gunky eye that probably needed medication from a vet. And they all needed flea treatment.
A hawk flew overhead, letting out a screech.
Instinctively, I crouched over the little creatures, blocking the hawk’s view.
These kittens were easily small enough for a bird that size to pick up and make a meal out of.
I didn’t need this. Not today. What I needed was a job, so I was never tempted to come back to this shithole again.
But I had Kara’s sweet face stuck in the back of my mind. Her holding a tiny newborn, wrapped in whatever cloth we’d been able to scrounge up. I remembered the feeling I’d had, watching the two of them curled up on a dirty mattress in the middle of Hell.
It was the feeling that had made me turn over a new leaf. It was a high I’d been chasing for years. It reminded me of the man I wanted to be. The one I was still trying to become every day.
I wasn’t the sort of man who left the defenseless behind.
So I picked up the three squirming kittens, let their fleas crawl all over my hands, and protected them in the same way I’d so desperately wanted to protect Kara and Hayley Jade five years earlier.
T he vet in Saint View rejected me away in under two minutes. They already had two litters of kittens they’d rescued and had no room for more. So I drove the sleeping fluff balls, content now that I’d stopped at the supermarket and bought them some food, into Providence, hoping the vet there might be more willing to help.
As soon as I stepped foot in the door though, I already knew what the answer was going to be. The receptionist shrugged and parroted much the same thing the first vet had told me. There were too many strays, and they couldn’t continue to take them in when people willing to adopt them were few and far between.
“Should I try the vet in the city?” I asked her, staring down at the three little bodies all entwined with each other in a food coma tangle. “The other vet said I’d just have to take them to the pound.”
The receptionist gave a sad smile. “There’s no point trying the vet in the city. They’re even worse off than we are and overrun by strays.” She reached into the box and stroked a fuzzy kitten head. “Could you keep them?”
“I’m allergic.”
She squinted at me. “Actually allergic, or ‘you just don’t like cats’ allergic? You haven’t sneezed once since you’ve been here.”
Dammit. She had a point.
I sighed and held the kittens out to her. “How much is this going to cost me?”
She winced. “To get that eye cleared up, give them all shots, deflea them, run a few medical tests to check for other diseases they might have picked up… Probably about a thousand dollars.”
I widened my eyes. “Are you for real?”
She shrugged. “It’s that or the pound.”
I really didn’t want to spend a thousand dollars of my savings. It had taken such a long time to build that up. I couldn’t get a job anywhere, so I was going to be going through my savings pretty quickly with no income coming in.
But something deep inside me knew I couldn’t leave the kittens for dead either.
The receptionist smiled at me as she took the box, clearly realizing I was going to agree. “You’re a good cat dad. Your wife is going to love the new additions to your family.”
“No wife,” I clarified. “Just me and an empty apartment.”
She paused. “Oh? Maybe I could come over and help you get the kittens settled in.”
I suddenly felt like an idiot for not recognizing that she’d been fishing to see if I was single. When had I gotten so out of practice?
Probably in the five years since I’d last gone on a date, I realized with a jolt.
The woman was pretty. Probably more than pretty, really. Most guys would take a glimpse of her blond hair and big blue eyes and get hard over her All-American, girl-next-door, cheerleader vibe.
But it did nothing for me.
It only made me think about how Kara’s hair had been the opposite, long and dark. How her eyes had looked black in some lights, and warm honey brown in others. How her body had been all curves and softness, while providing a home for her baby.
Like I did every time a woman asked me out, I shook my head and turned the receptionist down.
Because she wasn’t the one woman I couldn’t get out of my head.
The receptionist blushed pink when I explained I’d be fine alone but told me to come back in an hour after the vet had checked out my animals.
Apparently, I owned three fucking cats now.
How the hell had that happened?
I needed a drink to come to terms with that, and I had an hour to kill. I left my car parked outside the vet and wandered around the streets of Providence in search of somewhere I could get a beer with my lunch. I passed a couple of men’s clothing stores that sold shirts and pants a damn sight nicer than the ones in the big, budget-friendly department store in Saint View where most people I knew bought their clothes. I caught a glimpse of a price tag on a suit hanging by the door and did a double take.
While residents over in Saint View seemed to be cutting back on the basics like eating out at cheap hole-in-the wall diners, Providence was over here spending a thousand bucks on a single outfit?
Insane.
Then again, I’d just agreed to spend that on my trio of kittens, so maybe I was crazy too.
The cafés were all busy, no available seats to be seen at any of the ones I checked. Each was full of ladies dining with friends, couples sitting opposite each other, or families with well-behaved children quietly drawing on paper or watching iPads while their parents ordered for them.
I stopped in at one that had a menu that made my taste buds tingle and saliva fill my mouth, but was quickly told that without a reservation, I wouldn’t be getting seated today. Or even this month. They were that booked up.
I wanted to scream with frustration.
That new restaurant Luca was opening just down the road was going to make an absolute killing.
My feet took me there without conscious thought from my brain.
If I’d truly been thinking clearly, I would have walked the other way. Or even better, run screaming.
But I stood outside the restaurant that should have been mine and wished with everything inside me that things had worked out differently.
I stood there, losing myself in the daydream.
I didn’t notice the silver car pull up behind me, or the man who got out of it until he was standing right beside me, his arms crossed over his chest, matching my position. I didn’t acknowledge him. Both of us stared at the building that held so much damn potential I wanted to weep.
“You ready to look at that contract yet?” Luca asked.
And fuck me, I hated myself. But with no job, no prospects, and no hope of changing my life, I nodded.