Chapter 11 #2
“It’s okay.” He braces both hands on the side of the bar, squeezing until his knuckles go white. Without thinking, I slide a hand over his. He flips his palm up, fingers curling around mine. His are warm and rough and twice the size. I look at them, and my pulse jolts.
“Me and Mum were fucked without him,” Davis mutters.
“His pay, not him. I dunno how Mum handled it. She was there every day, working all the time so I could keep playing cricket and going to after-school shit. She barely ate anything but rice and soy sauce for years. Makes me sick, how hard it must have been, but she did her best to hide it. Wanted me to think we were normal.”
“Did you, um, ever hear from your dad again?”
His fingers tighten around mine. “Once. When I was eighteen, I went to see him in Christchurch. Thought an explanation might help.”
“Did it?”
He smiles bitterly. “No. All he said was that he couldn’t have the life he wanted with Mum. He hadn’t changed.”
My heart twists. I wish I could say something besides ‘sorry,’ but I can’t think of anything else. “I’m so sorry, Davis.”
“It’s fine,” he says. “Mum met Robert when I was fourteen. Big-shot banker, money to burn. Mum didn’t think he’d want the baggage of a step-kid, but he didn’t care.
He married her, moved us into his three-story house, took me under his wing.
Taught me about finance and restoring cars.
But that’s my point: Robert was a good bloke before he met Mum.
Dad wasn’t.” His smile sharpens. “So there it is. Love doesn’t change people. ”
I’m at a loss for words. It’s a sweet story, his mum finding her ‘one’, but Davis delivers it with such a hollow edge it makes my chest ache. I squeeze his hand again. “I get why you might feel that way.”
“Good, because whatever’s going on with Ada and the All Black…” He jerks his chin at the door. “It’s not gonna work just because he buys her ‘gifts’ and fucks her right. He did what he did, and he has to live with it. And I don’t think Ada can live with it.”
I’m dying to know what he knows about Ada’s past. What she must have told him, but I can’t get past Davis’s fatalistic tone.
He’s carrying around so much pain for his dad, his mum, and himself.
My heart breaks imagining him as a boy, big-eyed and round-faced.
I can just picture him trying to be the support his mother needed, trying his best to stay out of trouble and take care of himself because he thought she already had too much to worry about.
It makes so much sense why he’s the way he is now.
“You’re a good man.” The words tumble out before I can stop them.
“I try,” Davis mutters, eyes down.
“No. You are.”
He lifts his gaze, and the floor tilts beneath me. For a moment I’m spinning through something vast and unsteady, then I find my footing again. “You are a good man. I know that. Do you remember how we met?”
A shadow flickers across Davis’s face. “Of course.”
In my first month of running Afterglow, I announced it was last call and one of the leftovers from the Mitch years slurred at me to “shut up and pour the beer.”
I was stunned, but I knew I needed to say something.
To show the old regulars that I wouldn’t be spoken to like that in my own bar.
I told the guy to get out and took his glass away.
That’s when he called me a ‘disrespectful bitch’ and shoved me.
He was old and drunk and his fist barely grazed my shoulder, but I stumbled back, blindsided by the contact.
Davis was at my side in a second. I’d seen him drinking in the corner booth earlier.
He must have crossed the room in three strides before he laid the old bastard out cold.
Then he checked me for injuries and rang the cops.
He also restrained Aggie when she came flying out of the kitchen, ready to go to town on the guy’s unconscious body with a wooden spoon.
I figured Davis was just a Good Samaritan who’d disappear once the police statements were written, but once the cops left, he turned to me. “You hiring?”
I remember gaping at him, so young and superhero handsome, I couldn’t believe he was asking me for a job. “You want to be a bartender?”
“A bouncer,” he corrected. “I’ve got a day job in finance, but I did security all through uni and I’ve still got my license. You need someone on that door. At least on weekends.”
I said no, I couldn’t afford a proper security guard.
Davis nodded, but then the very next day he turned up in a black T-shirt and boots and started checking IDs and telling the regulars to pull their heads in.
He came back the next weekend, and the one after that.
Eventually, I signed him on to ease my conscience about taking advantage of him.
“I know you’re a good man because when I needed help, you were there,” I say to Davis. “You didn’t have to rescue me the night we met, or stay on to work here, but you did.”
“I hate that memory,” he mutters.
“You mean when we met?”
“I mean when I had to watch a drunk asshole push a woman around. Push you around, Cecelia.”
A shiver flits down my spine. Davis never uses my full name, and hearing it all low and stern does something to me I can’t explain.
“I don’t hate that memory,” I say softly. “It’s the night I met you.”
Goosebumps rise along Davis’s neck, and I realise we’re still holding hands. I should let go. I’m his boss, the older woman signing his admittedly tiny paychecks.
“Cece?”
His breath brushes my temple, sending a tremor down my spine. “Yes?”
“Have you thought any more about what you want?”
I have. I’ve spent hours thinking about it. “A little.”
His fingers shift, a thumb slipping free to rub circles on my inner wrist. It should feel normal—I spent half of uni with people checking my pulse—but here, in the low light, with his cologne curling between us, it’s a sensory opera. My body responds in kind, my nipples tightening to peaks.
“Cece…” Davis murmurs, lowering his head.
Every nerve in my body sparks like a firework show, and Davis is the match. Our mouths are so close together, they’re almost touching—
A loud cough cuts through the air. “Uh, Cece, do you mind if I take off early? I’ve got uni tomorrow.”
My stomach plummets. I pull away from Davis and spin around.
Lisa is behind me, her apron already off, car keys dangling from her fingers.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asks, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
I force a smile, hyper-aware of how busted I am. “Not at all. But would you please mind finishing your shift? It’s only nine, and we’re still—”
“We’re not that busy. Pretty sure the fucking scared everyone off.”
I cringe. What can I say to that? Sure, I let my best mate get audibly drilled by an All Black above my bar, but the customers loved it and so should you! Honestly, Jake will be lucky if this doesn’t end up on the news.
I open my mouth to reluctantly agree Lisa can leave, but Davis gets in first. “Actually, can you wait in the office for a sec, Lisa? Cece and I need a quick word about next week’s roster.”
“Cece and you?” Lisa looks like she’s just been asked to clean the toilets. “Why you?”
“Because I want him to,” I say automatically.
Lisa huffs, flips her blonde braid over her shoulder and saunters toward the back.
I frown at Davis. The roster is a masterpiece of my administrative skills. A Taj Mahal of Timeline Tetris. “Why exactly do we need to talk to Lisa about her shifts?”
“We don’t. But you do need to talk to her about skimming from the till.”
Bile floods my throat. “What?”
“I meant to tell you earlier, but…” A flush creeps up Davis’s neck, and I know he means Ada’s relationship shenanigans. But that’s the furthest thing from my mind right now. “Wait, so what did you see? I can’t just accuse Lisa if I don’t have evidence?”
“You’re right. Don’t get mad,” Davis pulls out his phone.
“But she was acting kinda sketchy last week, so this afternoon I set up a little camera behind the register. The feed goes to my phone.” He scrolls and holds it out for me.
I watch the recording of Lisa glancing around then slipping two twenties into her skirt pocket.
“She’s done it twice tonight,” Davis says.
Red floods the edges of my vision. I’m paying Lisa out of my own meagre savings, barely scraping by, and she’s robbing me? “That little…”
I turn heel and storm toward my office, Davis right behind me, his boots heavy on the worn floorboards.
“Are you kidding me?” I shout as I yank the office door open. “You’re stealing from me?”
Lisa doesn’t even flinch. She’s sprawled in the chair across from my desk, on her phone. “Um, what are you talking about?”
“Empty your pockets.”
“No.” Her eyes slide from mine to the door. “Davis, what’s going on?”
“We recorded you, you, idiot,” I yell. “Hand over the money you took tonight.”
“There’s no cameras in this place,” Lisa sneers at me, but as the seconds tick by and Davis says nothing, her smile starts to falter. “I wanna leave.”
Davis presses the warm weight of his arm against mine as he takes out his phone. “You can, but I’ll call the cops. I do have a video of you lifting from the till. You’ll get charged.”
“Fine. Fuck you then.” Lisa stands, pulling a wad of crumpled bills from her jean skirt. She tosses them on the desk, and I let out a little moan at the sight of all the money she’s stolen.
“Oh my God.”
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Lisa says. “You can afford it.”
My head nearly explodes. “I can afford it? I can’t even afford Netflix. Everything this bar makes goes into wages!”
“Bullshit. You don’t charge your alco friend, and she’s drinking here every night.”