Chapter 4
Sloane
I love everything about my cafe, I really do.
I don’t mind the long hours. Most of my customers are great and the ones who aren’t, usually fail to get under my skin.
This place takes a lot of hard work, but it pays all my bills, and it’s allowed me to put a little bit of money into my savings account every month for years.
Making coffee, baking, cleaning, putting in orders, and bookwork might not be glamorous, but I like it.
I find the mundane routine comfortable and relaxing.
Usually.
It’s an hour away from close up, and I still haven’t settled in. It’s a miracle that I haven’t caused a coffee explosion or spilled trays of drinks, I’m so distracted. Tremors alternate between my hands and the rest of my body. I keep trying to lose myself in work, but it’s not going to happen.
I feel like we’re one step away from certain disaster.
How is it possible that this day has been a thousand years long?
It’s wild to think that I woke up this morning and everything was so painfully, wonderfully normal.
Now, my son worked for a gang, witnessed a murder, and is prospecting at a biker club.
When I referred to them as a gang, he put me straight.
It’s not enough that he’s planning on joining them, he also works for Satan’s Angels MC too.
He’s so thoroughly enmeshed with them that I know chances are slim of ever unpicking those knots and setting him free.
If I needed a reminder of how deeply he’s enmeshed in all this, I just need to look up at the giant of a man who’s invaded my café and our home.
Okay, it’s for our protection, but I could do without his presence throwing me off kilter every time I catch a glimpse of those steely gray eyes.
The bell at the door jangles, admitting John and Henry. They work down the street and generally come in around five—the end of their day, for a coffee for the drive home.
Liam wasn’t entirely wrong when he listed off the types of men that I’m wary of.
He said don’t like, but I’ll die on the hill of caution never hurt anyone.
It’s not that I don’t trust a man in a suit, but it does get exhausting that donning one seems to make the wearer think that they can talk down someone working in the service industry.
John and Henry aren’t like that. They’re middle aged with kids nearly as old as Liam.
John’s been balding for years and has a dad bod, while Henry looks like a lumberjack jammed into a suit.
They’re always funky. Plaids, browns, checks, but never boring black.
He grins his typical grin at me. He’s as big as a Viking, though not as large as Cruz.
He and Liam went upstairs an hour ago to talk about security. We’ve never had a camera in our living space. I don’t like it, but there’s not much about this that I do think is great.
I still can’t believe this is happening.
“You look like your parade got pissed on,” Henry barks. Loudly.
Mrs. Jenkins is over in the reading nook, a smutty romance book resting on her knees, a slice of banana bread and her regular black Earl Grey tea on the coffee table in front of her.
She turns around and scowls. She might regularly read the spiciest, darkest books in full public view, but swearing in real life is a no-no.
She’s eighty-seven. I think she wants real life men to have some class like the book boyfriends do.
“I’m okay. Just… just got some unexpected news. I’m still processing.” I smile, but it’s the kind of thing that says I don’t want to talk about it.
A few teenage girls in the back giggle loudly, but when I sweep my eyes to the tables over by the back window, I can see them crouched over a phone. They’re not laughing at my shitty day. God. Normally, I don’t take everything so… personally.
Sweat prickles at the nape of my neck. I’m carrying a lot of tension and it’s not going to unwind itself anytime soon. I half expect some thugs to drive up in a black vehicle with tint and shoot my windows out.
Jesus Christ, could they shoot the windows out?
If they did, someone else could get hurt. Anyone in here, and it would be all my fault for not doing the responsible thing and closing for a few days.
I swallow thickly. I have less than an hour before I can flip the neon open sign off and shut it down for the day.
After that, I’ll figure out if I’m going to open tomorrow, or if the door is getting a handwritten note about us being closed for an emergency remodel or pipe repair or something stupid but believable.
“Are you having your regular?” I ask past my dry throat. The rest of me is clammy and sticky with sweat.
Henry frowns. He glances at John, then over the menu, then back to John. “I was thinking about trying one of those fancy lattes. The flavor of the day. Butter pecan sounds exotic.”
“Want a taster before you commit?”
“Do you think it’s good?”
“I love it.”
“Hmm.” Henry rakes a hand through his thick beard. “That’s probably why it’s up there, then. You wouldn’t put something gross on the board. Not like blue cheese and cabbage.”
I laugh, my regular throaty laugh, not the hysterical high-pitched sound that’s been waiting to escape. “Well, now you mention it, that sounds pretty good,” I joke.
“You’d probably have too many takers,” John says. He’s normally the quiet, polite, serious one.
I gape at him and he offers me a shy smile.
That makes me laugh harder. “Oh god, you’re so right. Between that and if we had a flavor for feet, I’d probably have hipsters coming all the way from Seattle.”
“If you ever make it, best keep in a secret then. Something only customers know about, like they do at restaurants where if you’ve worked there, you know all the recipes, and can ask for them later.”
“Foodie inside jokes,” Henry adds. He clears his throat and stands a little straighter. Business mode activated. “Seriously though, I’ll give the butter pecan a try. Are you having one too, John?”
I never thought I’d see the day where John changes it up from regular black coffee, but he nods too. “Sure. Why not?”
“Well, if they’re gross, they’re on me.” All the drinks today should probably be comped. I can’t say that I’ve done my best work while my mind has been constantly churning over Liam.
I’ve questioned everything. Do I know my own son?
Is it possible to know anyone? Is it even possible to know yourself?
I’ve read enough books and done enough journaling, that I’m pretty confident in that answer, but just because it’s no, doesn’t excuse anything, and it doesn’t make me feel better.
People make mistakes. Liam wanted something inexplicable, and what he’s wanted, he’s always worked hard to get. He’s always been that way.
I don’t know if it was the brotherhood aspect of that biker club that attracted him. Was he looking for a father figure? He has so many good friends already. He has me. Does he need more?
This whole thing is so messed up.
I get busy making two butter pecan lattes. To pull myself out of my head, I try and chat some more with Henry and John over the grinding, hissing, steaming of the machines.
“How was work today?”
“Well, you know, it’s a Wednesday,” Henry says. “I never find them to be good or bad. They’re very mid, just like their status would indicate.”
“I never did hate Wednesdays either,” John agrees. “It’s always Mondays and Fridays that have the most chaos. If something bad is going down, it’s going to happen then, especially if it’s a Friday of a long weekend and everything and everyone is closed.”
“I had that happen once. With my cat,” Henry says. “She got sick and I had to take her to an emergency vet, and it cost a fortune.”
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to feel the same about a Wednesday again. Liam’s news could change everything. Will we even be here? Will I still have the cafe when this is all over? Liam was so adamant that it was nothing, but I don’t know how he could even attempt to put a brave face on it.
I pass over the two finished lattes in their paper cups. Henry pays for them both and the men thank me and shuffle out.
A loud bang comes from upstairs, causing Mrs. Jenkins to curse under her breath. Shit!” she mutters.
I have to press both hands over my mouth to keep myself from laughing.
What am I ever going to do if we end up leaving Hart?
And if we leave, would that guarantee that we’d be safe?
Was Liam’s leaving Seattle enough? Would trouble follow?
Would he gravitate toward the same aspect of found brotherhood and belonging wherever we are?
I ball my hands into fists and glance up at the ceiling.
I have no idea what Cruz and Liam are doing up there, in our personal space.
My apartment is far from sacred or even nice, but it’s my space, and having a stranger up there just feels wrong.
On the fucked up scale of epic fuckery, it shouldn’t be all that bad, but maybe it’s the little things that are the most catastrophic.
Every parent knows about the atrocities, the horrors, all the hurts and aches and pains in the world. I had eighteen years to prepare myself for the day that I’d have to let Liam go. I wanted him to have the world, and instead, we’re back here… and… this.
I don’t know how to get my brain around it.
Any of it.
I should move. Clean something. Prep something else. Start getting the shop ready to shut down in forty minutes. Instead, I stand here. Frozen. I can’t even pretend that I’m not utterly bewildered and feel entirely like shit. I hate being helpless. Hopeless.
No. That isn’t our narrative. I felt hopeless and afraid once, when I was sixteen and found out I was pregnant, and again when I was broke, basically homeless, and staring down bringing a child into that life.
I got through all of it. It wasn’t easy, but I did everything I could to create a life of love.
I can do it again. Tough or not, it’ll pass.