Chapter 30 Snapped
G oing into the next day, there was something off.
If I had to describe it, I’d say I felt like a bee trapped in a glass jar with small air holes punctured in the lid. I was surviving, but I wasn’t happy or at ease. I was breathing. I was walking around and talking like normal, but inside there was a buzzing, subtle but impossible to ignore.
The buzzing kept me on edge all throughout the day and didn’t stop once, even as I tried to breathe it out. Just like that bee, I was panicked even though I wasn’t in any immediate danger. The feeling that I was slowly suffocating sat on my chest, growing heavier as the day at work progressed.
If I was that bee, I would slam my body up against the glass over and over again until I was bloody and damaged, but I wouldn’t stop. I’d hurl my body into those walls until I hit a weak spot and cracked a splinter through the jar, shattering the glass down around me as I flew free.
It was only a matter of when.
“Hey, Beautiful. Can I get a Gin and Tonic?”
The voice of the next customer pulled me from my dazed state of mind. I noted the smug gleam touching his lowering stare and tried so very hard not to roll my eyes at him.
“Sure thing.”
Spinning away from him, I’d just barely nabbed the bottle of gin in my palm before his voice rang out again. “Maybe you should make one for yourself too. On me.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” Please stop talking to me. “We’re not really supposed to drink on the job.”
“Come on. Who am I gonna tell? It can be our little secret.”
By this point in the night, I’d handed out so many fake laughs that I was beginning to forget what my real laugh sounded like. Yet here I was, handing out another.
“As tempting as that is, I’m going to have to pass.” Turning back, I slid his drink to him and batted a brief smile to the stranger. “But thank you for the offer.”
The man scoffed in the face of my kind smile. “I thought blondes were all about having fun?”
His comment swelled the buzzing in my chest and in my ears, grating on my already ice thin nerves.
“Now I guess you’ll know not to trust stereotypes.”
And that should have been the end of it. I should have been able to move onto my next customer and move on with my night. But this man had other plans—plans that did not sit well with the desperate bee ramming around inside of me.
“I’d say I just know not to trust sexy blonde bartenders.”
The heavy seduction in his voice ran down my spine in shivers, and everything in me screamed to turn from him and run the other direction—or to just scream in general.
One good, long scream that came from the gut.
Unfortunately, I could do none of the desired and instead just did what I usually do when customers got too flirtatious and tossed him yet another polite chuckle.
Then I got back to work, finding busy work to keep my hands occupied and my mind from wandering to the forward man on the other side of the bar.
“You see what I mean?” My shoulders tensed up the same way they would if his voice had been nails on a chalkboard. “I give you a compliment and you ignore me.”
“I’m just trying to work, sir.”
“Work? The bar’s half empty!”
“Yes, but I have things to do even when I’m not serving so—”
“No, no, no, I don’t want to hear your excuses,” he cut me off, waving his hand in front of his face. “I just want you to let loose and have fun, okay? How about a shot? Just one shot with me, come on.”
“Like I said, I can’t—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, it’s one shot!” The slap of his fist against the bar snapped a sharp breath back into my lungs. The man leaned his protruding gut across the bar, nearing himself and the off-kilter look in his eyes closer.
“You know the polite thing to do when a man offers to buy you a drink? Fucking say yes . It’s not gonna kill you.”
Just then, at the hands of his words, the entitlement rolling off of this man I’d just met, and the millions of other triggering catastrophes in my life, I reached the when . Inside my chest, the glass walls cracked like lightning, loud and dangerous all the same.
“And you know the polite thing to do when a woman says no to you buying her a drink? Respect her answer and move on.”
The man’s eyes widened with shock that quickly spread out into his expression, and I realized quickly that he probably wasn’t used to anyone talking back to him.
This theory was further confirmed as the shock morphed over into something gravely offended that obscured every single one of the strangers features.
“ This is the problem with women these days. This fucking feminist bullshit where men get chewed out for offering to buy a simple fucking drink for some bitch. You all claim that chivalry is dead and this is the goddamn reason why!”
“This has nothing to do with chivalry and everything to do with you being an entitled jackass!”
The words were out before I could catch them.
“What the fuck did you just call me?”
Fire sparked behind his swarthy eyes, and slowly, he rose from his seat. The action doused my newfound hot-headed behavior as if I’d been plunged underwater. In the split second that I came back up gasping for air, I sucked in a whole lot of fear down with it, nearly choking on my apology.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
He acted like he didn’t hear me. With his stare fixed on mine, he slapped his hands down on the bar and hoisted his body up and over. The moment his feet planted on the same side of the bar as me is when the sheer panic riled up my heart as it beat faster and harsher with every ticking second.
He took one step toward me.
“Say it again. Say it to my fucking face.”
His boot crushed another menacing step in my direction.
“Patrick!” I yelled, casting my stare over to the seated areas of the bar to see if anyone was watching or coming to help.
And they were watching, but they were not on their way to help.
Several curious eyes looked on as the man approached me, and not a single one of them stood to save me or stop him. A yelp tore from my throat as the man lunged and I tripped backwards over the rubber mat on the floor.
Pain rolled around my left ankle as it collapsed to the side at an angle it wasn’t meant for.
Patrick’s name bellowed from my mouth again as the man stepped so close the smell of his cologne burned the inside of my nose.
His mouth twisted up into a sneer so sinister it ignited that fight-or-flight response everyone is legended to have in them and much to my surprise, I chose fight.
In a blink, I’d wound my fingers around the neck of the very gin bottle I’d poured the man his drink from and lifted it above my head.
And then I swung, with fight in my muscles and terror in my heart until the sound of glass shattering crashed through the air and spit all over the floor and my clothes. The man cried out as the glass splattered any and everywhere, jumping up and biting my cheek.
Shrieks of alarm chorused from the onlooking patrons, every muscle in my body tightening preemptively as I anticipated the man’s retaliation.
Instead, relief flooded my wildly beating heart as I caught Patrick wrestling the man out of the bar through my pinched eyesight.
My assailant shouted that he’d sue me, us, the entire bar as Patrick steered him through the front door.
On his way out, several lines of trickling blood stood out on his forehead.
All I could do was stand there, unable to think or move or comprehend what had just happened.
Seconds later, patrons came to my side and pretended to care about what they all saw happen and did nothing to stop.
I ignored them all and hobbled over to Patrick as he walked back inside and made his way to me.
“What the fuck happened? Are you okay?”
“He-he jumped over the bar,” I stuttered, still overwhelmed. “I’m so sorry. I—”
“Sorry?” He stopped me, wearing a bemused expression. “You got nothing to be sorry for. Whatever you did, you did because you had to and I trust that.”
I had about fifty other things prepped and ready to say to Patrick to explain my way out of this mess that got stuck on my tongue.
“Thank you,” I breathed, too astounded to say anymore.
Patrick grunted in response with a charmed spark showing off in his stare. “Also—nice aim, kid.”
I wanted to smile or blush in return to Patrick’s compliment, but was still reeling from the violence of it all. I hated violence.
“Now, call someone to come and get you, okay? You’re goin’ home for the night.”
I thought about fighting him on it, but he’d walked away before I could and probably for the best. Even with mild pressure on my left foot, there was a twinge of discomfort. This was an injury that needed icing and quickly.
Over the next twenty minutes, I sat in the backroom calling Monica a total number of six times before giving up. She wasn’t answering anytime soon. She was likely in a meeting or something of the sort and it could be another hour or two before she got back to me.
Disheartened and mildly annoyed, I limped my way back out to Patrick in the main bar area.
“She’s not answering.” I hoisted myself up to sit on top of the bar. “I’ll just drive home now and go really slowly.”
Without even looking up from his work, Patrick shot back, “No you won’t.”
“What? Then how do you expect me to get home?”
I’d asked the question with a twinge of humor in my voice, knowing there wasn’t an answer he could possibly give me other than to let me drive myself home.
“Well…” In the middle of Patrick speaking, the door to the bar burst open, the noise itself twisting everyone’s neck in the direction the loud sound had come from. Just as the cause of the ruckus barrelled through the doors, Patrick spoke up with a hint of his own humor in his voice.
“That’s how.”
Dread expanded across my chest as I laid eyes on him. “You called him?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“ Why ?”
“Your sister ain’t comin’ and you need a ride.” Patrick turned to me, a peculiar spark dotted in his stare. “I had a feeling he’d come runnin’.”
Even as badly as I wanted to analyze the strange look Patrick had just given me, I had no time. Ethan was making his way over to us both, fists balled and eyes sharp with murder.
“Where is he?”
Patrick caught Ethan as he basically tried to run him down, placing his hand in the center of his chest.
“Gone. He’s been gone.”
Ethan hadn’t spared me one look yet, and I couldn’t lie that I was happy about that. The look in his eyes wasn’t anything I ever wanted aimed at me. It was a look that could strike someone dead.
He sliced those lethal eyes down to Patrick and spoke with promise. “If he ever comes in here again, I’ll kill him.”
Patting his hand against Ethan’s chest, he slowly moved away. “And why do you think he’s not here now?”
Patrick clapped his hand on Ethan’s shoulder twice before leaving to help a customer at the bar, abandoning me and Ethan alone.
I let my attention follow Patrick away, my eyes outlining The Regular’s logo printed on the back of his shirt as a distraction.
Desperately, I hoped that if I ignored Ethan’s presence long enough, maybe he just might get the hint and go away.
This was now twice that we’d seen each other when our orders were plainly not to.
We had an unfortunate habit of breaking any rules set in front of us, and it was a habit that we needed to stop.
Gentle fingers that were not aware of the opposing thoughts in my head pressed beneath my chin. Slowly, they guided my head away from Patrick’s shirt and right to the last man in the world who should have been standing this close to me.
Ethan’s eyes were waiting for mine, and as disarming as anything I’d ever seen up close.
“Are you hurt?”
God, his voice was like a teardrop. Slow falling and obvious in its overwhelming emotion, but also had a similar effect to seeing anyone cry. At hearing it, my defenses dropped and my heart was bleeding all over my sleeve in hopes that it might bring him any comfort.
“Just my pride and my ankle.”
A feathered touch from his thumb brushed a spot on my cheek that I’d forgotten about until a subtle sting burrowed in my skin where he’d been.
“And your cheek.”
I shrugged my shoulders and that was all. Feeling his hand on my face, swiping adoring caresses from my cheekbone to my ear was tortuous in a special kind of way that I wished would end, just as I wished it would never stop.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Batting my eyes up to his, staring at him through the edges of my eyelashes, I spoke plainly. “You know why I didn’t call.”
A mask of irritation covered his expression and told me just how much he did not like that response.
“I told you if you ever needed help, if you ever needed anything to call me. Didn’t I?”
“Yes, but we’re not supposed to—”
“I don’t care what we’re not supposed to do, Alice.
If you’re hurt or in danger or even if you’re out of fucking milk at 2 am, you call me,” he said pointedly and without a waver of deceit.
I’d have been able to see if there was any measure of bluffing to what he’d said with his eyes burning mine like they were. Those eyes of his… they never lied.
Not to me anyway.
Not giving me time to respond, Ethan dropped his hand from my cheek.
“Where’s your bag?”
“In the back.”
Ethan disappeared into the employee’s back room and moments later pushed back through the door with my bag over his shoulder and my portable coffee mug in hand. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked as he got closer.
“Driving you home.”
And without anymore said, he slipped one arm behind my back and the other beneath my legs, picking me up off of the bartop bridal style and sending my heart to the high heavens.
“Ethan!” I scolded quietly. “I don’t need you to drive me home.”
“Well—” He shifted me in his hold, my arms jumping up around his neck. My head shot to him, coming close enough to see the flecks of sapphire in his eyes and to taste the mint on his breath. His mouth drew my focus, supple and as condemning as his next words.
“That’s just too damn bad.”