I had a shift later that day, the evening shift, which meant I wouldn’t be getting off until the early hours of the morning. I wouldn’t mind the later finish if I could just figure out a way to sleep in the next day. After spending most of my adult life under prison rules, my body was trained to wake at six a.m., and even when I didn’t collapse on my bed until after one, I still found my eyes pinging open right before six. I was conditioned, that was for sure, but I wanted to leave my prison life behind me. The future I’d dreamed of when I was eighteen had never materialized. In fact, I’d been forced to put it off for another ten years, but now I had a second chance and I didn’t intend on fucking things up again.
I took a shower, got dressed, and headed out to my shift. As usual, the kitchen was busy and hot, and I nodded my hellos to the guys working their asses off to make sure customers got their meals on time. I was on prep for the start of the shift, and would move to pans later in the night after most of the meals had gone out. It wasn’t exactly classy work, but I was allowed to keep my head down and get on with things without being forced to interact with too many people.
As I worked, my thoughts kept drifting to Gabi. Both times I’d seen her had felt like a punch to the chest. It was like stepping back in time, and I had to physically stop myself from reaching out and touching her as we spoke, just as I always had when we were teenagers. She looked exactly the same to me, though I knew I must appear brutish to her. Ten years behind bars would harden a guy up. I wondered if she hated my tattoos, and that my hair was so much shorter now. Did she feel nostalgic in any way for the boy I had been back then?
The kitchen was always a noisy place, pans crashing and banging, meat sizzling, and people shouting orders to one another, but, beneath it all, a commotion sounded from the front of house. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what was going on. It was normally a pretty chilled out place to work, but something was definitely up. I heard shouts, and a plate crashed.
One of the waitresses burst into the kitchen, her gaze flicking across the space until it landed on me.
“Hey, Cole,” she yelled. “We need you out front. Some asshole is having a fit about his meal.”
“Can’t you handle it?”
“No, we need you.”
I was never asked to be front of house. The owner didn’t think I would be good for business. But most of the people working out front were women—the hostess and waitresses. Perhaps they just needed someone who appeared a little intimidating. I figured I fit that bill.
I dropped the potatoes I was peeling, the vegetables splashing into the muddy water, and barely stopped to wipe my hands on the apron I wore.
Shouts filtered through to the kitchen, and, as I pushed open the door, they grew louder. A small group had gathered in a circle around someone who was standing at the end of a table, a clutter of broken crockery at his feet. Asshole. Who the hell came into a restaurant to start a fight?
I squared my shoulders, fully planning on grabbing this guy and throwing him out of the door. I couldn’t afford to get myself in any more trouble, but I figured there were enough witnesses around to explain how I was the one trying to put this to an end, not start it. I sensed Deano at my shoulder. He’d also been working in the kitchen, and I knew I had backup. As I pushed through the small crowd, one of the waitresses—a tiny woman in her fifties—tried to placate the man.
“Stupid bitch,” said the guy. “If my meal is tasteless, I ain’t gonna pay for it!”
“But you ate the whole thing ...” She was still trying to reason with him.
The man must have noticed the movement in the crowd as I approached, and his head whipped toward me. The moment he locked eyes with me, I froze in surprise. What was it with people crawling out of the woodwork at the moment? Or perhaps it was just that I’d been away for so long. Everyone else had been around this whole time.
Ryan.
He straightened, his eyes widening. “Fuck me, Cole Devonport.”
To my astonishment, he apparently forgot the scene he’d created and strolled toward me. With me stunned into inaction, he grabbed my hand and shook it, smacking me on the shoulder with his other hand. I could feel everyone staring, trying to connect the two of us. Plenty of people knew about my prison stay, and I didn’t want to be associated with the likes of Ryan Becks. My reputation was bad enough as it was.
I dragged my fingers out of his hold and took a step back. “I think you need to leave, Ryan.”
“Now is that the way to greet an old friend?”
I scowled. “We’re not friends. We never were.”
He barked a laugh. “No? You could have fooled me.”
“Leave, Ryan, or we’ll call the cops.”
He gave a smug smile. “You know the police pretty well by now, don’t you?”
I balled my fists, resisting the urge to lunge for him and break his face. I kept my tone even, though anger bubbled beneath the surface. “This is your last chance. Turn around and walk away, or the police are going to be called.”
He gave a nonchalant shrug. “No problem. I didn’t want to stay in this shit hole any longer, anyway.” He turned, and for a moment I thought he was going to leave without any more trouble, but then he spun back to me. “Hey, how’s that piece of skirt you used to hang out with? Gabriella, wasn’t it? Is she still as fit as she was back then?” He chuckled. “I remember how she was always gagging for it.”
A red haze descended over my vision, and I was no longer aware of any of the people around us, or how I was supposed to be protecting my already ruined reputation. With a growl, I lunged toward Ryan, my shoes crunching on the smashed crockery. Hands grabbed my arms from behind, holding me back. I shook them off, but the delay had given Ryan just enough time to turn and saunter from the building, the little bell above the door ringing as the door swung shut behind him. I could make out his figure walking into the night. A part of me—a massive part—wanted to race after him and smash his head into the sidewalk, but I knew I couldn’t. Going after him now would be viewed as assault, and it would put me right back behind bars.
What the hell was he doing back here? As far as I was aware, Ryan had left town not long after I’d been incarcerated. I wondered if he’d seemed as surprised about seeing me as I’d been about him. Had the shock in his eyes matched my own, or had he been a little too confident about approaching me again for the first time in ten years?
I didn’t know, but the last thing I needed right now was the likes of Ryan back in my life.
Chapter Nine
Gabi - Eleven Years Earlier
COLE DEVONPORT WAS walking down the school corridor, directly toward me. I ducked my head, holding my books closer to my chest, and kept going, hoping he’d somehow not notice me.
But as he got closer, I realized he was the one trying not to catch my eye, and despite the way he walked, with his head down and his blond hair hanging over his face, it was impossible not to notice his black eye and split lip.
Before I’d had the chance to think through what I was doing, I’d reached out and caught him by his forearm, pulling him to a stop.
“Hey, Cole. What happened?”
“Gabi,” he said, his gaze flicking to me. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine. What happened to you?”
He gave his head a slight shake and glanced away again, his cheeks heating. “I got into a fight with my foster brother. It was stupid.”
“Your foster brother? Does he come to Willowbrook High?”
“Nah, he goes to Blackdown,” he said, mentioning another high school across town. “He’d already been going there for a few years before he moved in with our foster family, so they figured there was no point in moving him.”
“And he did this to you?”
“Would you believe me if I told you he came off worse?”
I could hear a teasing tone to his voice, but I felt like he was using it to cover how he really felt. I couldn’t imagine having to live in a house
that didn’t even belong to one of my parents, and then getting in a fight with someone I lived with—a fight so bad it left me with injuries every kid at school would surely notice and be gossiping about.
“Did he?” I asked.
Cole pushed his hair back from his face and grinned. “Nah, not really, but only because I knew I’d end up in more shit than he would. He’s younger and smaller than me, so handing him his ass wouldn’t exactly go down well with the couple who’ve taken me in.”
My eyes widened. “So you let him hit you instead?”
“I don’t know if let him is exactly the right way of putting it, but he definitely got in a couple of swings before I managed to pin him down.”
“And why did he want to hit you in the first place?”
“He took some stuff of mine, so I figured it was only fair I took some of his things in return.” He shrugged. “He wasn’t exactly happy about it.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I guess not.”
As we spoke, he gradually lost the slightly defeated atmosphere he’d had as he’d walked down the hall, the cocky attitude returning. Before I knew what was happening, he’d slung his arm around my shoulder and I discovered we were walking side by side down the corridor, him propelling me along.
Other students cast us curious glances as we walked, people stopping chatting at their lockers to raise eyebrows at us. I’d always been someone who was quite happy to be invisible at high school, but all of a sudden I felt a little spark of excitement, of confidence, at walking through school with Cole Devonport’s arm around me. It didn’t mean anything. If anyone else had stopped him, they’d be the one walking with him now, but for the moment I allowed myself to soak in the ounce of stupid pride I felt at Cole paying me attention.
I checked myself.
No, I wasn’t like that. I didn’t need the attention of a boy to make me feel better about myself.
I ducked and slipped out from under his arm. “Actually, Cole, I was kind of headed in the other direction. I have an English Lit class.”
“No problem. Meet me for lunch.”
“Sorry?”
“Lunch. You know, that meal between breakfast and dinner. I’ll meet you on the benches outside the gym.”
“But I’m supposed to—” I started. Only Cole had already turned and walked away. He looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Later!”
My face burned, but a smile tugged at my cheeks. I was supposed to be meeting Taylor and Jasmine for lunch. Was I really considering ditching my friends to eat lunch with a guy? I wasn’t the type of girl to do that, and anyway, I didn’t know how Taylor would react if she found out I ditched her to go and eat lunch with the guy she was crushing on. I’d seen how much she’d loved being around Cole, and she’d been pissed at him for not calling her already. I wasn’t so surprised. Sure, he’d been flirting with her, but guys like him flirted with anyone with a vagina.
No, I decided. I won’t go. It wasn’t as though I’d even be standing him up, as I hadn’t agreed to lunch in the first place. He’d just told me to turn up and expected me to do so.
The idea made me bristle—I didn’t like being told what to do by presumptuous jerks. It would serve him right to be sitting by himself for a few minutes before he clocked onto the fact I wasn’t going to show.
I tried to ignore the dip of disappointment in my stomach at my decision.
The last thing I needed was to get involved with someone like Cole. Besides, he probably only wanted to use me to get more juicy bits of gossip about Taylor or something similar.
Guys like Cole were nothing but trouble.
I GOT HOME AFTER SCHOOL, fully expecting the house to be empty. My dad was working the late shift that week, which made me a latch-key kid. Not that I minded. I was seventeen, and perfectly capable of making my own dinner, and putting myself to bed. Besides, it was sometimes easier when he wasn’t around. At least then I didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing or upsetting him in some way. It wasn’t that he was mean or violent—nothing like that—but he had a way of flying off the handle about things I hadn’t even thought were a big deal. I knew what the problem was—I saw all the crushed cans and empty bottles in the trash—but there was no way I’d dare say anything to him. He was the parent and I was the kid. He was the one supposed to be telling me off for behaving badly, especially considering his job. But I knew things had been getting worse recently, and I just wasn’t sure how to approach it. I guessed I’d been hoping things would get better by themselves somehow, that he’d magically grow out of it, but the problem had been going on for years now, and recently his drinking had escalated. I didn’t know if it was because he’d been under more pressure at work, or if it was the idea of me leaving to go to college in the not so distant future, and him being left on his own, but gradually more cans and bottles had started to appear.
I turned the key in the lock and pushed open the front door.
Immediately, something felt different.
I paused and frowned, realizing I could hear something where normally the house would be in silence. It took me a moment to place the sound, but when I did I hurried into the living room to find my dad asleep on the couch, his hands folded across his chest, snoring.
I glanced at the floor. A couple of empty beer cans were sitting on the carpet. Dammit.
Crossing the room to the couch, I took hold of his shoulder and gave him a quick shake. “Dad?”
He didn’t wake. The snoring stopped momentarily, but then started again.
“Dad!” I said, louder, giving him another shake that felt harder than I’d have liked.
This time, he startled awake. “Huh, what?” He blinked at me and then rubbed his face. “Jesus, Gabi. What are you shouting at me for?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
His eyes widened and he sat up straight. “Ah, hell. What time is it?”
“Four-thirty. Don’t you start at three?”
“Damn. I fell asleep. I’ve got to go.”
I glanced back down at the beer cans. “Go? You’re still going to work?”
“Of course I am, Gabi,” he said, exasperated as though it was somehow my fault he’d fallen asleep. “Where else am I going to go?”
“But ...” I hesitated. “Haven’t you been drinking?”
I looked pointedly at the empty cans, lifting my eyebrows and widening my eyes, hoping to get my point across without needing to say much more.
He shook his head. “I had a couple of beers with lunch hours ago. I don’t need you telling me I’ve been drinking. It’s not like I work regular hours like most people. If I don’t get a bit of down time, this job will run me into the ground.”
I held up both hands in defense. “Okay, okay. I was only asking.”
I held my tongue as he got up and went upstairs to change into his uniform. I was worried about him driving, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything—he’d only make excuses and defend his choices. Perhaps what he was saying was right and he had only drunk a couple of beers hours ago? I doubted it, and I thought if I looked hard enough I’d find an empty bottle of vodka hidden somewhere in the house, but I didn’t intend on searching. He was the responsible adult, and I was the kid. Nothing I said would make any difference.
Wanting to help, I brewed a pot of coffee while he was getting changed and then put it in a thermos mug for him to take with him.
He reappeared within ten minutes.
I handed him the coffee, and gave him a smile, wanting to build bridges. I didn’t want him to go to work still angry with me. He smiled back and leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, a waft of mint overlaying the stale alcohol flowing over me.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said.
“No problem, Dad. Stay safe, okay?”
He threw me a wink as he turned away. “Always.”
Chapter Ten
Gabi – Present Day
I WOKE FILLED WITH the desperate need to pee. I’d been having o
ne of those dreams where I was searching for a toilet, and I knew I wasn’t going to hold on much longer.
With an aching bladder, I swung my legs out of bed and hopped to my feet.
In a moment of complete disorientation, the floor rushed up and smashed me in the face.
I found myself in a crumpled heap, jarring my neck, my teeth cracking together. For a split second, confusion filled me, trying to work out what had happened to make me fall, and then it all came tumbling back over me. Of course, I had completely forgotten about the amputation.
I let out a scream of frustration and pounded my bunched fists on the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I hurt from the fall, and tears pooled in my eyes and then streamed down my cheeks. I didn’t like giving way to self-pity, but right at that moment I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be someone who couldn’t even get out of bed at night without falling on her face. My dad had slept through the whole thing, just as he always did, and I felt stupid, and helpless, and utterly alone.
This wasn’t the first time I’d forgotten and done exactly the same thing. It had happened more in the early days and I’d thought I’d gotten over it. But when I dreamed I had two legs, and then I still felt that leg when I woke, there never seemed to be enough time between waking and remembering to stop me falling down when I got out of bed.
I couldn’t stay on the floor, crying. I still needed to pee, badly. The last thing I needed was to have an accident on top of everything else. That would be the ultimate kick in the teeth.
Pushing myself to sitting, I angrily brushed the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and reached for my prosthesis. I wished I’d been allowed to take my new pin lock leg home, but for the moment I had to deal with the awkwardness of the rubber sleeve again. I attached the leg to my stump, and then used the side of the bed to pull myself to standing.
Through the drapes filtered the first light of morning, and for that I was relieved. At least I wouldn’t have to try to get back to sleep again.
Dangerous Encounters: A Romantic Suspense Boxed Set Page 5
