Shattered (Reflections Book 2)

by A. L. Woods

  I slammed the car door behind me, my hold on the strap of my bag tight in my fingers as I appraised the exterior of the bar. If it weren’t for the eyesore of a sign out front, it would have looked like an ordinary gabled front house on an oversized lot. It had an addition on its side that looked like an afterthought, the redbrick surface of the main structure a stark contrast against the yellow siding that made up the addition.

  With a fortifying breath, I floated to the bar’s front door. I paused to brush the snow that was still falling from my shoulders once I stood under the awning before my hand found the handle and pulled it. I had anticipated it to be locked, but it gave way with a whoosh.

  The air inside of the bar smelled like wood and cleaning products. Tired didn’t describe this joint. Oak wood paneling stretched across the walls, and the dark hardwood that covered the floor marred with scuffs and demarcations. Motes of dust caught in the stream of light that shone through the stained-glass windows in front. A jukebox sat in the corner near a hostess podium that looked like it had been around since the 70’s. My legs propelled me forward before my mind could reconcile with what I was doing. I assumed that the addition must have been for the kitchen, for the bar wrapped around a swing door with bright light pouring through a glass insert. My footsteps stilled when a door at the back of the bar swung open, releasing a blast of cold air.

  There are people you encounter in life who you don’t have to even utter a single word to, and yet feel a sense of kinship pass between you.

  A young woman who couldn’t have been a day over eighteen pegged me with an enigmatic glare from across the bar, a crate of alcohol in her hands that probably weighed more than she did soaking wet. Her auburn hair spilled over her bare shoulders in loose, curly waves—the kind that elementary school students wanted to pull on just so they could watch them twist back into place. The black tank top she wore was fitted around her small torso, and her shorts made her alabaster legs appear endless—an outfit entirely inappropriate for the cold front outside. Bright red Doc Marten boots had been haphazardly put on, the laces undone, her white hiked-up socks bleeding over the tops of the boots.

  “We’re closed.” Her accent was distinctly New England; the edges of her consonants and vowels all seemed to roll together nasally.

  I just stood there and stared at her. I couldn’t place it, but there was an alarming familiarity in the contours of the stranger’s face. The crate of bottles in the girl-woman’s tight grip sang in a sharp chorus as glass bottles rattled in their individual compartments.

  “We open at six. Come back then,” she added gruffly through clenched teeth, noting that I hadn’t turned to leave.

  My brows rose an inch. I couldn’t lose my opportunity now, not when I was this close. “Does Dom work here?”

  The girl-woman’s movements slowed until she finally stopped dead in her tracks, the bottles all but shrieking with a clatter. She glared at me over her shoulder, eyes tight on me. “What business do you have with him?”

  My palms sweated against my thighs, my eyes searching hers for some indication of their connection. I knew when Dom wasn’t in the city, he and Terry spent all their time here. The bar belonged to Terry’s family, but could I count on the platonic nature of my connection to either of them as my saving grace?

  The girl’s stare was an assault on my brain synapses the longer she glared, her foot tapping the floor with the impatience of a game show host.

  “I’m a friend of his,” I said.

  The snort she let out was every bit as contemptuous and disdainful as she intended it to be, my skin crawling as heat spanned my face. “Dominic doesn’t have friends with tits,” she spat with enough force to roundhouse kick me in the throat with her bright red boots, her peat moss eyes burning a hole so deep inside of my cranium that my brain pulsated. “He has whores.” She held my stare, her head tilting in amusement. “Is that what you are?”

  Her words cut at me like a blade wielded by an expert swordsman. In another life, another time, I thought this girl and I could have been friends. It was apparent to me from the stiff set of her shoulders and the acerbic nature of her sharp tongue that we were cut from the same tattered cloth, dealt a hand of cards that we had no choice but to work with because folding wasn’t an option.

  I shot her the closest thing I had to an ingratiating smile. “Your boyfriend isn’t my type.” I thought that would soften her ire, but it seemed to be like a lit match on gasoline.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she hissed, her pain cresting over the soft angles of her cherub face. Her slim frame shook, and I wasn’t convinced it was because of the weight crate she carried. Her knuckles turned white.

  “She’s right,” Dom mused, suddenly appearing from the same door the girl-woman had entered from. A look of hell spouted on his face, his jaw rocking, eyes locked on the curly-haired beauty while he leaned against the doorframe. He apprised her with the same consideration he would have given to roadkill. “She’s my fuck buddy who didn’t read the fine print.”

  The girl-woman’s bottom lip trembled, before she sucked it between her teeth, eyes narrowing on him as if she was seconds from smashing one of the bottles in the crate and shanking him with the pointed end.

  He would have deserved it.

  “You’re a piece of shit,” she said.

  He smiled at her in his signature laconic and smarmy kind of way. “You knew that before I fucked you, sweetheart.”

  What had I just walked into? A lover’s quarrel?

  Her next intake of breath was sharp, a ghost of something kissing her face before it floated away. She bent forward, setting the crate down at the foot of the bar.

  “I should have listened to my brother,” she murmured, more to herself than to either of us, her hair falling forward and masking her face as she breezed by him, intentionally bashing into his shoulder. He watched her go from over his shoulder, and I thought for the briefest of moments that I saw a sliver of his soul break through the otherwise blackened parts of him. Coming from him, the reaction seemed strangely human, as if he realized he might have hurt her and that his actions had consequences.

  When a door from somewhere above us slammed shut, he turned his attention to me, the flicker of good vanishing.

  His shit-eating grin and slight tilt of his head as his eyes ran over my frame had me folding my arms over my chest like a shield. His palms brushed together, the chafe nearly unnerving me. “What are you doing here, Cherry? You’re a long way from home.”

  “I need to talk to you,” I began, steeling my spine and kicking my chin skyward.

  Dom’s laugh was dark, but not as dark as the inch of a smile that curled his full lips.

  “I’m less interested in talking to you than I am in fucking you.”

  “I’m not interested in my sister’s leftovers,” I spat, shuddering at the thought. Dom was by no stretch of the word unattractive. He had a shock of black hair that he kept brushed back in a pompadour, the fade bleeding into the top. A five o’clock shadow softened the edges of the sharp lines of his triangular shaped face. There was something potent in the way he carried himself, though there was nothing particularly stocky about him.

  Dom was toned in the same way a man who had spent time on and off behind bars might have been—just enough to hold his own. Still, his clothes hugged him, the white T-shirt clinging to the fine muscles of his chest, the hem partially tucked into black jeans that narrowed at the ankle, making them easy to tuck into the black-and-white high-topped Converses on his feet. He exuded a hybrid of danger and mystery, the type who would put a woman in a chokehold, even if the sex started out as consensual, because he preferred keeping her on the dangerous precipice between life and death.

  “Well, I’m certainly interested in Cash’s,” he chuckled, taking timed steps toward me like a hunter approaching his prey, “I can be very convincing.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I scolded, stopping him with an outstretched arm.

&nb
sp; His brow arched, bemusement hitting his onyx eyes. He rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb, wiping the drool from his lips. “You’re boring, Cherry.”

  “You want excitement, go find your plaything.” I gestured with a kick of my chin to the sound of banging around upstairs, half expecting the heavy footsteps to smash right through the ceiling. It was a tantrum of epic proportions, and all the evidence I needed to know the girl-woman had made the fatal mistake of bringing her heart into Dom’s bed. The way he smiled at me, he knew it, too.

  He shrugged. “Later. I prefer her hot and bothered. The sex is better that way.”

  “Haven’t you heard about not sleeping with the help?”

  “I am the help in this case,” he said with a laugh, fishing a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of his jeans. “This bar belongs to her and Terry. I pull some shifts for them when I’m bored and things are dead at the garage.”

  The garage? I hadn’t even realized he was a mechanic. Then again, I’d never afforded myself the time to think about Dom beyond my disdain for him.

  My mouth opened and closed as I digested what he had just slung at me. I didn’t know what head fuck to sort through first, the fact that he earned money legally or the fact that the firecracker upstairs was Terry’s sister.

  Her reaction made sense now. She had been around Dom’s antics for a majority of her life, so I had zero doubts that he had paraded his bevy of conquests in her face over the years. What I couldn’t reconcile was why on earth Terry would ever let him touch his kid sister, knowing what he had done to mine.

  “I know you guys are friends, but I cannot believe Terry allows you anywhere near his kid sister,” I said. I’d been in Terry’s position, and the knowledge that Dom had touched my sister made me crazy. But if I’d had the advantage like Dom’s loyalty on my side the way Terry did, I would have knocked his fucking teeth out.

  “Better the devil they know.” Dom laughed mirthlessly. The smoke from the lit cigarette shrouded his face, the brume dissipating as it floated up. He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and pointer finger, tapping the ash to the floor.

  Something in his voice made me question how much of what he’d said to her, or about her, was for shock value. I couldn’t reconcile that with the way he had watched her when she left, and that gave me a morsel of false hope that maybe I wouldn’t leave here empty-handed…or with a desire to press assault charges.

  Before I could speak, he beat me to it with a shift of subject. “Cash has been looking for you.”

  My stomach twisted at the utterance of his name. I kept my expression relaxed, not wanting to give him the satisfaction that I was even marginally bothered. I didn’t want to see that motherfucker; I was liable to run him over with my car and keep going.

  “For what?”

  Dom leaned against the bar top, laughing through his nose. He cocked a brow at me as he took another drag from his cigarette. “You’re really not that all that perceptive, are you, Cherry pie?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but at least I’m smart enough to know not to spread my legs for you, so I think I’m doing better than most,” I said with a smirk. The insinuation wasn’t lost on him. I didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to get any darker, but it was like his irises disappeared.

  He bared his teeth at me like a dog, a snarl crawling out through the back of his throat. “Why are you here?” he growled, clearly tiring of me.

  “I want to ask you about my sister.”

  His chortle was derisive. “I don’t know what the fuck Cash sees in you. You’re like a damn broken record with the same shit over and over again, and you don’t even put out.”

  “And I don’t know what she sees in you,” I snapped, motioning toward the loud sounds above us, “so maybe you and I aren’t so different.”

  He almost appeared moved by the comparison. His lips parted, his tongue tapping the back of his upper teeth, contemplation filling the black pits that were his eyes.

  “At least I can shut her up.”

  I rolled my eyes, indulging him. “By putting her in a choke hold?”

  His laugh reverberated through the empty bar. “You’ll be surprised to know that she likes playing in the red zone with me.” He grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of even teeth. “But I know you’re too vanilla for that.”

  Heat hit my cheeks. I had been vanilla with Cash, but I was starting to believe I was heading into Neapolitan territory with Sean.

  Dom’s snicker drew me from my thoughts. “But that’s not the case with your new ride, is it?”

  I couldn’t keep the heat—and, I suspected, color—from appearing on my face. “None of your damn business.” Dom was a sycophant who ate that shit right up. I could have sworn that I heard a groan of approval purring in his chest cavity.

  “Good for you, Cherry,” he said. “Although, I can’t help but express my disappointment. I would have been a very patient teacher.”

  “Fuck you, Dominic.”

  “That is the plan, if you would just stop fighting me on what would be mutually beneficial for the both of us.”

  “How the hell would that be beneficial to me?” I demanded, shoving a hand through my hair.

  Dom pushed off of the bar theatrically, stretching with the finesse of a cat. “I’ve got something that you want, don’t I?”

  “And you’re dumber than I thought if you believed that I would ever spread my legs to get the answer.”

  “I don’t need you to spread your legs, Cherry.” He crept toward me. I stood rooted to my spot, my heart kicking in my chest, fear coursing through me. I willed my legs to move, but it was as if my shoes had been soldered to the floorboards. His scent was infused with the traces of the Marlboros on his breath when he invaded my space.

  He gripped my chin with his cold fingers, jerking my stiff head in his direction. His black eyes studied mine, searching for what, I’d never know. His voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s a lot we can do without either one of us taking off all our clothes.”

  “No,” I said forcefully. I broke myself out of the frozen terror that had momentarily suspended me, my limbs finally thawing. I slapped the outstretched hand that gripped my chin, watching as his hand drew back at the contact. Regret greeted me almost immediately when excitement had him drawing a tight breath through his nose.

  “Cherry, Cherry, Cherry,” he moaned, “I love it when you play hard to get.” He broke out into a fit of laughter as he stepped away from me.

  Oxygen returned to my lungs. “Do you ever not think with your dick?”

  “On rare occasions, yes.” He rounded the bar, discarding his half-smoked cigarette into an empty glass on the bar top. He looked familiar behind the bar, like he was in his element. “What’s your poison?”

  “It’s not even ten.”

  Bemusement sent his brows to his hairline. “Like that’s ever stopped either one of us before?”

  I blew out a sigh through tight lips. I considered declining, not wanting to risk having my brain compromised by the alcohol in my body that would surely slow my responses–but my anxiety won the war, and I needed the liquid courage.

  “Jack, on the rocks.”

  “Watered down. How typical,” he said snidely. He retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the shelf behind him. The ice would at least subdue some of the effects of the alcohol. Dom had a surprisingly steady hand as he poured the liquid into the glass and set it on a napkin in front of me. “So, talk, since you’re going to be a square.”

  I lifted the lip of the glass to my mouth, taking a slow slip. I let the charred oak and vanilla notes dance on my tongue for a moment before I finally asked the million-dollar question. “Were you aware that my sister was pregnant?” I questioned, training my eyes on his.

  Something happened in that moment between Dominic and me. Maybe it was the weight of the question I’d tossed at his feet like a piece of meat thrown to a rabid dog. I watched as his lips pur
sed.

  He reached for my drink, draining its contents without so much as wincing. He set the empty glass in front of me with a flat thud. I couldn’t tell if his reticence and indulgence was an admission or not.

  “Yeah.”

  “And she came to you about it.”

  He blew out a breath, running an open palm over his face. “We had numerous conversations that didn’t end the way she wanted, yes.”

  My heart thundered in my chest, loud enough that its steady bass pounded in my ears.

  “She was high as a fucking kite when she rolled her car. Why did you give her coke?” I could barely keep the quiver out of my voice, my heartbeat a continuous thump in my ears that I felt all the way to my fingertips that were pressed against the bar top.

  “I didn’t give her shit.” Anger ripped through me as his words registered in my mind. Of course he would deny it; he’d never told the truth a day in his life.

  “She didn’t get her hands on those drugs by herself. You’re the only one who would give them to her.”

  He moved faster than I had time to react, wrapping his hand around my wrist, his fingernails sinking into the smooth stretch of skin. The pain registered for the briefest moment, but adrenaline overrode the sensation. I had him where I wanted, backed up in a corner with nowhere to run.

  He couldn’t scare me anymore.

  “I did things to and with your sister, but getting her pregnant or giving her expensive drugs wasn’t one of them.”

  “Bullshit,” I spat, ripping my wrist free. “You were the last person she called. I saw her caller ID log; it was you she kept calling.”

  Dom sent the glass spiraling through the air behind me, the glass splintering when it hit the floor. His chest heaved, and his eyes looked crazed.