by Madison Faye
“You can stay,” she says softly. She bites her lip again, and I swear I see a little blush before she shakes it off. “I’m just cleaning up. You want something? I already sent the kitchen crew home, but I’m can do…” she frowns. “Well, I can do like, toast or something?”
My eyes drop, and for the first time, I catch the swirls of tattoo ink coming down one arm from her short sleeve dress down to her elbow.
“You’re closed,” I growl, nodding. “Look, I’ll just wait out—”
Thunder booms, loudly, and the girl barely stifles a shriek as she jumps about a foot off the floor. She does blush then, deeply, and she rolls her eyes awkwardly.
“If you, uh, wanted to stay…” she shrugs. “I could use the company?”
I smile thinly and nod. “I could use the dry.”
She grins and gestures to the 50s-style chrome and Formica diner counter with the space-age looking stools bolted to the floor in a line down it.
“You want something?”
“Nah,” I shake my head and shake off some water before I trudge in squeaky wet boots across the floor. “I’m good.”
“You sure? Coffee or something?”
“I could do coffee.”
She beams. “Sit tight, I gotcha.”
She turns and starts to mess around with the coffee machine, and I almost walk right into a bloody booth with my eyes locked on her. It’s not even a flattering outfit she’s wearing, this little yellow 60s mod-style dress with a white apron and the white sneakers. But fuck me sideways, I can’t look away. She moves almost sensually, reaching up for the coffee filters on the shelf above with a practiced grace that says she’s worked here a while.
The coffee machine bubbles to life as I slump my wet arse onto a stool and shrug my jacket off. I stand again and reach down to peel off my soaked black hoodie. I can feel my long hair come loose when I tug it over my head, and my t-shirt sticks to it like glue and peels off of me as well. I toss the hoodie onto the stool next to me and push my t-shirt back down out of my face. My hands slide into my hair, and I push it back and wrap a tie around it, keeping it in a knot on top of my head. I look up, and the waitress blushes when it’s pretty clear she’s been staring at me.
The coffee machine burbles behind her as we both go quiet.
“Um,” she swallows. “I like your ink.”
“Thanks. Yours too.”
She glances down at her arm and blushes a little. “Oh, thanks.” She whirls quickly, fussing with some stuff on the back shelves. “Cream or sugar?”
“Whiskey if you’ve got it.”
She turns and grins, arching one pretty brow as her soft full lips curl. “I wish,” she giggles.
“Just black is great.”
She nods and reaches up without looking to snag a plain white, chipped mug from the shelf. She pulls the coffee carafe out early from under the drip, pouring me a mug before sliding it back under. She turns and slides it across the counter to me.
“Thanks,” I growl. I glance around at the darkened diner. “This your place?”
“Rosebud?” She smiles and shakes her head. “Nah, I just work here.” She frowns. “A lot,” she follows with a wry smile. She looks up at me again. “You sure you’re not hungry? I’m just going to be closing things down before I leave. I really can get you a piece of toast or something.”
I take a sip of the steaming hot coffee and rake my fingers over my beard. “Don’t—”
“It’s really not a problem.”
I nod. “I could do toast.”
She smiles. “Comin’ right up.”
She whirls on her heel and waltzes through the saloon doors into the kitchen area.
“You want some music on?” she calls.
I shrug. “Sure.”
“Any preference?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
“What?”
“Dealer’s choice!” I call out a bit louder. A second later, Bill Withers begins crooning out “Ain’t No Sunshine” over the dingy speakers. I grin and lean over the mug of hot coffee. Shit, nice fucking choice. Hilariously appropriate for a thunderstorm, but the song also brings me right back to East London, to my Grandmother’s flat where me and Asa grew up.
“This okay?” she calls out.
“Fuckin’ perfect.”
Her pretty face appears over the top of the saloon doors from the kitchen. “What?”
“Perfect,” I grin. She smiles back and disappears again.
“Can’t go wrong with the classics.”
Amen to that.
I sip my coffee as Bill serenades us and the rain pounds the windows. Thunder booms again, and then again, and suddenly with a flash of lighting, the music stops, and the lights turn out. There’s a scream from the kitchen, and I’m up and moving like it’s hardwired into my brain. I grunt as I slam through the double doors into the kitchen to see her standing by a work counter with a hand on her heart. She looks up at me sheepishly and makes a face.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
“You okay?” I frown.
“Just scared of the dark, apparently.”
I chuckle. My eyes are still adjusting to the almost pitch-black back in the kitchen area, and I can barely make her out.
“Let’s skip the toast, huh?”
She giggles softly. “Yeah, I can’t see a thing back here. Hang on, there’s a flashlight up at the register out front.”
Two things happen: She moves to go to the door, and I move to help her. I don’t even know what I’m trying to do, but it ends up with her bumping flat into my chest and my arms going around her for a second.
“Oh,” she says quietly with a gasp.
“Sorry,” I growl. But I’m not that sorry, not when I feel her body press to mine, and not when my hands slide over her hips for a moment. We both pull apart, and she laughs a short, forced, breathy laugh as she brushes past me.
“This way.”
I follow her out to the dining area, which is about one percent less pitch black than the kitchen. I can make out the shape of her through as she feels her way down the counter to the register. I follow behind her, when she suddenly comes to a stop and swears.
“Fuck,” she hisses.
I grin at the language. Wasn’t expecting that from her.
“It’s supposed to be here. So of course, it’s not, knowing this place.” She sighs in the darkness. “There might be one in the back office, hang—”
She whirls suddenly and walks right into me. She gasps, and her hands fall flat against my chest through my damp t-shirt. With a grunt, my own arms move on autopilot, jutting out to catch her as if she loses her balance. My hands grip her tight waist, and my pulse suddenly spikes at the feel of her.
Aww shit.
The clouds seem to let up for a second outside, because the moon glows through the diner windows, bathing her face in white. She looks up at me, her eyes wide and her lips in a little o-shape, and she gasps. She doesn’t pull away, and I don’t let go of her. I watch the delicate hollow of her neck move as she swallows, and I can hear her breath catch.
Something raw inside of me blazes to life. A storm bigger than the one raging outside threatens to explode through every part of me, flickering hungrily across my eyes as they drink her in. My cock thickens, hungering for her, and I don’t even realize I’m growling lowly like some kind of animal until even I can hear it.
“I—” She gasps quietly.
But her pretty eyes lock on mine, and when I see the green fire in them, and when I feel her body roll ever-so-subtly into me under my hands, I know not even the storm outside could pull me away from her.
I move in, my hands tighten, she moans, and then, I crush my lips to hers and kiss her like she’s already mine.
Chapter Two
Delphine
“Fucker,” I swear under my breath as I grab the plate of pancakes and bacon, yanking my hand back.
“Plate’s hot,” Jerry, the line cook, mutters under his breath wi
thout looking up.
“Oh, is it?” I grumble. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I just did.”
I glare at him, but he still doesn’t even look up from his grill of burgers and all-day breakfast food. Jerry’s like one of those grumpy characters from the movies—you know, the older, sullen prick with the secret heart of gold? Except Jerry doesn’t have the second part, he’s just a dick.
I whirl and stride out into the dining area with my tray full of food. I scan the diner, full of the usual crowd of truckers and miscreants and head to the table of three guys.
“Pancakes and extra crispy bacon?”
“Thanks, darlin’,” Martin grunts through a mouthful of chewing tobacco. His habits are disgusting, and the man can barely string four words together during a conversation. But Martin’s been coming to the Rosebud Diner for years now and is a pretty nice guy once you get past the mint Skoal scent and the monosyllabic grunts. I mean, a guy in his sixties that gets pancakes and bacon for any meal of the day can’t be all that bad, right?
“Burger, medium with swiss…” I put the plate down in front of Lester, one of Martin’s AA friends. Martin usually rotates through about five other men his age from the program who come out to eat with him after meetings in downtown Dark Water Falls.
Lester rubs his hands together. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
The “sweetheart” and “darlin’” shit would normally warrant a big fuck you from me if it came from any other patron. But, Martin and Lester and the rest of the guys from their AA group are harmless old guys just looking to make it through another day. So, I’m usually fine letting it slide with them.
“And last but not least, Cobb salad, dressing on the side, extra spinach, no cheese.”
Martin and Lester snicker when I put the food down in front of Tom, their other friend.
“Hey, fuck you too, pricks,” the grizzled retired factory worker grunts, making me grin. “I’m tryin’ not to have another fuckin’ bypass over here.”
“Hey, die young, leave a pretty corpse,” Lester snickers.
“Yeah, well, the ship has sailed on ‘young,’” Tom chuckles. He turns to wink at me. “Good thing I’m still easily mistaken for Brad Pitt, huh sweetheart?”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “You charmers need anything else?”
“Nah, we’re good. Thanks, Delphine,” Martin grins.
I leave them to their food and head back to the kitchen. The Rosebud Diner usually does okay on Friday nights, but tonight seems even busier than usual. Plus, it’s just me and Scarlett since Val called out. I dart through the saloon doors to the kitchen, and instantly gasp as I go crashing into Scarlett.
“Oh, fuck!” we both say at almost the same time. She’s manages to stop her tray full of burgers and fries from toppling over to the floor, but one of the little ramekins of ketchup has splattered down the side of my uniform.
“Motherfucker,” I grumble.
“Shit! I’m so sorry, girl,” she groans. “I didn’t hear you say ‘in!’”
It’s because I didn’t, because I’m distracted today. Well, more distracted than usual, I guess. It happens when you lead a life of partial captivity—“owned” by a man you loathe who seems to hate you just as much.
…I lead a strange, strange life, believe me.
“I’ve got an extra apron in my locker!” Scarlett says quickly. “Hang on, hold this.”
She shoves the tray into my hand and darts through the kitchen for the employee area, returning a second later with a crisp white apron.
“Oh, perfect, thanks.”
She pouts. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” I say, waving her off as I change into the new apron. The dress still has a red ketchup stain on it next to the new apron, but at least I look somewhat more presentable.
“My fault, I didn’t say I was coming in.”
“Busy tonight, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, a little too busy.”
“Hey, I like money, don’t you?”
I giggle. “Sure. Thanks for calling out, Val.”
My friend laughs. “For real. Alright, I gotta jet.”
She grabs the tray of burgers and dashes out into the dining room. And then, I’m right back into the cycle—pick up food, deliver food to customers, take order from new table, put the order in, listen to Jerry bitch about how much he hates his job and how he’s going to quit in “five fucking seconds, I swear!,” grab more food to deliver, and then rinse and repeat.
The tips are paltry, but constant on a night like this, and at least that’s something. I can tell myself I’m saving to “get away from this place”—something Scarlett and Valerie say too, but in their case, they mean it. Me? I’m not going anywhere. Not when my father is who he is, not when I’m “owned” by the man I’m owned by. Not when I’m in the situation I’m in.
No, believe me—I’m never getting out of Dark Water Falls.
Time goes by in a blur of ketchup stains and Diet Coke refills, until finally the diner door swings open a little extra forcefully, and I look up and cringe.
Fuck.
I hate it when he comes in here. It’s awful enough that I have to live with him and endure his constant barrage of insults and thinly veiled threats. It’s bad enough that I’ve still got the bruises from his temper tantrum last week. But as crazy as work is sometimes, and as shitty as it pays, it’s at least space away from him.
From Bryce Barnes, the man who my father sold me to. And yes, you heard that right.
Barnes is a local thug with delusions of grandeur who thinks of himself as a regular Al Capone or Scarface. Except, this is Dark Water Falls—shitty, crumbling, tumble-weed town Dark Water Falls. Barnes’s “criminal enterprise” is basically slinging shitty cocaine and Oxy to out of work factory workers, working a few scams and “protection” rackets, and running the gambling at the bike races he hosts now and again down at the old race track from when the town thought NASCAR was going to set up shop here thirty years ago.
Now, how is it that a girl like me ends up being “owned” by a fuck-wad like Barnes? Easy, because my father was and is the exact same caliber of fuck-wad.
Before Barnes, it was my dad, Ben, who “ran” this town. Except Ben Armory got lazy, or got bored of running the show, and eventually new blood, i.e. Barnes, set up shop and started to muscle him out. I got lured back home from college by my dad’s pleas that he needed help with his bad knee. But it turns out, it was a lot more than that.
Dad’s “bad knee” was courtesy of Bryce Barnes and a baseball bat, and my coming home wasn’t to take care of him.
…It was to settle a debt.
See, Barnes moved fast, and before my dad could blink, he’d taken over the drug trade for the whole town. Dad and some of his people hit back and stole a shipment from one of Barnes’s warehouses, and that’s when a little territory feud went nuclear. Barnes hit back hard, burned down my father’s crappy little headquarters, scared off his remaining guys, and knee-capped him. And to settle the debt for the missing drugs? Well, Ben didn’t feel like getting murdered in a back alley for his thievery, so he offered payment in the only thing he had left…
Me.
So, yeah. My own father “sold” me to a rival drug dealer to save his own hide. Someday a therapist is going to have a freaking field day with me.
“What’s up, sexy?”
I roll my eyes and turn to glare at Barnes. It’s a weird, weird situation we have. Like I said, we both clearly hate each other—I hate him for keeping me like a sort of prisoner, and he hates me for… well, who knows which one to pick. I live with him in this crumbling old Victorian house in a dirty neighborhood near the river in Dark Water Falls, but we have separate rooms. In public, Barnes will call me “sexy” and “his,” and put his arm around me like I’m his possession.
But he does not own me or possess me.
In fact, he doesn’t even touch me, which is the one blessing in this ent
ire fucked up situation. I can’t leave, and he’s made it very clear that if he were to catch me with another man, there’d be two murders happening pretty quick. But he won’t lay hands on me—at least, not that way. He tried, twice, when I first came to him, but believe me, nothing happened. Because apparently, big tough macho Bryce Barnes has tiny problem with, well…
Being tiny—tiny and not exactly capable of getting it up.
The first two attempts when he couldn’t get hard before he could even take his clothes off got me smacked around, like it was my fault. But hell, it’s better than having to actually fuck a guy like that asshole. And after that, I guess he decided to cut his losses and save face. To everyone else, he brags about how he “fucks me like a champ” or whatever. But the truth is, Barnes has never even gotten a kiss from me. Instead, he spends his time screwing around with any girl dumb enough to let him into her bed. And I honestly feel sorry for them.
The downside is, he blames me for this. He says it’s my fault, just like any problem of his is “my fault” or “my curse.” So, Barnes does touch me, but it’s in the form of smacks and hits, not trying to get into my pants.
All-in-all, I’ll still take the hits over the alternative.
“What do you want, Bryce?”
A flash of anger flickers over his face. After all, we’re in public, and he’s with his “boys,” which means I’m supposed to play the part of being his trophy girl.
Whatever.
“I came to see you, baby!” he grins even though there’s fury in his eyes. He moves into me and hugs me tight, but I shiver when I feel his breath against my ear.
“Watch your fucking mouth, bitch,” he growls so that just I can hear it. “Don’t forget who keeps a roof over your head.”
He pulls back and smiles at me. “You excited about tonight?”
No.
“Yep!” I smile thinly, barely playing the part for him.
Tonight is a race night. Bryce runs a few of them a month down at the old abandoned racetrack, but for bikers, not car racers. It’s mostly local guys and a few of his own crew, but the real purpose of it is that Bryce controls all the betting around it. And in a shit town like Dark Water Falls, believe me, betting some hard earned cash on a shitty bike race at a shitty abandoned racetrack run by shitty wannabe gangsters is pretty much the most fun you can have on a Friday night.
