by Zoey Parker
She shook her head, sighing. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Three times I went to the hospital after he hurt me. One time I had a broken arm. Another time, a black eye and bruised ribs. Another time he broke my collar bone. All those times in just a couple of years. He took time off when I was pregnant. I can at least give him credit for that.” She laughed bitterly. “Do you think once, even one time, anybody asked me if my husband did it to me? That’s the first question they ask, isn’t it? If somebody in your household did something to you.”
“I really don’t know,” I replied.
“I went with a friend of mine to the ER once. She had tripped and fallen while we were out one day. Her wrist broke. I drove her to the hospital. And the first thing two nurses and a doctor asked her was that very question. Did somebody in her household do it to her, and was there anybody there she was afraid of.” Ellie stared at me. “Nobody asked me in three visits. Not a single person. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me this town is even more fucked up than I thought it was,” I muttered.
She nodded. “You don’t even know,” she whispered. “So that’s what I’m facing. And if he can use that kind of power against me, imagine what he can do to people like you.”
The words hung in the air. Her cheeks went red when she realized what she had said. “People like me?”
“Motorcycle clubs. I know who you are. The Inferno Hunters.”
“Congratulations. You can read.” Everybody knew who we were when we went out in our kuttes, and we never rode without them.
“I’ve heard of you, is all. I know what you’re capable of. And he will know it, too. I promise. He’ll make it his business to find out everything he can and bring you down. I wish to God you had left it alone. It’s enough that he’s making my life a misery. I don’t want to see him doing it to anybody else.”
“Even trash like me. Isn’t that right?” I laughed.
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’m used to it.”
She stood up straight, coming toward me. She couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, but when she wanted to, she could make those inches count. She put her hands on her hips, staring me down. “I’m sorry if I give a damn about what my shithead of an ex-husband will do to you, okay? Maybe it’s all the years of feeling like a loser for staying with him as long as I did. I don’t know. Either way, I have guilt issues. If you have half a brain in your head, you’ll stay far, far away from him and lay low for a while. Don’t even stick your nose outside if you don’t have to.”
I chuckled. “Nobody tells me what to do. I do what I want. I helped you because I wanted to, not because I wanted your permission or your thanks. Good thing, I guess, since I didn’t get either. I didn’t do it to be a good guy either.” I leaned down, closing the gap between our faces. Her eyes went wide under dark eyebrows. “I’m not a good guy. But I guess you knew that already.”
She breathed hard, heavy, through slightly parted lips. Thick, full lips. The kind a man wants to suck on until a woman cries out for more. The kind I imagined being sweet and soft and juicy. I licked my own lips just looking at her.
“Get away from me,” she whispered. She didn’t sound like she meant it, though, and she didn’t make a move. Her eyes were on my mouth, too. She watched me closely, gasping a little with every breath.
I needed to do it. I couldn’t help but take her by her tiny waist and pull her closer to me as my mouth met hers. I had to taste her. I had to know if she was as good as she looked. The first instant when our mouths met was electric. My cock sprang to life, aching for more of her.
I parted her lips with my tongue, and she sighed and melted against me as I explored the inside of her mouth. She was so sweet, and warm, and alive in my arms. Her hands found my shoulders. She gripped me hard, moaning a little in the back of her throat. I thrusted my hips toward her, rubbing my erect cock against her hip, and she moaned louder.
Then she gasped, pushing me away with more force than I thought a little thing like her would have. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. From the way she breathed, I would have thought she’d just run a marathon. Her tits rose and fell as she panted for air. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. Her mouth was a little swollen from the rough way I had kissed her. She sneered, wiping the back of her mouth with her hand. “Go to hell,” she spat.
I couldn’t explain why I felt disappointed. Something inside me went sour. I could only smile a little at her choice of words. “I’m already there,” I said, shrugging before I turned to leave the kitchen. The cook looked at me with wide eyes. He was still scared from that asshole being there. He had a right to be scared. I had a feeling, if Ellie was telling the truth, that he could be a lot of trouble for all of us.
“There you are!” Ryder saw me as I walked out of the kitchen. “I told you to go after her, not to do it right there in the kitchen. You couldn’t have waited a little bit?”
I looked around the table. Ryder was the only person left. “Where did everybody go?”
“The already had their dessert. The other waitress, the cute little MILF-y thing, she brought out pie and cake. You were gone for a long time, brother.” He finally noticed the look on my face, and his smile disappeared. “What’s wrong? What happened back there?”
I wanted to brush it off, wanted to ignore her warnings. I couldn’t, though. “I think it was trouble,” I said.
Chapter 5
Ellie
Sandy tried to get me to go home after the incident with Connor, but I wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t do without the tips, even though the Inferno Hunters had left over a hundred dollars.
“You take half,” I urged her. “You delivered the dessert and cleaned up the plates and stuff.”
“You couldn’t help that,” she insisted, pushing the money toward me. “Please. Take it. You need it, honey. Stop being proud for a little while, okay?”
I couldn’t keep offering to give it to her, so I pocketed it with the promise to myself that I would do something nice for her at some point. She deserved it for being such a good friend.
The ironic part was it was such a quiet night I could’ve left without much of a dent to my take for the night. I only served a half dozen more tables, though I at least had the chance to sit and rest in between times.
Sandy sat with me at one point. “Are you all right?”
“I’m so tired,” I admitted. “Not just tired physically, though Lord knows that’s a very real thing right now. I’m tired in my heart. I don’t understand why Connor won’t let me go.”
“It’s a threat to his manhood, honey. The fact that you left him.”
“He doesn’t care about me,” I said. “He cares that I left him. It’s a blow to his pride. You’re absolutely right.” I put my head in my hands. The pain in my arms was exquisite—it was difficult to lift a tray, so I had to carry plates to tables to at a time. I couldn’t handle more than that. I had painkillers at home, so I could at least count on the pain going away long enough to let me sleep.
“You were right to leave him,” Sandy reminded me. It was like she could hear my thoughts.
“Sometimes I wonder,” I said. “Isn’t that sick? Sometimes I wonder if it was the right decision. I mean, he hurt me, yes. But it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I should have grown a thicker skin.”
“No way,” Sandy said, rubbing my back. “I’ve known a lot of women in your position, Ellie. And let me tell you, they don’t wake up one day and decide not to do it anymore. It escalates, in fact. Tell me. Did he start off hitting you?”
“No,” I admitted. “It was all verbal for a long time.”
“Right. Then he moved on to physical violence. And I bet that got worse over time, too, right?”
I only nodded.
“Oh, honey, you did the right thing. For you and your daughter. Who knows when he would have turned on her…”
“I can’t even think about that,” I said, sh
aking my head. It wasn’t like I never had. I’d carried the image in my heart—made-up, thank God—of Connor hurting Isabella. It was one of the only reasons I found the strength to leave him, the thought that he would hurt her one day.
“So stop blaming yourself. This is all his fault. And I bet he’s nothing but a lot of talk.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said with a rueful smile. “He means every word he says. He’s determined to make my life a living hell. He’ll take away the one thing that’s ever mattered to me. He wants to drag me through the dirt, make me wish I’d never been so stupid as to leave him. Really, I wish I’d never been so stupid as to marry him. God, what was I thinking?”
“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have Isabella. She’s a great kid.” Sandy smiled.
“Yeah, you’re right.” I smiled, too. Just the thought of my spunky, willful, whip-smart little girl was enough to make me feel a little better. Like there would be a good outcome to the situation. I had to adopt a little bit of the hope she ran around with. The endless hope of children.
By the time five o’clock rolled around, all I wanted was a hot foot bath and something for the pain. I couldn’t take it until Isabella went to school, though, since it would make me loopy. The thought of getting back home after driving her there was all that got me through as I drove home, my sore arms making it difficult to turn the wheel.
Why had I married him? It was a question which plagued me night and day during the worst times of my marriage, and again in the days just after my leaving. Why had I married him? Did I have any pride? Or was it that I didn’t think I could do any better? The thought was sobering and sad, and probably very close to the truth. I’d always been what the boys thought of as “cute,” but I was the good friend. I wasn’t tall or willowy. Back then, that had been the ideal body. In the ten years that had passed since the painful days of high school, a new body standard had come to pass: the curvy girl. My day had come.
Not that I was ever fat. I was petite, large busted, with a thick butt. No matter how hard I worked out, how little food I ate, I couldn’t change my basic body type. Boys didn’t pay attention to me, and my self-esteem suffered. Then, my freshman year of college, Connor showed up in my life as a teacher’s assistant. He’d been a grad student studying finance, and he must have sensed there was something in me that would respond well to something in him. Some wounded part of me. Like an animal sensing his prey.
I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex I’d called home for the eight months since I packed up Isabella’s and my things and left while Connor was on a business trip. It was still the most daring thing I’d ever done. Sometimes I could hardly believe I was that person, the one who ran, who finally took charge of her life.
I remembered every time I turned the key in the lock on the weathered front door to my apartment. Every time I entered the tiny little living room with its popcorn paint ceiling and paneled walls. The only thing I could afford on the little money I made at the diner, and a far cry from the cathedral ceiling of the entrance the condo Connor still insisted I loved so much. It had been all his idea, obviously, as everything in our marriage had been. I did miss the space, though. The only thing I missed.
Mom was fast asleep on the couch, reruns of I Love Lucy playing at low volume on the TV. I considered turning it off, but instead sank into the beaten recliner beside the sofa and put my feet up. I let Lucy and Ethel take my mind off the myriad problems plaguing me. After an hour or so, I chuckled a little too loudly at a certain scene, causing Mom to wake with a start.
“Jesus! You scared me to death!” She placed a hand over her chest, eyes wide behind big, round glasses.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
“No sense now,” she said, sitting up instead. “Besides, it’s, what, nearly six thirty? Isabella will be up soon. I might as well get going. Unless you need me to stay and help? You just tell me what you need.”
I smiled, about to tell her not to worry, but thought twice before I spoke. “Would you mind helping her out of her bunk when she gets up? My arms are very achy today.”
“Achy? What happened?” Mom reached for me, and I winced. I should have known better than to bring it up.
“Nothing, really. You try working a double shift with those heavy trays and see if your arms don’t kill you by the time you get home.” I tried to laugh, tried to keep it light. I failed miserably.
“Let me see your arms, Ellie Elizabeth. You know you’ve worked many a double shift, and you’ve never winced when I tried to touch you.”
I couldn’t argue with her. I raised one of my sleeves. Mom’s gasp wrenched my heart.
“What happened? Oh my God, Ellie. Did he come to the diner?”
I nodded, tears filling my eyes for the first time since it happened. It was like a floodgate opening, and before I knew it the entire wretched story poured out of my mouth. Mom looked horrified by the time I finished.
“Oh, thank goodness that man came in to help you. What if he had hurt you even worse?”
“Mom, it’s okay. He wouldn’t have hurt me worse. Really. I’m fine, just very sore. My muscles are screaming at me.”
“I don’t doubt it! You’ve said so many times that he’s so strong. I’m going to get some of those painkillers out of the medicine cabinet, and I’m going to watch you take one.”
“Mom, really…” I didn’t want to raise my voice and wake Isabella. I waited until she came back. “I can’t take one until Isabella goes to preschool. It makes me too loopy. I can nap until it’s time to go pick her up.”
“You’ll take it now, and you’ll go to bed, and I’ll take care of getting Isabella to school today. You have to do something for yourself for once. Let me take care of you.”
I wanted to protest, but on the other hand, I didn’t. It felt good having somebody fret over me. “You always take care of me,” I said, taking the pill from one hand and the glass of water from the other. I had a good half hour until the pill took effect.
“I want to. Just let me. Okay?” She went to the kitchen. “I’ll make some tea. You keep your feet up.” I couldn’t argue. I didn’t want to. There was something special about having my mommy around. One of the qualifications of an apartment was proximity to my mother’s house—a shame it was so small, or I would have moved in with her. But Mom downsized after Dad’s passing, so she lived in a little one-bedroom, single-story home with hardly room enough for her. Still, it was close enough that she could come over any time I needed her. It pained me to need her so much, though. I hated to think of a time when she couldn’t be such a help anymore. What would I do then?
I let myself zone out to the TV while Mom puttered in the kitchen. As if Fate were nudging me, a commercial for Happy Days came on—Mom loved watching her classic TV while babysitting overnight. The Fonz made me think of the bikers in the diner. One in particular.
That kiss. I closed my eyes thinking about it. I hadn’t had a kiss like that…well, in my entire life. It had been over eight months since anybody had kissed me at all, and even then, Connor’s kisses had devolved to the point where they were perfunctory. The way a brother might kiss his sister, on the cheek with almost no contact.
Parker’s kiss, on the other hand, had been magic. I’d gotten wet almost right away, an unknown wave of passion sweeping over me. I had no idea before then that I was capable of getting turned on so easily. I’d melted into him, holding on for dear life. My heart had raced, blood had rushed in my ears. The moment had been intoxicating…and wrong. So very wrong.
I hardened myself against the memory. I didn’t have time or space in my life for a man—any man, but especially not a bad guy like Parker and his friends. The last thing I needed was a criminal. I would never let myself get caught up in ill-fated romance again. And anything with Parker was bound to be ill-fated. No doubt about it.
Mom came back in, holding a tray with two cups of tea. I thanked her profusely. It m
ight have been the exhaustion, but I felt like the pain meds were kicking in a little faster than usual. It was a relief. I would sleep for hours, pain-free. I might even have a few nice dreams.
Like maybe a dream about that kiss. I pushed the thought from my head, insisting it was nothing.
“Why are you blushing?” Mom asked.
I didn’t want to tell her, but I hadn’t even told Sandy, and I needed to spill to somebody. “The strangest thing happened after Connor left. Remember, I told you that man pulled him off me.”
