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“I’m sorry.” Eloise held her hands up and gave Sarah a nonthreatening smile. “I just needed to ask you a quick question before we head into the office.”
“Sure, you can always ask me anything. You don’t have to ambush me in the parking lot.”
“I know, it’s just … Is that another bruise?”
Sarah pressed her fingers to the purple and blue splotch beneath her eye. There was a layer of foundation over it, but the color was too dark to be concealed properly. “I’ve become such a klutz lately.”
“You were never this clumsy before.” Eloise laid a hand on Sarah’s arm, inspecting the black eye and the yellowing bruise on her cheek from a few days prior. “Are you sure you’re okay? You can talk to me if something’s been going on since you started staying with your mom?—”
“I stopped staying with my mom a few days after I went over there.” Sarah brushed her off and started walking toward the front doors of the building. “I’m fine. What did you need to ask me?”
“Oh, right.” Eloise had been so caught up in her worries about Sarah that she’d forgotten for a moment. “I just wanted to know if Kim ever mentioned a place called the Tough Break bar?”
“What?” Sarah stopped and took a deep breath before she turned back around to Eloise, her face blank and her voice slightly irritated. It was a seemingly random thing to ask and Eloise didn’t want to have to fully explain it to get an answer.
“I know it sounds like a silly question, it’s just that there was … well, I just thought maybe she’d been there with you or something?” Eloise gripped her fingers together and tried not to fidget. She didn’t want Sarah to see her nervousness and start having questions of her own.
“Never heard of it.”
“You’re sure? It might be important?—”
“I didn’t really hang out with Kim outside of work unless it was with you, okay? Neither did Chloe.” She shook her head and smiled tightly. “I know it makes us shitty friends, and I feel bad about it every day, but we didn’t include her as much as we should have.”
“Oh.” The small hope Eloise had carried that one of them might be able to put her fears to rest faded. “I don’t think you were a bad friend. It’s normal to have regrets when something terrible happens.”
“Yeah.” Sarah started walking again. “We all have regrets.”
Twenty-Six
Ethan woke to an empty bed and an empty house. There were blankets folded on the end of the couch downstairs and a note next to the coffee pot.
Ethan,
You stole the whole bed last night. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to share?
Eloise
He supposed they had, but what a man did in his sleep was another story. He figured this meant he owed her flowers or some shit as an apology for having kicked her out of her own bed with his selfish, sleep-ruining habits. He could handle that. Flowers were a little outside of his comfort zone, you didn’t tend to need them when you avoided emotional entanglements, but she seemed like the kind of woman that would go for some good, old fashioned red roses. Or maybe some of those big white ones with the fancy petals, whatever they were called.
There was a florist not far from the bar and he could make a stop there after he finished up his work for the day. He’d been going by Tough Break as little as possible, but Dylan had reacted with exactly the ugly threats that Ethan had expected when he’d tried to convince him that it was time to stop with the other bullshit and start focusing on the legit business at the bar. It had the potential to be a steady source of legal income and Ethan had been thinking about trying to improve it for a while, but Dylan only put enough effort into it to keep the doors open.
Once it had become clear that Dylan didn’t intend to let him out of their shadier practices without a fight, Ethan had considered ending his relationship with Eloise to keep her safe. He hated that his presence in her life made her vulnerable, but she’d done nothing to stop him when he started pulling away, and he’d been hit full on with the realization that she was more important to him than he’d been willing to acknowledge.
He hadn’t said anything to her when he realized he was in love with her. Partly because he needed to figure out an exit strategy that would involve him still having an income while keeping Dylan from losing his shit, and partly because he didn’t want to spook her.
Eloise was an anxious woman despite her ballbusting bluster, and he knew she tended to approach things from a more logical angle. Simple sentiment wouldn’t be enough to break her down and convince her to let him into her life on a more permanent basis, so he was going to have to work on making himself indispensable.
Kicking her out of her bed wasn’t exactly an item on his checklist, but he could fix that with the flowers and then move on to mowing her grass and packing her lunches. He’d never set out to make a woman fall in love with him, but it couldn’t be that hard, could it?
Getting out of his predicament with Dylan and finding a real job after so long making money through exclusively questionable means seemed like the harder part of the plan. He was still working out the details when he arrived at the bar and started helping Myles with inventory.
“You okay?” Ethan tried to ask the question as casually as possible but he wasn’t sure he was able to mask the concern in his voice.
He’d known Myles since the day he had gotten out of juvie and he’d never known him to be an unhappy kid. Quiet and timid, but always optimistic. It was no small feat to keep a smile on your face when you had a family as messed up as his was, but Myles had always managed it. Something had shifted in the last few weeks and his excuse that he’d just not been feeling well was starting to wear thin. His skin was sallow and there were circles under his eyes like he hadn’t been sleeping.
“I’m fine.” Myles’s tone was sour and his expression could have curdled milk.
“Are you really?”
