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I took a second to glance around to see if anyone was watching me—expectantly or not—then snatched the journal and paper from the desk and walked quickly toward the booth I always sat at.
I flipped through the pages until I found the one I was looking for, but only had time to see that there was something written below my note before I had to stash the journal next to me when one of the waitresses walked up.
“Well, well . . . Deacon Carver. What can I do for you tonight?” she asked. Her voice dripped with sex, and her tone held so much meaning. The look she gave me promised a night I knew I needed after the day I’d had.
I couldn’t remember her name, I rarely tried to remember their names, but I remembered her. If I hadn’t already known from personal experience that she was bat-shit crazy, I had no doubt I would have told her to come to the house that night.
Unfortunately for her—and my memories—I didn’t forget girls who wrecked houses and screamed like banshees when they found out I didn’t want to be tied down, and I also didn’t have the patience to deal with her now.
I’d been consumed with stress and guilt all day over finding what I thought was the beginnings of a fucked-up suicide note, had just released a year-and-a-half’s worth of pent-up anger on Charlie because I couldn’t seem to control myself around her lately—and was hating myself for it—and now this waitress was keeping me from seeing what had been written back to me.
“Absolutely nothing,” I responded gruffly. “Whoever is cooking right now, tell them I need the usual for Graham and me. To go.”
I stared at her expectantly until she turned with an exaggerated huff, and waited until she was back in the kitchen before pulling the journal back up.
The relief that pounded through my veins as I read th
e note written back to me was so intense that my hands began shaking.
They hadn’t been about to commit suicide—she hadn’t been about to, I internally amended as I stared at the neat, feminine handwriting.
A harsh, relieving breath forced itself from my lungs, and I had to set the journal on the table when the shaking of my hands made it too hard to read the words again.
And again.
She’d added more to what I had originally thought was the beginning of a suicide note, and now thought might be a poem. If what was in front of me then had been written down earlier that afternoon, I probably wouldn’t have spent hours panicking that this girl was going to kill herself.
I wouldn’t have said what I had to Charlie.
I ran my hand through my hair, agitation poured from me as I tried to force her face from my mind.
With a rough breath out, I focused on the poem . . . but after reading it again, I still felt depressed as shit for the girl. Because if this was supposedly about her relationship with a guy, then she had no fucking clue that he was using her, or that she was nothing more than the best friend. Because those words pretty much summed up how Graham, Knox, and I all talked to, and thought of, Grey.
Sister. This girl wasn’t in a relationship, she was thought of as a sister.
After grabbing a pen from a different waitress as she passed by, I added a couple words to the last line, and wondered why the hell I was smiling over the fact that she’d left my other changes in as I wrote back to her.
You’re alive! Christ, you have no clue how damn scared I’ve been all day. But I think we might have other problems now. This relationship . . . are you sure you want to be in it? You say you’re always there for this guy, listening to him about everything apparently . . . so who’s there for you? Who’s listening to you? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me—or, hell, maybe we do; this is Thatch—so you don’t have to listen to anything I say. But from what I’m reading, I think you’re putting way more of yourself into the relationship than he is. Find someone who would write these words about you.
Who listens to your sad songs
The shoulder that you cry on
Out on that ledge you walk on
When you’re sinking
Who knows your keeps your secrets locked up
When I’m there’s no one you can trust
I know it’s much more than just wishful thinking
Just say the words and (you know) I’ll be there
Before I left Mama’s with dinner for Graham and me, I placed the journal back on the greeter’s desk with the same piece of paper just below it. Only this time, I copied her words in my own writing on the back, warning anyone who saw the journal not to move it.
Chapter Five
