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“Why don't you mind your own damn business? This is between me and the bitch.”
“It’s fine, Hawk, I’ve got it,” Julie eked out as Mike reached around and grabbed her ass again.
Fury filled me. I’d be damned if I was going to stand here and let him continue to touch her after she had already told him to stop. I lost all composure. I seized him and turned him to face me. I reared back to punch him. Before I could, Joe gripped my arm, holding me back just as the biker’s fist sailed toward my face. The impact pushed Joe and me backward.
I saw red. There was only one way this would end.
Everything around me faded as the fuel of injustice powered through me. All I could focus on was Steve and his filthy hands all over Julie. Her telling him over and over to stop. I hit him once that I knew of and then probably again, but I couldn’t remember.
“Dude. Stop. The cops have been called,” Joe pleaded.
At that moment, the blackness swallowed me whole.
6
Julie
My stomach rumbled for the tenth time in the last five minutes. This time loud enough to be heard across the room. I had forgotten breakfast as I rushed out the door this morning. And I hadn’t thought about bringing lunch. Again.
I needed to start taking better care of myself, but there were only so many hours in a day and it seemed that out of the twenty-four most people were able to function with, I had thirty-five hours of work to complete. That didn’t include showering or eating.
I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to reach up on my toes to get a stretch down the back of my legs. I should have been used to being on my feet all day, but once I added night shifts, my body revolted. It was too much. All of it.
There was another reason I couldn’t eat. It could be summed up in two words: Kane Hawkins.
I sighed louder than I meant to, but I glanced out the windows that lined the wall on the left of the classroom. All the children were on the playground, and I had a break from recess duty. I had a minute to let my stomach roll with the memory of what happened last week. It wavered between nausea, excitement, and dread.
I turned from the window. It was supposed to be easy money. Guaranteed to add enough cash in my pocket to pay my bills so I didn’t have to leave the education center. I sat on the corner of my desk. I took a job doing something humiliating so I could keep one that meant more to me than anything else. It was some kind of twisted poetic irony.
Nothing else that happened once I tied on that waitress apron made any sense. I almost had sex in the back of the bar. I had let a man I’d never met touch me. Kiss me. Lick me. Suck me like a piece of candy.
And I liked it. No, I loved it.
And for what? To get pawed at by a drunken biker? And then to have Kane Hawkins defend my honor and end up being hauled off to jail? None of it made sense.
I felt guilty. Guilty about everything. The almost sex. Missing part of my shift. The fight. Hawk’s arrest. Dragging my ass to work exhausted every morning this week. There wasn’t a corner I could turn to where I didn’t feel the guilt.
> It was as if something had possessed me that night. Something sexy. Something forbidden. And it was almost Hawk. I had almost let him take total control over me.
“Miss Bristow?”
I jumped at the sound of the small voice behind me.
“Hey, JJ.”
I thought I was alone. I had let my thoughts drift to places I never should have let them go at the center. Teaching here was my true calling. These kids needed me. And they needed me to get my shit together.
I could relate to them. I thought maybe more than some of the other teachers. There was a part of me that was like them. I had lost my mom at a young age. I knew what it was like to feel that kind of pain. To feel like I had been abandoned. I knew it too well. If these kids were lucky, they had one parent. But looking at JJ, I knew he wasn’t one of those.
“Is it ok if I stay inside?” he asked.
“Don’t you want to play with everyone else?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. I just want to read.”
He scuffed his feet along the linoleum floor. It wasn’t the worst request he could make.
“All right,” I caved. JJ was one of those kids who was quiet. He’d rather bury his head in a book than play kick ball or tag.
