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Of course, he could. Guys who dress like Aden and can afford to drop sixty dollars on limes always get whatever they want. Don’t I know it?
My lips thin and I edge back a half-step. Suddenly, two feet doesn’t feel like nearly enough space between us.
From over his shoulder, my gaze connects with the cashier who must’ve caught my tiny movement. There’s no smile in his eyes when Aden grabs the plastic bag off the counter and waves off the offer of change.
Then it’s my turn.
I move toward the high front counter. By the time I get there, anyone would be hard-pressed to tell the cashier even knew what a smile was from his tight lips and furrowed brow.
Lifting my basket to the counter makes me break out in a sweat as the motion tugs on my ribs. Once I’ve done it, I inch back a step, keeping my eyes on a handwritten note stuck to the wall beside the cashier.
No credit. Cash only.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read signs just like that, over and over. Until Rylan. And then I never stepped foot in a grocery store again. When a guy can afford a million-dollar apartment in the most expensive building in the city, everything is delivered.
Groceries, wine, clothes. Everything.
To know you don’t have to queue for anything because it all gets brought right to you, whenever you want, morning, noon, or night smooths away all those annoying life inconveniences.
It’s nice.
Stress-free.
Until you can’t leave, and it’s up to someone else to decide if they want to give you something or nothing.
Then, a life like that is nothing but a prison.
But if you’d been the mate he wanted, you’d have been living the sort of life people could only have dreamed of. And all it would’ve taken is for his bite to turn you, and for you to pop out the shifter heirs he was so desperate for.
“Twenty-five dollars and sixteen cents.”
I turn to face the cashier who's bagged up the items in my basket while I stared at his handwritten note.What the hell did I pick up to have spent that much?I dart a glance at the plastic bag, but it doesn’t help me figure it out.
“Sure.” I slip my hand into my pocket.
My fingers touch the sides, the bottom, and yet more fabric, but it doesn’t touch a wallet.
You must’ve shoved it in the other pocket.
With the panic of the bus driver a hair away from tossing me off the bus if I didn’t pay still fresh in my mind, mistaking one pocket for the other was bound to happen.
As I try out a smile for the grim-faced cashier with his unblinking stare, I plunge my hand into my other pocket.
“Is there a problem?” the cashier asks, his lips a thin line as I scrabble around for something that’s suddenly not there.
“No problem,” I lie. While I’m busy working out how I’m going to get myself out of this situation without it turning messy, that’s when I remember the man.
I shoved the wallet into my pocket.
Fact.
I may have been out of it after what happened to Simon, but I had the wallet on the bus. It thumped against my thigh as I sat down in my seat before… well… before I lost all sense of time. But I had it.
Now I don’t.
The pockets are deep enough it couldn’t have fallen out while I was running. I haven’t let anyone come near me. Only the bus driver. And the man from outside the grocery store.
I bounced off him because he stepped out just as I was rushing toward him. I couldn’t have stopped in time to avoid it, and he must have known that.
