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1
RAE
Looking back,there were so many points where I could have changed the course of my life for the better. But hindsight is both a blessing and a curse. Today, a curse more so than the other.
“Did you hear what I said?”
I return my gaze to Maddie—my best and only friend in this small town—seated across the small café table from me. “Sorry.” Her dark honey-blonde hair is a riot of waves spilling across her shoulders, the late afternoon sun highlighting the left side in shades of amber.
“Stop watching Connor,” she whispers, leaning across a little. “It only encourages the idiot.”
“I know.” I steal a look outside from beneath my lashes as I stir my now-cold coffee. “But if I lose track of him, it makes getting out of here that much worse.”
“Which is why you won’t do it by yourself.” She steels her jaw, ignoring her own advice and eyeing the fucker out the window.
I take a moment to regard her. To admire, yet again, how fucking strong and resilient she is. I don’t know how we became friends when we’re cut from such different cloth, but I’m still thankful we are.
Maddie tucks her wayward hair behind one ear, then gently sweeps the same hand before her to end with the middle finger extended toward Connor. An old lady two tables back gives a disapproving scowl before rising from her seat and heading for the exit.
“I don’t know if the both of us are enough.” I shrug, ditching the spoon on the saucer with a clink. “Two women who weigh a hundred and sixty-five pounds soaking wet andhim?” I glance toward the troublemaker as I take a sip.
My shift ended an hour ago. Fifty-five minutes ago, I phoned Maddie and begged her to skip out on her date and come save me. Forty-two minutes ago, she arrived, and I felt twice as shit as I had when I disconnected the call seeing how pretty she looked. Thirty-eight minutes since my ex-asshole finally got out of his truck and sat his butt down outside the café, casually placing one ankle to the opposite knee. Twelve since I contemplated for the fourth time this week throwing myself off a bridge and ending the torture that is his “love.”
“I wish you’d let me talk to my dad about this.” Mads pulls her phone from her purse and swipes up. “He’d have a few ideas on what to do abouthim.” I marvel again at how she manages to store all six inches of that device in the tiny cross-body bagandkeep a lip gloss contained without the zip busting open.
“It’s not his issue,” I repeat for what feels like the millionth time. “It’s mine.” However, having the President of the Red River Reapers on side does sound useful. “I just wish the police could do something about the jerk.”
“They won’t on account of who he is. You know this,” she cajoles.
“On account of who hisdaddyis,” I correct.
If only small-town America came with a directory of the who’s who in underground crime. Maybe then, when the handsome devil chased me down after my shift, I could haveasked his name and promptly referenced the index. Maybe then, I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering how the fuck I shake the obsessed son of a mobster without losing my life in the process.
“What did Fennex tell you?” Maddie asks with a sigh.
“Said that the courts would demand evidence of what I had to say. That they’d want irrefutable fact, not the opinion of some girl who’s lived here less than a year.”
“Jerks.” She puffs hair out of her eye.
“I mean, I could do it…”
“But that means getting close again,” she finishes with a sigh.
“Yeah.” I take a sip of the cold coffee and steal a look at the bench again. “Which also means taking on hiswholefamily if I’m successful.”
Something I can’t do, no matter how satisfied it would make me feel to see their smug faces behind bars.
Connor smiles—as though the fucker can read my damn thoughts.
I shed my last hope the day I walked into the sheriff’s office. A part of me clung tight to the tiny olive branch, believing that Connor’s behavior would be enough to at least threaten to prosecute, if not send him directly to jail, given his priors. Enough to give me a free pass. But apparently, the lack of physical evidence secures his freedom.
The lack of bruises shaped like fingers.
The lack of broken bones.
The lack of DNA.
The last time a man left physical reminders of his “care,” I thought I’d surely die.
