She remembered…everything. Every awful, excruciating detail of all of it. Her New Orleans Cajun former gator-hunting Felix, the club’s infamous info-extractor. Mercy; the boys all called him Mercy.
“What?” Ronnie asked. “If you keep doing that, someone’s going to think I got attacked by a whole pack of cats.”
She was digging her nails into him again. She let go like he’d slapped her hand away, folding her arms tight across her chest, sucking a deep breath and realizing she’d stopped breathing for about ten seconds. Her chest ached; her throat hurt; her eyes stung.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
Her voice had been so low, it was impossible that any of the Dogs had heard her. But Mercy’s head lifted, and his dark, unforgiving gaze slid across the lot until it touched her toes; it moved up her legs, along the ruffled hem of her skirt, across all the most secret parts of her that he knew intimately, up her throat, her shaking lips, and finally to her eyes, where they latched on and held tight.
She stopped breathing, and he maintained eye contact for a fathomless moment, his expression unreadable. Then he smiled at something one of his brothers had said, and returned his attention to Aidan.
No smile for her. No wave. Not even a nod of acknowledgement. Just that flat stare that she didn’t understand – had never understood. Mercy was jovial when he was around his fellow Dogs. But with her…God, she never knew what he was with her. Right now, he was indifferent, and that hurt like hell, like a knife sinking through her ribs.
She made a sound, some small whimpering sound, and Ronnie asked, “Ava,what’sgoing on with you all of a sudden?”
“Nothing,” she snapped. “Come on.”
With an effort like nothing she’d known before, she fixed her gaze downward and marched to her truck. She threw up a hand and nodded when Aidan asked if she was making a run to the house. “Sure,” she said when he asked her to bring his iPod back. She hit the remote unlock on her F-150’s key fob and yanked her door open. Slid in, started it, waited for Ronnie and then threw it into gear, all without having to glance at Mercy again.
But when she checked her rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of his imposing figure, stamped against the corrugated steel of the bike shop.
Coming home for this party had been a mistake.
Then again, when had she ever done anything thatwasn’t?
When Ava pulled into Leroy’s on Main, she parked in front of one of the three gas pumps. “I might as well fill up while we’re here,” she said with a sigh, turning off the engine and reaching for her shopping list in the cup holder.
Ronnie gave her a blank, judging look. She could feel the curiosity and doubt coming off him in waves. “I can pump while you shop,” he offered.
She nodded. “Thanks.” She passed him her credit card and climbed out of the truck with purse and list in hand. “I won’t be long.”
Leroy’s had been around since Maggie was a little girl, a mom-and-pop grocery, dollar store, gas station combo, its shelves full of all sorts of odds and ends, overstuffed in a charming, small town sort of way that was completely lost on the college yuppies. The kids all went to the Seven-Eleven. The Dogs, and the Teague family in particular, were patrons of Leroy’s.
Ava didn’t realize it had been five years since she’d last graced its door until she heard the little bell above jangle and was hit with the smell of the small deli counter in back. Her eyes soaked in the sight of yellowed linoleum, packed shelves, neon signs, candy-colored drinks behind frosted cooler doors, hand-sketched signs advertising the week’s specials. She heard the slow churning of the Slurpee machine, the whine of the neon bulbs, hum of the coolers, electronic whizzing of lotto tickets printing. She smelled the deli: fresh bread, salami, pepperoni, pasta salad, vinegar, olives. She halted just inside the door, as the air conditioning rushed over her skin and her adolescence stole over her and made her shiver and smile. Ronnie, she thought with an inward lamentation, would never understand her completely, because she would never be a girl who hated her roots and wanted to leave them in the dirt. Even something as simple as walking into Leroy’s brought her past rushing back in Technicolor portrait. It was never her family or her life that had caused her pain, but the world outside of it. The world…and the man she’d loved.
No, she told herself.You’re past that.
With a mental shake, she glanced at her list and struck out through the maze of aisles, finding the Bic lighter, the rubber bands, the cupcake paper cups, the five jars of salsa for the chips that had already been bought. She stopped at a cooler and pulled out a twenty ounce Coke that she uncapped right there and took a swig of. When her basket would hold no more, and she’d checked off all the items the old ladies had given her, she cruised past the deli counter. There would be food at the party, yes, but getting to it would prove a monumental task. The guys would savage the offerings like a pack of hyenas.
A teenage girl with sleepy eyes took her order for two turkey subs on wheat and wrapped the vinegar-drenched sandwiches in wax paper, bagged them in plastic. Laden like a pack mule, she snagged another Coke for Ronnie, headed to the counter…and froze in her tracks.
Behind the register, glancing up at her with typical retail disinterest, was a very pretty, very familiar blonde boy with wide athlete’s shoulders and sunshine-colored hair.
“Carter?” Ava asked, stunned.
The boredom abandoned his features, replaced by shock. “Ava?”
The neon signage in the window flickered once, twice, three times…
Ava gathered her composure and set her basket up on the counter. “I thought you had a full ride to Texas A&M,” she blurted before she could stop herself. “I didn’t expect to see you in here.”
Carter Michaels, star quarterback of Knoxville, graduate of her class, a once-enemy turned hasty-ally to her in high school, she’d figured she would never see him again, not when he had such a bright football future ahead of him.
He glanced down at the counter, his cheeks coloring. “Yeah…about that…I kind of tore my ACL to shreds. No more scholarship, no more college. My dad flipped his shit.”
“Oh, damn,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged and offered a lame smile. “Life’s not a fairytale, ya know?” He reached for her basket, scanner in hand. “Are you in town for the party tonight?”
