After that, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anyone or anything else distract me from becoming a certified cosmetologist. It was the only thing I’d ever wanted for myself, to take part in making someone feel beautiful and special.
I wasn’t built like the models all over social media, my curves softer and more exaggerated, but I knew how to work with what I had, and I fucking owned it. Over my years of sparse living, I'd learned that even a coat of nail polish could give a woman a reason to smile throughout the day. It might have seemed insignificant or trivial, but joy was joy in whatever amount or iteration it presented itself in.
So my dreams came first.
And this Aaron character, as beautiful as he was, as warm as I felt under the light of his regard, was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
If Otto had taught me anything, it wasnotto trust chemistry. I’d grown up with bad men all around me, and despite leaving that life behind a long time ago, it seemed I was still inexorably drawn to dangerous men.
I was uncharacteristically zoned out, so I didn’t look up when the bells over the door chimed even though it was gone midnight and into the hours when I had to be hypervigilant.
“Hey, pretty girl,” a rough voice rumbled, alerting me to the presence of a large man just to the left of the till.
Instantly, I took a step back from the partition between us, hand reaching for the panic button installed under the lip of the counter.
He grinned beneath the lady’s stocking pulled down over his face, the shape of his smile obviously sinister even though the black nylon obscured it.
“Not so fast,” he warned, whipping his arm from behind his back to lay a massive sawed-off shotgun on the counter. The barrel angled up into the window box designed in the partition, where customers and I could exchange coins and lottery tickets, cigarettes and receipts. It had to be opened on my side for the gun to get through, but even though the plastic barricade was thick, it wasn’t bulletproof. Gun laws were strict in Canada, and there usually wasn’t a need for it.
My throat went dry as fear thundered through me like a herd of stampeding bulls.
“I’m thinkin’ you know what to do,” he encouraged in that gravelly voice. It was artificially deepened in an attempt to obscure his true tone, but something about it seemed familiar. “Put the cash in a bag and slot it on through.”
They’d hit at one in the morning, so there was a decent amount of money in the till.
I hesitated, my fingers so close to the button that would raise the alarm.
The bells jingled again, such an innocuous sound heralding three more alarming, gun-toting men with stockings over their heads. Two joined the original thief, but the other turned downthe rows with a murmured, “No one needs a Good Samaritan fuckin’ things up.”
The man in front of me laughed harshly. The sound scored down my spine like sharp nails.
“Do what I tell ya, bitch, and maybe I won’t shoot ya.”
My heart lodged itself in my throat, making it hard to breathe as I opened the till and slowly collected the money for these thugs. Self-preservation and personal terror collided with fear for Aaron as I watched the thickset man with a gun wander down one row and up the next.
Where was he?
Had he left out the back when he heard the men enter?
It was hard to believe a man like him would cower in the face of these assholes, but anything was possible, and it wasn’t like I knew Aaron from Adam.
I just thought he was beautiful.
I just thought something at the backs of those large, thick-lashed eyes spoke of goodness despite his obvious counter-culture appearance.
“You’re takin’ too long,” the man growled, cocking his shotgun with aclick-schtickthat chased chills down my spine. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“All clea––” the man wandering the rows started to say.
But his words were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a gasp and then a clatter as he fell to the ground in the far aisle to the left, dislodging a stand of beef jerky as he landed.
“The fuck?” their ringleader demanded. “What the fuck’re you doin’?”
There was a slight pause that seemed to throb with tension, then a low masculine groan.
“Fuck,” came a voice I recognized even in that single syllable, even though he’d only spoken a handful of words to me. “Tripped over a damn magazine.”
The ringleader standing in front of me seemed to quiver with pent-up adrenaline. His head was cocked back toward the aisle, and I felt sure he would know his thief-in-arms had been taken out and replaced with Aaron. There was no air in my lungs and no hope in my heart.
