“You forget yourself already, kid?” he asked. “Do not question me.”
My hands raised to his, scrambling to peel them off as I fought for air. I tried to nod, but his hold was too tight.
He stared into my eyes for a long moment until I was sure I was turning blue, and then released me so I fell back to the bed with a gasp. My throat ached so badly I honestly wondered if he’d broken something.
“You do as you're told without askin’ dumb questions. Get a job at Eugene’s and make yourself useful until Hazard gets here. He might decide then to keep you home and get you makin’ some kids like you shoulda been doin’ the last eight years.”
He tossed another garment at me––a denim skirt––and then left as abruptly as he’d come in.
I lay there for a few minutes, struggling to breathe through the twin clutch of pain and panic still collared around my neck.
But eventually, I got up, pulled on the cropped shirt and little jean skirt Rooster had pulled out for me, and dragged myself to the bathroom. My reflection showed a woman I hadn’t seen in years, if ever. My usually healthy complexion was sallow, tinted green and yellow from fading bruises on the left side of my face. I needed to refresh the blue dye and resolved to find somewhere to have it done in town. Until then, I could do something about the ugly, unhappy face staring back at me.
As I opened my glittery blue toolkit and assembled the tools of my trade, I tried to focus on one task at a time so the tears trembling in the lower troughs of my lids wouldn’t ruin my canvas. Primer for staying power, foundation to even out my pale complexion, and concealer to hide the lingering bruises. Bronzer, blush, and highlighter made my features come back to life, if only artificially, and the addition of smoky eye shadow and a pink lipstick made my best features pop.
When I was finished, you couldn’t even tell the girl looking back at me was a shell of her former self.
She looked…beautiful.
Tears trembled, and I caught one on my thumb carefully so it wouldn’t ruin the illusion.
“You’re beautiful,” I told myself, my voice temporarily roughened by Rooster’s abuse.
Ugly, stupid bitch! Rooster’s voice yelled in my mind’s ear.
“You’re beautiful,” I said again, and this time, I let myself imagine Aaron.
The way he’d looked at me, a little shocked and awed, the way he’d touched me in that stolen car, like I was more precious than the stolen jewels in the back.
Not ’cause you’re damn pretty, Blue, ’cause a man like me knows pretty girls. Nah, the sight’a you knocked the air straight from my chest ’cause a pretty girl with a sweet smile was mannin’ a gas station in the middle’a the night on a dangerousstretch’a highway, and I thought, this girl doesn’t have anyone in her life to tell her not to risk herself like this. She’s fightin’ and clawin’ for everythin’ she’s got, and what she’s got is no one. And, Blue baby, that sucker punched me. A girl like you should have a whole army’a family at your back keepin’ ya safe and makin’ ya promises they always intend to fuckin’ keep.
I closed my eyes as I recited those words back to myself, forever carved into my bones in a way I’d never forget.
When I opened them, I recognized the girl in the mirror again. She was the confidant, plucky woman I’d cultivated for eight years. The girl who wasn’t ashamed to love girly things and my soft curves. The girl who used makeup and hair and clothes like both an armour and a canvas to show the world exactly who I wanted to be.
Brave, bold, beautiful.
The kind of woman who could hook a man like Aaron Clare through the heart in one miraculous night.
Before leaving the house, I didn’t resist the urge to grab my hidden phone and stick it into the back of my short blue cowboy boot. Even if I didn’t text him again that day, knowing he was within reach made me feel like I could get through my day.
“Why?”
I blinked at the huge, rough-hewn man looming over the counter from behind the bar, his massive arms bulging beneath the plaid shirt, his dark grey eyes narrowed on me.
For a barkeep, he wasn’t very friendly.
“Um, because I need a job?” I suggested with a little shrug and what I hoped was a pretty grin. “And I’ve got experience serving, so I figured, why not ask here.”
“You figured,” he repeated dryly, his expression entirely unimpressed.
When I’d asked a pretty server to speak to the manager, I hadn’t expected this man. He hadn’t even introduced himself.
He was rude, but honestly, I’d fallen in love withEugene’sthe second I stepped foot in the long, low building on the side of the Sea to Sky Highway. It was retro in a way that wasn’t tryingto be cool or hipster. Dark wood everywhere, neon signs and old biker paraphernalia on the walls, a small stage to the right of the huge U-shaped bar with some space for dancing before high top tables. The right corner was made up of booths and short tables, the tops scarred by time and a few choice etchings from visitors. A jukebox was lit up against one wall, the sounds of old-school rock crackling over the speakers. It smelled like spilled beer and maraschino cherries, like leather and seasoned wood.
I would have spent the rest of my life inside those four walls and been happy.
It was cool as shit, and the people drinking there at eleven in the morning were cool too—a handful of bikers who probably hadn’t gone to bed yet from the night before and a collection of pretty women crowded around two tables in the far corner.
