Chapter 4

Willow

The floor was cold, black grime embedded deep in the grout between the tiles. I stared at that tiny patch of floor as I tried to push the pieces of shattered plates onto the plastic tray with my trembling, bleeding fingers. Coffee stains soaked into my pants, and my knee throbbed from the fall.

Brad and Chloe’s laughter echoed inside my head like some distorted, cruel radio broadcast that could never be switched off. The air felt suffocating. Amber was shouting at me from behind the counter to hurry up, but my muscles simply refused to cooperate.

“How pathetic…” I heard Brad mutter, followed by another burst of laughter from their table.

“I’m taking this out of your paycheck!” Amber shrieked again.

The words struck me like physical blows.

The money I was saving for Ellie’s future.

The money I endured every one of Victor’s kicks to earn.

Something hard and burning tightened around my throat, but my eyes remained dry. I could not afford to cry.

Not here.

Not in front of them.

Desperation gave me strength.

Ignoring the sharp shard of glass that had cut deep into my palm, I began piling the mess onto the tray with quick, mechanical movements. Fresh blood mixed with spilled coffee and ketchup.

I did not care.

I just wanted to disappear.

With my head lowered, I hurriedly cleaned everything from the floor.

When I finally managed to struggle to my feet with the heavy, dripping tray in my hands, my left thigh, where Victor had kicked me, trembled and erupted with sharp pain. I instinctively hunched over, protecting my ribs.

That was when the brass bell above the entrance rang.

It was not just a simple chime.

As the door opened, the autumn wind rushing into the café seemed to drain every trace of warmth from the room in an instant.

Then something even stranger happened.

The noise, the conversations, and Chloe’s irritating laughter died within a single second.

Silence descended over the Neon Café.

Even Amber fell quiet behind the counter.

It was as though the air had suddenly grown thicker and heavier, as if an invisible, suffocating pressure had settled over everyone in the room.

Balancing the tray in my hands, I instinctively glanced toward the entrance.

Five figures stepped through the door.

I did not need to see their faces to know who they were.

The town’s elite.

Jace and his crew.

The guys wore ridiculously expensive leather jackets and dark clothes, while the two girls, Lexi and Maya, walked beside them with a kind of confidence that immediately intimidated me.

To me, they had always belonged to another universe.

A world without hidden purple bruises.

A world without nights filled with terror.

I quickly lowered my head.

Invisible.

Stay invisible.

I turned and started toward the kitchen. The tray was heavy, and I could barely put any weight on my left leg, making my steps uneven and pathetic.

All I wanted was to get behind the swinging door and disappear into the safety of the dark dishwashing area.

As I crossed the middle of the café, Jace and his group were walking directly toward me, heading for their favorite secluded booth in the corner.

They did not look at me.

To them, I was nothing more than another dirty, insignificant member of the staff.

But the exact moment I came level with Jace, barely three feet away from him, he suddenly stopped.

It was as though he had walked into a wall.

His black leather jacket stretched across his broad shoulders.

His usual superior, bored posture vanished in an instant.

His breath caught in his lungs.

Then he inhaled deeply, almost animalistically, directly from my direction.

His nostrils flared.

All I could smell on myself was coffee and stale grounds, but he seemed to sense something else.

The coppery scent of fresh blood from my palm?

Or something darker, something pulsing beneath my clothes?

His head slowly, almost mechanically, turned toward me.

I froze.

My heart pounded in my throat.

Slowly, fearfully, I raised my eyes.

And for the first time in my life, I looked directly into his.

The air disappeared from my lungs.

Jace had the face of a dark, fallen angel.

Flawless, masculine, and impossibly threatening.

His slightly wavy black hair fell across his forehead, but it was his eyes that truly paralyzed me.

They burned with such a vivid, scorching emerald green that the color seemed almost unnatural.

And those eyes were staring directly at me.

There was no pity in them.

None of the mockery I was used to.

Something entirely different burned there.

Something raw.

Wild.

Unpredictable.

His gaze swept over me in a flash.

It stopped on my bleeding hand gripping the tray.

Then it traveled higher, taking in the enormous, shapeless sweater I was hiding inside and the way I held my shoulders protectively.

Finally, his eyes reached my split lip and the swollen purple bruise beneath my eye that the concealer had failed to completely hide.

Jace’s jaw clenched so hard I could almost hear his bones grinding together.

For a moment, something dark and restrained flashed in his green eyes.

Rage.

The sight of it froze the blood in my veins.

“Jace?” Lexi asked quietly, stopping one step behind him. Confusion colored her voice. “What is it?”

Jace did not answer his sister.

He did not move a single inch.

He just stared at me.

As though the entire world around him had ceased to exist and I was the only thing left in it.

Every instinct inside me screamed a warning.

Men who looked at me like that always hurt me.

Victor looked at me that way before he hit me.

Jace had not raised a hand, but his presence alone, the oppressive power radiating from him, was enough to make my body remember every piece of trauma it had endured.

Without thinking, I took a small step backward and drew my shoulders even tighter around myself.

My breathing became ragged.

The sight of my fear seemed to affect Jace even more.

The hand hanging loosely at his side slowly curled into a fist.

I could not take his stare anymore.

I clenched my teeth, broke eye contact, and turned away.

Clutching the tray against myself and ignoring the pain in my thigh, I practically ran through the swinging door and into the kitchen.

The moment the door closed behind me, I leaned against the cold tiled wall beside the sink.

I dropped the tray onto the metal counter and raised my trembling hands to my face.

My heart was pounding so violently it felt as though it might tear itself out of my chest.

Blood from my hand smeared across my face, but I did not care.

I had no idea what had just happened out there.

I only knew that Jace’s gaze had broken through the walls I had spent years carefully building around myself in a single second.

He had noticed me.

He had noticed the blood.

He had noticed the pain.

And the realization that I had somehow ended up on the radar of the most dangerous boy in town terrified me more than anything else.