Ella Rae Vance

Chapter 2:

Present day

"Don't tell who?" I said to a closed door.

Rita was already gone. Down the hall, into the kitchen, yelling at the fry cook about something that wasn't the fry cook's fault. Like the whole conversation never happened.

I stood in that little office for a minute. Two minutes. Picking at the edge of my apron the way I do when my brain is going too fast.

Here's the thing about me. I've got a pretty good danger radar. It's not a superpower. It's a scar. Two years of living with a man who could go from sweet to scary between one blink and the next, and you learn to read a room or you don't survive it.

And every single thing Rita said in that office was screaming at me.

Blackwood.

Triple pay.

Don't look anybody in the eye.

Don't tell him your real name.

But rent was due Friday. And Lily's shoes had a hole in the toe that I'd been covering with a Sharpie like a liar. And if there's one thing I've learned it's that danger radar is a luxury for people who can afford to listen to it.

So I clocked out at four, went home, and got ready.

---

My apartment is two rooms and a bathroom that you have to close the door on real slow or the handle falls off. There's a window in the kitchen that sticks, a neighbor upstairs who plays the same three songs over and over, and a crib in the corner of my bedroom made of cheap pine that I bought used off a guy on F******k.

Lily was at Delphine's till seven.

I stood in front of my closet door and looked at the three rules in Sharpie.

1. No men.

2. No touch.

3. No trust.

Some girl wrote those. Some girl who had a bruise on her ribs and a baby on her hip and thirty-eight dollars in a checking account. She was right about everything.

I put on black jeans and a black tank top and tied my hair up.

Then I got my daughter, made her dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, read her the book about the bunny, and put her down at eight.

She held my finger while she fell asleep. She does that. Two years old and she's got this little iron grip and she won't let go until she's out.

I sat there on the floor by her crib way longer than I needed to.

Then I got up, put on a jacket, and drove to Harrow Road.

---

The bar was called Blackwood.

Not a cute name. No neon sign, no cute font, no ironic sign that says "Est. 1987." Just a black brick building with a black door and one light over it, and about forty bikes lined up out front like a metal herd.

I sat in my car for a second.

Every single alarm I own went off at once. Not just my danger radar. My everything. My chest went tight and my hands went cold and I had the thought I always have, the one that shows up like a bad guest: Take Lily and go. Tonight. Again.

Then I thought about Friday. Rent. Shoes. The electric bill I still hadn't opened.

And I got out of the car.

---

The inside was worse.

Dark wood. Low lights. Smoke, not cigarette — something thicker. Music playing low and slow like the speakers were mad at it. Men everywhere. In leather. With patches on their backs that I didn't let myself read.

I walked straight to the bar and said to the guy behind it, "I'm the waitress. Rita sent me."

He looked at me. Then he looked at somebody behind me. Then he said, "She's pretty."

I did not look behind me. Rule number one. No men.

I said, "Where do I put my jacket?"

---

It was fine for about two hours.

I carried drinks. I kept my eyes down. A man with a beard and a missing tooth asked if I was new and I said "just tonight" and he said "that's what they all say" which was not as funny as he thought it was.

Nobody touched me. Nobody looked at me too long.

And then the whole bar went quiet.

Not slowly. Not one table at a time.

The music was still playing and the whole room just — went silent underneath it. Like a hand had reached out and pressed a button on the world.

I was behind the counter with a tray of glasses in my hands and I didn't turn around.

I knew.

I don't know how I knew. But I knew. My whole body knew. My skin got tight and my mouth went dry and I stood there with eight glasses on a tray and my back to the door like a coward.

His boots came around the end of the bar.

I saw them first. Black boots, worn in, the kind a man wears when he's used them. Then the jeans. Then the belt. Then the cut.

It said PRESIDENT.

And I looked up.

---

Six foot four. Maybe five. Wide as a door, all of it muscle under a black t-shirt, and a leather vest over it that had seen things. Tattoos on both arms. Knuckles with old scars. A beard that was more like three days of not shaving.

But it was his face that got me.

Not handsome. That's a stupid word. Handsome is for guys in magazine ads. This was something else. Sharp. Still. Like a knife sitting on a table where it doesn't belong.

And his eyes were already on me.

Already. Before he even got to the bar. Before I turned around. Like he knew where I was in the room the whole time.

He stopped in front of me.

Put both hands on the counter.

And said, "What's your name, little girl?"

The whole bar heard him. I know they did. Because I heard a chair scrape somewhere behind me and then nothing, no sound at all, like forty men stopped breathing at the same time.

Here's what I should have done.

I should have said some fake name. Any fake name. Rita literally warned me two hours ago. My brain had one job.

What I did was stand there with my mouth open like a fish.

Then I said, "Ella."

My knees went hot. My face went red. I could feel the burn crawling up my neck and I wanted to die right there behind the counter.

He tilted his head. Slow.

"Ella," he said. Like he was tasting it. Like he was trying it on. "Ella what?"

"Just Ella."

"Just Ella." He smiled. Barely. One side of his mouth. "Okay, Just Ella."

And then he reached over the counter.

I froze. I mean froze. My feet wouldn't move, my arms wouldn't move, and he put his hand out slow enough that I could have backed up, and he didn't touch my hand, he didn't touch my face, he took the tray out of my hands.

Eight glasses. Didn't spill one.

He set it on the counter. Looked at me.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm cold."

"It's ninety degrees in here."

"I get cold."

"Okay." He nodded. "You get cold."

Then he turned around, and the whole room came back to life, music and voices and glasses clinking, all at once, like someone pressed play.

He walked to the corner booth and sat down with his back to the wall.

And he watched me for the rest of the night.

---

I want to be honest about something, because I promised myself I would be.

I liked it.

That's the worst part. Not that he watched me. That I liked it. I carried drinks for four hours and I felt his eyes on the back of my neck and it didn't feel like the way Damon used to watch me — like a thing he owned that might run.

It felt like someone was looking at me and seeing me. Seeing all of me. Not the apron, not the tired, not the fake.

It's the most alive I'd felt in two years. Which is sick. Which is a problem. Which is why the three rules exist.

At the end of the night I counted my tips. Ninety-six dollars. Triple pay plus tips. I'd made a hundred and forty dollars in one night.

And I stood in the back hallway and I thought, I could do this again.

And then I thought, Don't be stupid.

---

I clocked out at one in the morning.

Walked through the back door into the lot. It was empty. My car was the only one left, sitting under the one light. I dug in my pocket for my keys.

And then I heard it.

Not a sound. A feeling. That thing where the air changes and you know without looking.

I looked.

He was standing by my car.

Leaning against the driver's side door like he'd been there a while. Arms crossed. Cut still on. Watching me walk toward him with those eyes and not saying one word.

I stopped ten feet away.

"Something wrong with my car?" I said. My voice came out steady. I don't know how.

"No," he said.

"Then you mind moving?"

He didn't move.

He said, "You didn't tell me your last name, Just Ella."

And he said it soft. So soft. Like we were the only two people in the world and he was letting me in on a secret.

I didn't answer.

He pushed off the door, slow, and walked toward me. Stopped a foot away. Close enough that I could smell him — leather, and that smoke from inside, and under that something clean like he'd just showered.

He reached into his cut and pulled out a piece of paper.

Held it up.

It was a driver's license. Not mine. A license with the name Ella Rae Donnelly on it, and a photo that was three years old, and an address in a city two hundred miles away.

"I asked around," he said. "Seems you been lying to a lot of people for a long time."

I felt the blood leave my face.

He folded the license, careful, and put it back inside his cut. Over his heart.

Then he leaned in close. So close his mouth was by my ear.

"Relax," he said. "I'm not the one you're running from."

Chapter 2 Ends.