Jogging across the parking lot, I approach her and pull her car door open. Crouching down next to her, I put my hand on her knee.
“What’s wrong?”
Her eyes are cast downward, taking in my hand wrapped around her knee.
“What have you been getting into?” she asks, her voice quivering, lighting a match inside me. It’s like a switch flipped from good to evil. “Graham, what did you do?”
The sound of an ignition starting pulls me away from her, to the loud engine behind us. As soon as my eyes fall on the source, I feel the ice fill my veins. I’m torn between wanting to cross the parking lot and lay him out and wanting to wrap my arm around Halle and get her out of here.
I’m kicking myself for letting her walk out here by herself. My mind drifts back to the conversation I had earlier this week, the information that had come in from an informant about how they had spotted Krate in the parking lot of Brodie’s.
Seeing the black GTO parked behind her, I stand to full height not shying away from the coward who I know is behind the wheel. Whatever happened has everything to do with me and this bastard.
All I see is red. I want nothing more than to pull him out of the car and rip him to shreds. The lights flash in front of my eyes, as he puts the car into reverse and slowly backs out of the parking spot.
As the car turns, pulling out, his eyes meet mine.
“Oh, God,” Halle mutters to herself. “Graham, stop! Don’t go,” she cries, reading my mind.
Flexing my jaw, I stare him down, sending a message to him not to fuck with me, but the smile that lines his mouth has me curling my hand into a fist as he hits the gas and peels out of the parking lot. When his car turns the corner, pulling out of the lot, I’m next to Halle in an instant.
“C’mon, I’m going to give you a ride home. You can tell me what happened in the car. I want to make sure you get home safe. I’ll have Maverick come by tomorrow and drive your car to the salon.”
Holding my hand out to her, she puts hers in mine as I help her out of the car. I don’t move to let go until we approach my pickup and I help her into the cab.
We drive in silence the two minutes it takes to get to her place. Pulling up alongside of her apartment building, I put the gear in park and roll my head to the side to glance over at Halle.
“Tell me what happened, Hals.”
The light from the dashboard casts a soft glow on her face, giving me just enough to see the sweet curve of her smile. I know she likes hearing me call her by the same nickname I had for her all those years ago.
“It was nothing at first. He was just hitting on me, acting like he wanted to take me home. But then he.” She pauses, glancing back over at me. “He asked where you were. Said he couldn’t believe you let me out of your sight long enough for him to talk to me.”
My grip on the steering wheel tightens.
“Has he pulled this shit before?”
The anger is rising in my voice, taking her off guard. Normally I can keep my temper in check. I’m not usually one to fly off the handle like this, especially not around her.
Something about knowing this skeevy fucker is trying to get close to my Halle pisses me off.
Her eyes narrow at me as she lets out a heavy sigh. She doesn’t know what I know though. She doesn’t realize how tangled up into my past, into what happened to Gage, we believe he is. I can’t tell her, at least not yet, but dammit I want to. I want her to know so she understands and so she’ll stay the fuck away from him.
“Listen, Graham,” she says, but I hold my hand up stopping her.
“Don’t go there with me, Halle. This isn’t one of those topics you can fire back at me about how I don’t need to worry about you and you can do whatever the hell you want. Not about this, not with you. Whether you like it or not, I’m gonna worry about you. If it’s you, it is my damn business. Let me make this clear, we will not be goin’ there. Not ever.”
Halle lets out a heavy sigh, as she crosses her arms over her stomach. I watch as she runs her finger over her thumbnail, before she glances up meeting my eyes.
“I’m going to ask you again, Halle; has he tried to pull this shit before?”
She presses her lips into a thin line, contemplating, before she finally answers.
“No, he hasn’t. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling he was only doing it because of you.”
She doesn’t know why but hearing her say it I know she’s not wrong.
“Why do you say that?”
“I saw him poking around your truck before I got outside. I think I caught him off guard when he saw me coming.” Her eyebrows furrow as she looks at me. “I’m not sure what he would be looking for. You’ve never been one to keep your vehicles very clean.”
She looks down at the floor, kicking her foot at the sweatshirt and empty bottle of motor oil sitting on the floor. I’ve been meaning to throw it away, I just haven’t got around to it.
“Just do me a favor, Hals. Please just stay away from Krate and any of the scumbags he runs around with, alright? They’re not good people, and I don’t trust them,” I say, lowering my voice. I know she can hear the worry in my voice as she peers up at me.
She’s trying to get a read on me, figure out what I’m not telling her but doesn’t fight me for more answers. I’m grateful as hell for it too. I don’t want to lie to her, but now isn’t the time that I fill her in on this. Not yet anyway.
“Okay,” she says. Very rarely does she give into me without pushing.
“You may not believe me. I certainly don’t deserve your trust anymore, but I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you.”
My mind filters back to the night Gage died, the panic that consumed me. Picturing being in that moment but with Halle on the other end, I just can’t.
Resting my chin on my closed fist, I glance out the window at the street light in the alley behind her apartment building. The light is about to go out, so it flashes every few seconds. I let it distract me from the darkness of my thoughts.
“I do,” she whispers, catching me off guard. My eyebrows furrow and for a second, I’m unsure of what she’s talking about, but then my comment comes back to me. Hearing her tell me, even after everything happened and the pain I put her through, she still trusts me carries a lot of weight.
Her hand reaches across the center console and brushes against my bicep. My arm flexes under her touch. I can feel the warmth of the contact radiating down my arm and throughout my body. Only she has ever been able to make me feel this way. Seeing her, touching her tonight for the first time in years, it makes me wonder what I was thinking letting her go and leaving her behind.
I have thought about her every day for the past five years. When I first left, she would call or text me almost every day. For the longest time, I would sit and replay the voice mails she would leave, just using the sound of her voice as a connection to the loss I felt aching in my stomach. I saved her text messages and would re-read them when I was thinking about her, regretting my decision to leave. I left her with nothing but a goodbye, yet I used her words telling me she missed me to get through every day.
It made me feel incredibly selfish but giving her the same in return would’ve only been to ease the guilt I felt inside. It wasn’t going to help her move on, so every time I thought about responding back, I closed the message and turned off my phone.