I did my best to ignore him, but I couldn’t unhear the words. Starting down the road, I left my disappointment behind and headed for the Fairfax Minimart.
The tears clouded my vision.
A horn sounded.
I slammed on the brakes and narrowly missed the car. Stuck in my little bubble of self-pity, I hadn’t noticed it.
Stopping on the side of the road, I took a minute to get my hyperventilating under control and wipe my tears. “Get it together, girl,” I recited to myself. After a few sniffles and another wipe at my eyes, I straightened my back, checked my mirror, and pulled back onto the road.
Luke had been a mirage. The one thing I’d thought I knew about him had been a lie. From the first day, I’d considered him one of the good people, not a violent ex-convict like Dom.
Had I fallen for an act? Everything in our relationship had happened out of order, so I hadn’t seen how that was leading me to this point. I’d given myself to a man I didn’t even know. He’d hidden everything from me, knowing I’d reject the real Luke, the ex-convict Luke, so he could have me for a week.
I should have known it was too good to be true. Now I had no idea which was the real Luke Carver. Was he the violent felon Nesbit had said he was? Or was he the man I’d spent a wonderful week with? The man who’d helped me and taken care of me when no one else would.
My dealings with Dom had taught me that the criminal element sooner or later always reverted to their baser form. Would that be Luke tomorrow or the day after?
After picking up my check in Fairfax, I went to the bank branch in the grocery store.
At the window, Marci was surprised that I wanted to cash the check instead of depositing it. “How’s the new car?”
It took me a second to recover. “I didn’t get it yet. They weren’t as flexible on the price as I’d expected, so I need to save a little more.”
She counted out my money. “That happened to me too,” she lamented. “It’s criminal the way those guys lie.”
Her comment made me flinch as I locked the bills away in my wallet. “Car dealers are the worst,” I agreed as I left.
Back outside, I had a choice to make. Which way did I turn out of the parking lot?
Back to Luke’s?
My heart thumped almost audibly with fear, and my legs shook. What truth would I learn there?
I turned the other direction instead.
Chapter 32
Debbie
This time of day Dom would be at work, so I pushed through the door and into the welcome chill inside the Hilltop Diner. This had been my refuge to think, to wish, and to plan for better times. I looked toward the back. My usual booth was empty.
A girl I remembered as Ramona, one of my ex-boyfriend Willy’s previous girlfriends, glared at me as the door closed.
Only when I caught sight of Willy sitting across from her did I understand why.
Ramona’s sneer as I passed their table was lethal.
Without a word, I continued to my usual booth and slid in, keeping my head down, not wanting to look at anyone.
My leg shook uncontrollably with adrenaline. I patted my face dry with a napkin from the table.
Unable to flee and unable to stay with Luke—what the hell could I do now?
Nell walked up, cheery as ever. “Geez, girl, you see a ghost or something?”
I must have looked terrible. “Or something?” I concentrated on stilling my leg.
“The regular?” she asked.
We’d skipped breakfast. “More than that, I think.” I needed sustenance to quell my nervousness, and to keep my hands busy lest I start pulling my hair out.
“No problem. Whaddya want?”
“Could I have the cheeseburger and fries?” I asked tentatively. My leg started up again, and I forced a hand down on my thigh.
“Sure thing,” she said with a nod.
Head in hands, I closed my eyes to think. Now I was back to figuring out how to turn myself in, and without any help.
Dom’s viciousness meant I had to be quick about it. He could find out at any time that I was back—hell, now I had to avoid him and Annie.
I’d planned on talking it through with Luke and maybe having him negotiate for me. He wasn’t a lawyer, but it seemed better than doing it myself. But that was before I’d learned what he was.
I was so totally fucking out of options. Going back to Luke’s now seemed off the table.
A half hour later, the adrenaline had subsided enough to still my leg. I’d scarfed down my burger and was dragging a fry through the ketchup when I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. Pushing the plate away, I folded my arms on the table and rested my head on them.
When I looked up a minute later, maybe longer, Nell was in front of me.
“Can I join you?” she asked.
“Nah, you have customers to take care of.” I looked behind me to see people at several other booths and the counter.
Willy and Ramona had left without me noticing, not that he was any of my business anyway.
“Julie will take care of them for a minute.” She slid in across from me. “Why so glum? What happened?”
I looked for the words to describe it. “I’ve got big problems.”
“Having trouble staying ahead of your stepdad?”
My eyes widened. Somehow she knew I’d run away. “I didn’t say—”
She leaned forward. “You didn’t have to. I hear things,” she said softly.
That brought a terrible thought front and center. “Has he been in here looking for me?”
She shook her head. “Naw, he wouldn’t dare. I kicked him out the first time he set foot in here, and he knows what Spencer would think of him coming back.”
I choked back a laugh at the thought of Dom being blackballed. “Really?”
“I only serve good people in here, and that doesn’t include him.”
That had me thinking back to the night she’d kicked Scarface out on his ass. It had served her well to have a biker with a mean reputation behind her.
“I’ve got no place to stay, and I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.
“Pick someone you can trust.”
I cocked my head. “It’s not that simple.”
“Like I said, there’s good people and bad people. The good people you can trust. The others, you can’t. It doesn’t get any simpler.” She let that witticism sink in for a second. “If I get in a jam, I just go back over what I did to get there, and figure out where I went wrong.” She stood. “Think about it.”
When I was alone again, I put my head down with my eyes closed. I went over the decisions I’d made and things I’d done, looking for something to undo, but I got nowhere. I’d left home, and that couldn’t be undone. I’d gotten robbed and beaten up. It was too late to undo that.
If I’d stayed at Willy’s more than one night, that might have worked, except with Ramona back in the picture, that wasn’t an option any longer. I’d been joking when I’d mentioned to Annie that Dom would pay money to find me, but that couldn’t be undone, and by Nell’s definition, Annie had proven she wasn’t in the good-people camp anyway.
I’d left Luke’s place because he was a convict like Dom. It had seemed logical at first, but was it? He’d told me I could trust him, and he’d never given me any reason to doubt that. He hadn’t told me about his past, but then, I hadn’t told him about mine either.