Right when Ithink this week can’t get any worse… it does.
The dinner rush is in full swing, and the walls are closing in. The kitchen’s boiling hot. I’ve got one fryer down, a food blogger asking to "tour the back for his followers," and a group of girls in old LA Knights jerseys ordering every damn item on the menu just to take pictures of it and leave half untouched.
It’s still happening.
So-called fans are still swarming The Marrow.
And I’m two seconds away from losing it.
I duck into the walk-in just to breathe. Cold air hits my skin. I count to ten. Then twenty.
When I step back out, Wes is waiting with a ticket in one hand and a strange look on his face.
“What now?” I mutter, snatching the slip.
He doesn’t answer. He jerks his chin toward the front of the house, where something, orsomeone, is clearly causing a ripple.
That’s when I hear it.
A laugh. A familiar, syrupy smooth noise. A sound I haven’t heard in years and hoped I never would again.
It freezes me in place.
No. No way.
Another voice joins it, one of the hostesses, overly polite. Nervous.
And then: “No way, youareSavannah Monroe!”
Fuck.
The name slams into me like a freight train.
I don’t move, not yet. Can’t. My pulse is thunder in my ears, and every cell in my body is locked in place.
She’s here.
She’s actually here.
I round the corner slowly, dread curling in my gut like smoke, and then I see her.
Savannah.
As glossy as the last time I saw her, like not a day has passed. Red lipstick. White coat. Sunglasses perched on her head like a damn tiara. The restaurant hums with a low buzz, people recognizing her, whispering, pulling out phones.
And she’s loving it.
She stands in the middle of The Marrow like she owns it. One perfectly manicured hand resting lightly on the hostess stand, eyes scanning the room, searching. Until they find me.
Then she smiles.
That smile. All teeth and lies and showbiz charm.
“Knox,” she says, like she’s just bumped into me at a charity gala, not my fucking restaurant.
Everything in me recoils.
I step forward slowly, my body taut with the kind of tension that doesn’t come from cooking or stress, but from memory.
