She says quietly, “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Coming here?” I frown.
She shakes her head. “Being there for Maisie.”
I glance over at the sheriff, decimating the pie in record time. It’s damn good pie. I don’t blame the guy.
Lowering my voice, I lean closer to the counter. “But she might need more help than I can give her.”
She pats the back of my hand. “You’re a good man, Wyatt,” she adds. “I’ve seen the way you all keep an eye on her. Give her time to get used to the idea that you won’t hurt her, and shewillopen up about her past. Scars need time to heal. If she didn’t feel safe here, she’d have left already.”
“I know that.” I rub a hand over my jaw. It’s why I’m so desperate to help her in case someone scares her away before I can get through to her. “Thanks, Audrey.”
None of us can make her talk or open up, but wecanbe there when she needs us.
“She’ll be okay here,” Audrey assures me with a confidence I wish I could absorb. “Rios has always come together for one of its own, and that includes Maisie as well.”
Chapter 3
Maisie
When I first started working at the diner, Nico had me serve the smaller tables near the front counter, where he could see me from the kitchen and intervene if I needed help.
He didn’t seem to notice any of my bruises, and neither did Lina, his thirty-two-year-old daughter. They just got to work showing me how to use the cash register, take orders, and clear tables without making multiple trips to the same table. I will be forever thankful to them for not asking questions I wouldn’t have known how to answer.
I had tried concealer. Layers and layers of the camouflage stuff that I’d picked up at a CVS. The sales assistant said it was good enough to cover up tattoos, all while she avoided telling me I looked like a raccoon with my two black eyes.
My concealer had been thick, but my bruises were dark and at the stage when they get bad before they get better. The more I applied, the more the makeup drew attention to the puffiness and the swelling from my finger-shaped bruises from Derek yanking me around.
It happened in Nevada.
One night, I went to work at a hotel. I came back later to find Derek had broken into my motel room and was waiting for me in the dark.
As bad as my bruises were when I started at the diner, they weren’t nearly as bad as they had been in Oregon. My face and neck were out of bounds. His parents and people from church would have seen those. Every other part of me was open to abuse, and he was never shy about dishing out a punch or a kick when I didn’t live up to the perfect wife he’d dreamed up in his head, a vision I could never achieve.
Sundays were always the worst.
We’d come home from church. He’d have smiled at everyone, kissed the back of my hand, and kept me tucked up against his side, playing at the perfect husband.
But when we went home, the pretense slipped. He didn’t have to go to work, and everyone was busy with their own families, so it was just us. No buffer between him and me. From midday until eleven at night, when he went up to bed, I had hours and hours of second-guessing myself, terrified that one word I said would set him off.
I could never do anything right. His frustrationsalwaysblew over on a Sunday when I had no reason to leave the house to escape him.
IhatedSundays.
The bell chimes over the door, yanking me back to the present.
Lina serves tables near the entrance, where large groups of tourists and families sit. Her section is always loud, full of laughing or, in most cases, crying kids and overwhelmed parents trying to quiet them so they don’t disturb everyone else.
I was beyond grateful when Nico had me take the smaller tables, thinking I’d lucked out with a great boss who wouldn’tpush me into overwhelming situations before I was ready to handle them.
As a red-faced toddler screams on table fifteen, my gaze lands on the brown-haired college-aged guy leering at me from my section. I wish I were dealing with the baby, not him. Give me twenty screaming babies, but nothim.
Lina bumps her shoulder against mine, and I startle so badly that if I’d been holding something, I’d be wearing it.
“Sorry. Want me to go?” she asks, her eyes sliding from me to the guy who had alarm bells ringing in my head ever since I showed him to his table minutes before.
He’d been staring at my ass the entire time. I felt it. He’d surprised me by not trying to grab it. After thrusting a menu at him, I’d babbled about being back in a couple of minutes to take his order, and I’d all but run away. Since then, I’ve been hiding out behind the counter, making it look like I’m waiting for food to come out when in reality all I’m really doing is delaying the inevitable.
