“Don’t worry about me for a second,” I insist, standing in my mismatched shoes and escorting her towards the door.
I watch her leave, turning back to the assistant when he clears his throat, holding the matching shoe in his hand. They’re lovely but my enjoyment has evaporated.
“Thank you,” I tell him, barely bothering to try it on my foot before swapping back to my tatty sneakers. “I’ll take them.”
“You’ve seen the price?”
Dahlia was right. The snooty tone insists I can’t afford to pay for what I want. “Yes. I’ve seen the price.” Then I remember her parting advice. “And I’ll take a pair of ballet flats in the same size. Plain black if you have them.”
His visit to the back room is shorter this time, and he opens the box, pushing aside the tissue paper.
“Yes, that’s fine,” I say, barely looking. My stomach is reacting to the coffee, and I really want to teleport home right this instance.
The assistant rings up the charges while I stand with the credit card in my sweaty hand. When I pass it across, he frowns. “This isn’t yours.”
It’s not even a question. A dipping sensation in my belly could be the double espresso or it could be a reaction to the disbelief flashing in his eyes. I just my chin into the air. “No, it belongs to my boyfriend.”
“And you have his permission?”
Nobody challenged Dahlia.
We’ve made purchases at four stores. Five if you count the café.
The more he glances at me with open suspicion, the more guilty I feel, and the more defensive. “Of course, I have his permission. You can check with him,” I snap, half hoping he does just to see him flounder. I pull out my phone, flicking through to my contact list to bring up Maddox’s details.
“I’ll check with the bank. Come through to the back office,” he tells me, gesturing to another assistant to say he’s leaving the main store. “Just to get out of the way of the other customers.”
My hands clench into fists, the rush of embarrassment at not being believed so intense that if he weren’t still holding the card, I’d leave. I nearly do anyway, but I don’t want to tell Maddox I abandoned his card in the clammy hands of a random shoe store clerk. Even worse, I’d hate the shop assistant to think he successfully intimidated me.
Instead, I follow him into a windowless cubbyhole and take a seat, imagining how his attitude will change when someone tells him I’m allowed to use it.
If someone tells him that.
My gloom takes centre stage, then the man finishes his call. “They’re checking,” he tells me. “It shouldn’t take too long.” The moment he says that the phone rings. This time the call’s even shorter. “The cardholder is on his way.”
Thank goodness.
I hope I’m not dragging Maddox away from anything important. After learning about his lie, I wouldn’t mind going somewhere, just the two of us. To talk, to reconnect and build back our trust.
“Justin?” a voice eventually calls from the hallway. “Customer for you.”
I sit upright, expecting Maddox to walk through the door, waiting for the touch of relief.
Instead, Blaine Alcott strides into the room.
His father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EVIE
“I didn’t steal it,”I repeat for the umpteenth time since getting into Blaine’s vehicle. The smooth leather interior is gorgeous to touch, my hands can’t stop stroking it. A point of contrast to the tight tangle of hatred directed at me from the man driving. “Maddox wanted me to buy some clothes.”
“You’re a stripper. The last thing any man wants is to buy youclothes.”
I turn my face away from his, staring out the side window at the vehicles travelling in the next lane over, going about their days without being whisked towards certain doom.
The fear shouldn’t be this powerful, not when I’ve done nothing wrong. But tell that to the brain raised on being tossed from household to household. A childhood where every lesson ended up the same, that I’m a burden, a nuisance, a debt that nobody wants to take on.
