“No. He just… made every decision for me during the past six years. Where I went. What I spent. Who I talked to. He controlled me. But he never hit me.”
He’s quiet for a long time. “Then we won’t kill him.”
He says it the way someone might comment on the weather. Flat. Factual.
I can’t tell if he’s joking.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. Pull the coffee pot off the burner. Pour him a cup without asking, because I already know. Black. No sugar.
He wraps his hands around the mug. Drinks. Looks at me over the rim.
“The coffee’s terrible,” I say, and my voice cracks on it.
One corner of his mouth lifts. Barely a movement, but I made his face do that, and it spreads warmth through me.
“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”
The second man calls from the door. “Saber. He’s gone.”
He finishes the coffee in one long pull, sets the mug on the counter, and stands. He reaches into his pocket and puts a twenty on the counter.
“Closing time.” He says two words, and everybody in the diner moves.
The couple grabs their check. The guy at the counter drops a ten and walks out with his book. Tiffany doesn’t say a word.
Then he walks to the door. Stops. Doesn’t turn around.
“If he comes back, I’ll know.”
And they’re gone. The sound of bikes that rumble like thunder cracks open the desert floor.
I lock the door. Flip the sign. Press my forehead against the glass and breathe until my hands stop shaking.
Saber.
His name is Saber.
CHAPTER 2
SABER
Shelby is working the counter,same as every night this week. She’s got a rag in one hand and the coffee pot in the other, and she moves between the truckers and the regulars like she’s been here for years, not weeks.
She’s fucking beautiful, but she doesn’t know it. Brown hair pulled back in a messy knot, big green eyes, and a body that was built soft in all the places mine wasn’t. She barely comes up to my chest.
The top of her head would tuck right under my chin. I’ve thought about that more than once. How easy it would be to lift her. How her legs would have to wrap around my waist because there’d be nowhere else for them to go. How I’d only need one hand to pin both of hers above her head.
Fuck. She’s all I can think about lately.
Three weeks ago, I sat in this booth at seven in the morning, and a girl I’d never seen before poured my coffee and looked me dead in the eyes. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t look away until she was good and ready.
I came back the next morning. And the one after that.
Three weeks of mornings, and I never made a move. I didn’t know what she was running from, until that asshole showed up.But I’ve been around enough people with ghosts on their heels to recognize the signs.
The way she checked the door every time the bell rang. The way she kept her bag behind the counter instead of in the back. The way she parked her car nose-out.
She was ready to bolt at any second.
