His brows furrowed, a fraction, barely visible. “You never got it, before this, how did you know how?”
I smiled, even though my insides were quaking like the San Andreas fault was rupturing. “You just do,” I replied. “You don’t have to be shown love to know how to give it. It’s in us, all of us, even big scary badasses who talk in grunts and don’t use verbs,” I teased. “I think you just have to find something that’s worth loving. Nature does the rest.”
It was then that I figured out what nature had done for me. It had given me someone else to love.
I loved Lance.
And I was about to open my big, stupid mouth and say it, but he kissed me instead.
Then he fucked me. On the sofa.
Fucked. Not made love.
It’s important to make that distinction.
“You need to quit,” Lance said from behind me.
I paused throwing all my crap into my purse. But I didn’t look around. “Excuse me?”
Lance obviously didn’t like that I wasn’t making eye contact with him, or maybe he didn’t like the cold bite in my tone. Whatever it was, he grabbed my hips and turned me so I was facing him.
We were in a fight.
Because I had to work. For the seventh day in a row. Lance, apparently, had counted since my foot was healed enough to walk around on all day.
I had too. But not for the same reason.
Esther and Logan were not forcing me to work seven days straight. In fact, they were arguing about it every single day I turned up. Esther did not send me home, though. Merely grumbled about stubborn women under her breath.
“Takes one to know one!” I shouted at her back.
She flipped me the bird.
I did not want to work seven days straight. I did not want to miss weekends with Nathan. Time with him. But I also did not want Nathan to live on the street.
The insurance was going through. Somehow they were covering almost everything. Somehow, the landlord was covering the difference. Lance had something to do with this, I was sure.
I didn’t know how long insurance would take to come through. I also needed money, a lot of it, to pay Keltan, who continued to brush me off every time I mentioned starting a direct debit every time we spoke.
His receptionist even made excuses when I tried to do it through her.
I would do it.
Somehow.
Hence the seven days working.
Hence Lance and I being angry with each other.
He didn’t want me working seven days straight. I didn’t want him telling me when I should and shouldn’t work.
So I’d gotten ready in a huff, ignoring him, until this moment where I’d been about to walk out the door and he’d informed me I needed to quit and then manhandled me so I would face him.
He let go of me so he could fold his arms over his chest, I supposed to intimidate me with his badass stance, or distract me with the way his muscles moved with the motion.
The latter worked for a second.
Until he spoke.
“That diner, you need to turn in your notice.”
I straightened my spine and moved my eyes from his distracting and beautiful muscles. “You see, Lance. For all your ability to read people, to know things about people just by noticing a few tiny things, you didn’t hear the warning in my tone that told you to rethink that statement.”
His jaw twitched. “Oh, I heard it,” he clipped. “Just don’t give a shit about it. ‘Cause we both know that you’re better than that place. You’re worth so much more.”
I skipped over the sweet part of that sentence because it was sandwiched between things that made me raging mad. And it was spoken in a cold and harsh tone, even for Lance.
“I’m better than a place that gave me a job without references or any waitressing experience?” I asked. “For the people who helped me get out of a shitty pay by the hour motel room I was renting with my infant son? A place that has made it possible for me to feed, clothe, and house that son? I don’t care if you have a fancy shiny office or fancy shiny SUVs that you think add up to something more. But I’m not better than all of that. I’m not worth more than that. Because that diner, the people, what it gave me, it’s fucking priceless,” I hissed. “Furthermore, the very fact that you think you have the authority to do things like tell me to quit my job because it doesn’t measure up to your standards, or maybe because you’re too embarrassed to have a…” I trailed off, snatching the word ‘girlfriend’ off my tongue before I uttered it. Because it felt wrong. Presumptuous. Also lacking. “A whatever I am as a waitress, that’s your problem. Not mine.”