But right now, with him standing in front of me, shaking from rage wearing a foreign expression on his face.
Before I opened my mouth, Logan walked into the room. “Elena, you’re back. We’re so glad, I was about to…” He trailed off as he walked fully into the kitchen and saw Bobby’s face and likely felt the energy in the room.
“Bobby, what are you doing?” he demanded, but then he must have gotten a look at my face because I heard his harsh intake of breath.
“You need to tell me who did this, right now, baby doll,” Bobby gritted through his teeth.
“How about you step back, take a second, Bobby,” Logan said, always the peacekeeper, but even though I couldn’t see his face, there was an anger in his voice that was as foreign as Bobby’s expression.
Bobby didn’t move.
“How about you give Elena a second?” Logan added, enunciating my name. “She’s likely been through a lot.”
That had Bobby immediately letting me go. But he didn’t take a step back. His face did soften slightly, and he lifted his hand to gently stroke my bruised skin.
“I’ll kill them,” he whispered.
My eyes were brimming from Bobby’s reaction, and from Logan’s voice. Because of the emotion in them. The concern.
“We’re not talking about killing with you still holding a meat cleaver,” Logan said. “We’ll do it over coffee.”
I looked to my boss and father figure for the past few years. Nathan called him Pops, to his great delight. He and Esther had lost their daughter when she was fifteen to an overdose. I felt that pain in them every single day, and as a mother, I considered them saints for still finding the ability to go on, to smile, to love each other like they did after something as soul-destroying as that.
Logan was wearing a different kind of pain right now.
I flinched that it was because of me.
“I’ve got to get to work,” I told him. “It’s the breakfast rush, and I’m not going to put you out.”
“Fuck the breakfast rush,” Logan said, shocking me more than Bobby had.
Logan never cursed. No matter what disasters happened at the dinner, and all sorts of crap happened. Waitresses stealing, customers complaining, toilets flooding, food deliveries getting lost, small kitchen fires. All through it, he kept his calm while Esther did all the swearing and stressing. He was a pond on a summer’s day, no ripples. His wife was the Atlantic Ocean, stormy and unpredictable. It worked.
But there were ripples today.
“I can’t right now,” I whispered, a plea to the two men. “I just need to wait tables, deliver food and pretend that things are normal, just for a couple of hours. After that, I can do it.”
Both men regarded me, both gazes softening as I knew they would. Though Bobby was still gripping that cleaver pretty darn hard.
Logan nodded, understanding on his face. He moved across the room to pull me into his arms. He smelled of peppermint and Old Spice. I sank into the embrace and bit my lip so I didn’t cry.
I didn’t want to let go of the safety in his arms, the love, but I had to.
I pulled back, took a breath, put on my ‘customer service smile’ and readied myself for the day.
“Two hours,” Bobby barked. “Then we’re hearing about this. You’re not dealing with this alone.”
I bit my lip even harder to make myself not cry at that one.
“Two hours,” I promised.
“Oh honey,” Esther whispered, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. Tears swam in the woman’s eyes.
Never had I seen that.
Or heard the softening in her voice, apart from with Nathan, and even then, she was still stern. And he loved her for that. Everyone cooed and fussed over him, because he was the cutest kid ever and also the coolest to be around. He adored the fact that Esther spoke to him like an adult and didn’t take shit.
As promised, Logan had come and got me after the breakfast rush was over, and exhaustion was catching up with me. A couple of the other waitresses noticed my face and either ignored it, sensing I couldn’t talk about it or gave me soft smiles.
Apart from Kaitlyn, of course. The newest girl who inexplicably hated me when she first started.
She scowled at me and then ignored me.
She definitely wasn’t happy about Logan pulling me from the floor, muttering about having to cover my tables.
I hadn’t planned on telling them everything when Bobby, Logan, and Esther sat me down in the back office with a plate of peanut butter pie and a large pot of coffee.
You’d think I would be sick of peanut butter baked goods with the sheer amount of sugar I’d consumed this morning, but you’d be wrong.
I dove into it and somehow ended up diving into my entire story, starting with meeting Robert and finishing with one of the top security firms in the city currently staking out my son’s school to make sure he wasn’t kidnapped again.