Page 2 of Saber's Claim
My whole body responds like he put his mouth on my neck. Heat pulses between my legs and climbs, and my hand tightens on the pot.
He’s looking at me now. And I swear he knows exactly how my body reacted to his seemingly innocent touch.
I pour the coffee. Walk away. And this time, I don’t look back.
When I circle past a few minutes later, he’s gone. A twenty-dollar bill is tucked under the mug. The coffee is cold.
I press my palms flat against the Formica where his arms were.
Still warm.
The dinner crowd is thin. A couple is splitting a plate of fries. A guy at the counter is reading a paperback. Tiffany is counting down the minutes until closing time.
My feet ache. My apron is stained. I’m thinking about the biker’s hands and whether he’ll come in tomorrow.
The bell rings, and my whole body goes cold when I see who just walked through the door.
Kyle.
He’s standing in the doorway in a polo shirt and khakis. He’s clean-shaven, and his hair is combed. All charm and smiles on the outside, but I know what he’s really like behind closed doors—controlling and manipulative.
He tracked me. Thirteen hundred miles, three weeks of silence, and he tracked me to a diner in a town that barely exists on a map.
My hands go still on the rag I’m holding. My shoulders pull in. My chin drops. Six years of muscle memory kicks in before my brain catches up, and I hate it.
I hate that my body still knows how to shrink for this man.
“There she is.” He says it warmly, like we’re old friends. Like I didn’t leave in the middle of the night with two bags and no note. “You’re a hard girl to find, Shelby.”
He slides into a booth. The biker’s booth. And the wrongness of him sitting where that man sat this morning is so loud in my chest I can’t breathe.
I don’t move from behind the counter. “What are you doing here, Kyle?”
Whatever he is about to say, I won’t like the answer.
“I came to bring you home.”
He folds his hands on the table. It’s the patient gesture; the one he uses when he’s explaining why I’m wrong about something.
“You’ve made your point. You’re independent. Congratulations. But this—” He gestures at the diner, at my apron, at the life I built from nothing. “This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know what I am.”
“I know you better than anyone on this planet.” He leans back. Spreads his arms across the top of the booth. Taking up space the way he always does, so there’s none left for me. “Who pays your rent, Shelby? Who’s helping you out here? Because I know what a waitress makes, and I know you didn’t leave with much money.”
He kept track of every dollar I spent for six years. It didn’t matter whether it was my money or his money. Everything was his. The apartment. The furniture. My phone plan.
He never hit me. He never had to.
He just made sure I couldn’t survive without him, and then he reminded me of it every single day.
My hands are shaking. I shove them in my apron pockets.
“I’m not going back.”
“Shelby.” He’s using the voice that makes other people think he’s kind and makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. “Let’s not do this here. Come outside. We’ll talk in the car.”
In the car. Where nobody can see. Where the conversation becomes his, and the doors lock.
