Jagged (9 page)

We’d promised, though, to keep in touch. See each other. Go out and get a bite to eat. When I’d asked for the divorce, I’d told him I didn’t want to lose him from my life. I just didn’t want to be married to him anymore.

Greg, being Greg, went for that.

He’d do anything for me.

Even let me go.

Something the men in my life always seemed able to do.

Then again, I also seemed perfectly capable of asking them to.

But I hadn’t kept my promise. I had reason. My life was swirling down the toilet. We’d talked a couple of times and Greg knew this so he didn’t pressure me. Then again, he wouldn’t pressure me anyway. That wasn’t his style.

On leaden feet, I moved to his table and rounded him, carefully arranging my face so he saw I was welcoming, not wary. He caught sight of my movement and his clear, bluish-gray eyes came to me.

“Hey,” I greeted.

“Heard you were working here,” he replied.

I leaned into the table and tucked my tray under my arm. “Yeah. Better money.”

He nodded. He’d offered to help me out financially, repeatedly. I’d declined. Repeatedly.

“It’s good to see you,” I told him.

“Yeah, you too,” he told me.

I forced my lips into a grin. “Breakin’ the seal on The Dog,” I noted on a careful tease.

“Like I said, heard you were working here and haven’t seen you in a while. Thought I’d take a chance.”

“Glad you did,” I lied. It was a lie not because I didn’t want to see him, just that I didn’t like being surprised by his showing up at my work.

It was then Greg forced a smile.

“Can I get you a beer or somethin’?” I asked. “I… well, our other girl is out sick so it’s only me on tonight. I probably can’t hang at your table but I’ll get you a beer and do my best.”

“That’d be good, Zara.”

I nodded and asked, “Newcastle?”

“Yeah.”

I forced a smile, turned away, and moved toward the bar.

Ham moved toward me, his eyes sharp on my face.

“Newcastle,” I said the minute I hit the bar.

“Who’s that guy?” Ham asked a nanosecond after the final syllable left my mouth.

And again, Ham never missed anything.

I held his gaze. “My ex-husband.”

Ham’s jaw got tight and his eyes went to Greg

“Ham,” I called and his eyes came to me. “It’s cool. We’re cool. It wasn’t ugly.”

“Way I see it, babe, your house cleaned out, him leavin’ you stuck with a mortgage you couldn’t afford, that’s plain not true,” Ham returned.

I leaned into him. “I’ll explain later but, honestly, Ham. It’s cool. Seriously.”

“Right, you want me to believe that then you best stop lookin’ like takin’ a Newcastle to him is like walkin’ to the electric chair.”

Luckily, Greg didn’t have superhuman perceptive and deductive powers like Ham did so I was relatively certain I’d pulled the wool over his eyes.

I’d never been able to do that with Ham.

“I hurt him,” I said quietly.

“Shit happens. People deal. They don’t show where you work and make you look like you look right now, cookie.”

I couldn’t do this now so I asked, “Please, can you just get me his beer?”

Ham studied my face before he got me Greg’s Newcastle.

I took it to Greg and slid it in front of him. “There you go.”

“Should I open a tab or pay for this now?” Greg asked and that was so Greg. He didn’t know how to pay for a beer in a bar.

I tipped my head to the side and forced another smile. “You plannin’ on gettin’ hammered?”

Greg’s eyes moved over my hair before they came to mine and he answered, “No.”

“Then feel free to pay as they come, honey, but that one’s on me.”

He shook his head and straightened his back. “No, Zara. I’ll—”

I put my hand on his bicep. “Let me buy you a beer.”

I watched him pull in a breath and then he nodded.

“I’m gonna do a walk-through. Soon as I have everyone sorted, I’ll come back. Okay?”

“Sure, Zara.”

“Okay,” I said softly, then did as I said I would.

This took a while because I had a lot of customers. This was also not easy, knowing Greg was there and feeling Ham’s acute attention on me and my ex-husband the entire time.

When I was free for a few minutes, I took Greg a fresh Newcastle and put it in front of him, whisking away the empty.

“This one, I’m paying for,” Greg announced.

Again, I forced a smile. “I’ll allow that.”

“You got two seconds?” he asked.

Damn. Greg didn’t get out and about much so I had a feeling he was there for a reason and not just to see me. And I really didn’t have it in me with all that had been going on to deal with this if his need for two seconds was going to hit deep. He’d been really cool with me all along but I always worried one day, something would trip, he’d realize I did him wrong, and he’d stop being cool.

I worried these two seconds would show he was done with being cool.

I could give him that. He deserved it.

But not with no warning, at work, and with Ham watching.

“Yes,” I answered.

He looked to the beer, the wall, then twisted on his barstool so as better to face me.

“It’s public record but I didn’t find out that way. Guy at work’s wife works for a judge and she talks. She mentioned you. He knew about you and me, so he mentioned you so I know you changed your name back to Cinders.”

Of all the things I thought he might say, and truth be told, I had no idea what he was there to say, I just guessed he was there to say something, that wasn’t it.

“Yeah, I petitioned the judge a while ago. Why?”

“You took their name back.”

I pressed my lips together.

He knew about my parents. Then again, everyone in town did but Greg knew more than most because I told him.

He hated them. He didn’t hate anyone. He was a kind soul and didn’t have a judgmental bone in his body. But he hated my parents and he’d never even met them.

“You said you’d never take their name back,” he went on.

“Greg—”

“You asked for us to be over, Zara, and I didn’t like that but I left and the only thing I could think of to make me feel better, not having you, was that I gave you that. I took away their name and gave you mine. I thought you’d keep it.”

“Honey, we aren’t married anymore. It’s not mine to have.”

“That’s the only good thing I gave you.”

Oh God, now
this
was stinging.

“That’s not the only good thing you gave me, Greg,” I told him gently.

“It’s the only thing you let me leave with you. Made me clear everything of mine away. I thought you’d keep
something.
”

“I asked you to take your stuff because it’s
your
stuff. That’s fair. I wasn’t making you clear everything of yours away,” I corrected.

“Well, it felt like that,” he returned.

Man, oh man, that wasn’t what I intended. I was trying to do right.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I replied carefully.

“You’ve got nothing of me. You even gave back the rings.”

“You bought those, too,” I reminded him. “That’s also fair, honey.”

Again, his back went straight but this time with a snap.

“You know, stuff like this, Zara, it isn’t about fair. That has nothing to do with it. It’s about a lot of other stuff but not about being fair. I didn’t want to leave you but you wanted that so I let you go. Then you made me leave you like I left you and I hated that but you wanted it so I did it. But what
I
wanted was some indication that maybe a day or an hour or a second of what we had meant something to you. Enough you’d want to keep it. And I could live with all that, thinking that the best thing I gave you, the most important thing I had to give outside my love, was my name. I thought at least you’d keep that. But you got rid of that, too.”

“Greg—”

He stood, pulled out his wallet, and threw a twenty down on the table.

“Don’t make change. I know that tip is above fair but at least let me give you that,” he said before he turned and walked away.

Yep. He was done being cool.

I stared at his back long after the door closed behind him.

Long enough for Ham to get to me, come close, for me to feel his warmth behind me, his bigness surrounding me, but nothing was going to take away this sting.

“You’re on break,” Ham growled above my head.

“I gotta do a sweep of the tables.”

“You go back to the office, sit down, pull your shit together, or I carry you back there and lock you in until your shit is together.”

I turned and looked up at him.

He was wearing his scary look.

“My shit is together,” I lied.

“Bullshit. Motherfucker gutted you. I watched,” Ham returned. “Go. Now. Break.”

I held his eyes.

Then I went back to the office, took a break, and got my shit together.

Or, more truthfully, I got myself to a place where I could pretend that it was.

* * *

I was right.

When the night was done and Ham took us home on his bike, I was so exhausted from work and dealing with Greg, I couldn’t even enjoy the ride.

But I’d made a shitload of tips.

I was in my bedroom, sitting on the side of my bed yanking off my boots, so ready to go to sleep it wasn’t funny.

Because sleep would erase the sting of Greg, at least for a while.

My bedroom door opened, and I turned to watch Ham, in socks, his usual faded jeans, his navy shirt unbuttoned all the way down, a bottle of vodka in one hand, two shot glasses in the other.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Get comfortable, cookie, story time,” Ham answered, and without delay,
he
got comfortable.

That was to say, he sat on my bed, stretched his legs out, poured two shots of vodka, put the bottle on my nightstand, lounged back against my headboard, and held a glass out to me.

“Ham, I’m exhausted. I need sleep.”

“You need sleep, stretch out, throw this back, and give it to me fast.”

“Give what to you fast?”

“The explanation you said you’d give me later. Just sayin’, darlin’, it’s later.”

I had the feeling Ham was in the mood to be stubborn and unyielding because he was lounged on my bed like he used to lounge when we were together-together and we’d relax in front of the TV. That was to say, stretched out, shirt open, boots off. And when we’d relax in front of the TV, Ham did it like he intended to do it forever. Which was the way he looked now.

So I decided to give in so I could get it over with and get some shut-eye.

I avoided looking at his broad, muscled chest and defined abs as I crawled into bed and took the shot glass from him.

Ham had a hairy chest. It wasn’t profuse. It wasn’t a dusting either. I’d never been one to like men with hairy chests but his was just so…
Ham
. If the first time we made love and he took off his shirt (or, if memory serves, as it actually happened, I yanked it off), and I found a smooth chest, I would have been disappointed.

Even though on another guy I did not like this, with Ham, I loved it. In the times he was mine, I slid my fingers through it. I trailed my nails down it.

And after a night like that night, I would have liked nothing better than to cuddle up next to him, put my cheek to his shoulder, sift my fingers through his chest hair, rest my hand against the warm hardness of him, and let his mellowness melt my physically and emotionally exhausting night away.

Alas, this was not an option open to me.

To get my thoughts off his chest hair and stop myself from even beginning to think about his abs, which would not bring on thoughts of relaxation and stress relief, but instead orgasms, which would be a better kind of stress relief, I threw back the shot.

Ham leaned forward, took the glass from me, his was empty, too, and he twisted for a refill, demanding, “Stretch out, babe.”

I stretched out, my head to the foot of the bed, on my side, up on an elbow, head in hand, eyes on him.

He reached out an arm with the filled glass toward me. I leaned to take it and settled back in.

“Talk to me,” he invited.

I didn’t sugarcoat it.

“I fucked him over,” I declared.

“You cheat on him?” Ham shot back.

“No.”

“Steal from him?”

“No.”

“Lie to him?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I loved him.”

Ham’s brows shot together, giving me his scary look. Or, I should say,
scarier
look and he asked, “What?”

I rolled to my back, rested the shot glass on my belly, and told the ceiling, “I loved him. When we got married, I was happy. I was thinking house, babies, settled, safe.” My eyes slid to Ham. “I really did love him, darlin’.”

“Okay. So… what?” Ham asked slowly.

“I didn’t love him enough,” I whispered.

His face lost the scary look, went soft, and his voice was jagged when he said, “Cookie.”

He got me.

He always did.

I turned to my side, got up on my forearm, and explained. “Six weeks in, Ham, six weeks into our marriage, I knew I didn’t do right. I had second thoughts, too late. He was a homebody. I knew that. I still married him even though I was not a homebody. I’m social. I don’t like stayin’ at home all the time. That’s all he liked. He likes foreign movies—you know, the ones with subtitles. He watches them a lot. I don’t like them. Reading and watching”—I shook my head—“did my head in. And half of them are just plain weird. After we tied the knot, he didn’t spring that on me as a surprise, tying me to a chair, and making me watch Polish movies. Before we were married, I knew that about him, too.”

“So you fucked up,” he said in his jagged voice.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Huge. Time went on. He’d talk babies. I’d delay because I knew. I knew I wanted out and I didn’t want a baby caught in that mess. I wanted something he couldn’t give me. I didn’t try to change him. Make him into what I wanted. In the beginning, I just thought I could deal with who he was if I had all the rest.”

“All the rest of what, darlin’?”

“Babies. Home. Safety.”

“But you couldn’t deal.”