Hope
I’m about to settle down for the night—a glass of wine, thick socks, and some garbage DVD sounds like a good plan—when my cell buzzes from my handbag. When I see that it’s the restaurant, I think about ignoring it. But just because a handsome biker gave me some cash, it doesn’t mean I can suddenly start ignoring my workplace. This is what you get for living two minutes from the restaurant, I think.
“Yes?” I answer.
“It’s me.” Alex sounds out of breath. “I’m really, really sorry, Hope. But I’m here on my own packing up. It’s going to take forever. I called Lucca on his cell and he said I could call you. He’ll give you an hour’s overtime for it.”
I sigh, but quietly so it doesn’t travel down the phone. The clock tells me it’s just gone midnight, but Alex has one of those soft, innocent voices and the thought of him there alone doesn’t thrill me.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be there in five.”
I go into the living room and slip into my shoes. I haven’t even changed out of my work clothes yet. Dawn is asleep in the armchair, moaning softly to herself. Every so often, her head moves from one shoulder to the other, as though something in her dream is chasing her. Probably all her demons: drugs and the quests to get drugs; the things she did when she didn’t have drugs; the men she went with to secure a steady supply of drugs.
I take the blanket from the couch and drape it over her. Then I lean in and kiss her on the forehead. My little sister, all snuggled up, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead as the drugs ooze out of her system.
“You’ll feel better soon,” I whisper.
I wouldn’t say that to her when she’s awake, though, because I have no clue if it’s true.
I lock the front door behind me and leave for the restaurant, my eyes heavy with sleep, but my step oddly light, springy.
The memory of the money, hidden underneath my mattress, is like a tonic against the thought of working past midnight.
The only problem is the thought that accompanies the reassurance: I’ll have to thank him in some way.
How does one thank the leader of an outlaw biker gang?
“You can go now, Alex,” I say, rubbing down the table.
His shaggy-haired head snaps up. “But we still have to do the rest of the cutlery. And arrange the glasses for the morning. And—”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “You’ve been on your feet for too long.”
“So have you,” he mutters.
“Yes, but I’m twenty-four. I have age on my side, young man.”
He grins at me, all teeth. “Are you sure?” he asks uncertainly.
“I’m sure. Go on now. Don’t make me ask again.”
I’m on one side of the table, Alex’s on the other, a rag in his hand. His polo shirt is stained with water and sweat and grease and beer, and his eyes are bloodshot with tiredness. “Will you get home on your own? I mean, will you be okay? It’s dark.”
“I can take care of myself. I have a tube of mace in my handbag.”
He laughs. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Seriously.”
“Oh.”
“Go on.” I wave my rag in his direction; the smell of the cleaning product rises into the air. “Don’t make me chase you out!”
He laughs again. “You’re the best, Hope, you know that?”
“Oh, yeah, kid. Look at me.” I wave a hand over the restaurant. “I’m the best there is.”
I am all but done with the packing away when I walk into the kitchen and turn on the lights.
The knives are pristine and neatly slotted into their transparent holder, so that I can see the glimmering steel. The wooden chopping board—scratched with use—lies beside them. The kitchen is all steel surfaces, gleaming, shiny, as alluring to me as diamonds are to other women.
Without thinking about what I am doing, I skip over to the knives and the chopping board. I pick up a small slicing knife and chop-chop-chop an imaginary onion. “Five salads on the way,” I mutter, my voice strangely loud in the silence of the kitchen, the only other noise the ka-ka-ka of the knife on the wood.
“Get me that lettuce,” I say to my make-believe sous chef.
“Fresh-grilled chicken.”
“Slice it thinly.”
“Present it like a work of art.”
Ka-ka-ka.
“I’ll add the finishing touches.”
“Like a picture in a cook book.”
“I want them to stop for a second before eating just to admire the plate. That’s what I want.”
Then I stop, giggling softly to myself.
Even pretending to be in a busy kitchen is more fun than waiting tables.
Maybe one day, I think, sliding the knife back into its place.
The restaurant—the sign above it reading ‘Gourmet Hollow’—sits at the end of Main Street. Across the road is the attorney’s office which has grown large over the past few years, to the point where it has its own car park built next to it. Streetlamps illumine the car park. Usually, if I leave the restaurant late, it’s empty.
But when I leave tonight, at half past one o’clock, a man on a Harley Davidson is watching me.
My heart lurches, my reflexive thought that the man is a threat making me clutch my handbag to my chest. But then I lower my hands. Squinting, I see that it’s Killian O’Connor, his messy blonde hair and his muscular build and leather jacket and scuffed blue jeans making it impossible to mistake him for anybody else.
I stand outside the restaurant doors, watching him for a few moments. He stares at me openly. It’s too dark and I’m too far away to see his face clearly, but I imagine he’s smirking. There’s something in his posture which is smirk-like, almost like he can tell how scared I am—and it amuses him.
I know I should walk home, pretend I didn’t see him. Just because he gave me money—money I did not ask for—doesn’t mean he can wait for me in the middle of the night.
“Come say hi,” he calls across the road. “You’re safe with me. Don’t worry.”
Is that true? I wonder. Or am I in more danger with you than I would be alone?
“You don’t need to be nervous.”
He swings his legs over his bike, so that he is no longer mounting it but leaning against it.
I know I should just walk home. But then my legs begin to move. I have no choice in the matter, I tell myself. My legs are moving against my will. It’s easier to tell myself that than admit the truth: that I may want to see what this biker wants; that I may be just a tad curious about him.
I walk into the car park, close enough to see that I was right. He is smirking.
“I’m Killian O’Connor,” he says, when I’m even closer, when I can smell the gas of his bike and his cologne, musky and manly. “You probably already know that. But what’s a man if he doesn’t introduce himself to a pretty lady?” He smiles, his wolfish eyes trained on me like he’s hunting.
Just like Lucca’s eyes, I think.
But Lucca’s eyes make me want to scream in fear, disgust, repulsion.
Killian’s eyes make me want to scream in a whole other way.
“You’re right,” I say. “I know you.”
He nods. Everything about him is so cocky. Even when he nods, it’s a nod that says, Of course you know me. But there’s something different about his cockiness. It’s not off-putting, as it would be with other men. It’s not cocky like he’s trying to prove something. It’s cocky like he’s already proved himself a hundred times before.
He watches me quietly.
“See anything you like?” I shoot at him. “My phone has a pretty decent camera. Maybe I should let you use it?”
His grin widens. “You’re a feisty lady, aren’t you?”
“Maybe I just don’t appreciate being gawked at,” I reply, my voice sarcastic.
“I don’t know,” he says.
He pushes away from the Harley and takes a few steps forward. We’re almost face to face. If I reach out, I could grab his arm, his shoulder, his muscles. Muscles which bulge from the leather of his jacket. Muscles which seem fit to burst from it.
“What don’t you know?” I say.
My voice is steady. Perhaps he thinks that because he gave me money, because he is the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs, I will tremble before him. That I will turn into some kind of sniveling, nervous creature. If he does think that, he’s wrong. I’ve dealt with worse than this. Dawn and my dead parents come to mind.
“If you don’t like me staring at you. I’m not sure it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, right,” and I roll my eyes, “because you know me so well. Tell me, Killian O’Connor, what is my second name?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea. I never noticed you before tonight. But let me tell you, Hope, you were the one bright spot at that meal.”
A hole has appeared in his armor, I sense. He’s just admitted something about himself. I pounce on it. “What was wrong with you tonight, then, Killian? The others looked like they were having the time of their life. You didn’t, not even close. In fact, every time I turned around you were staring at me. Not laughing or drinking or cheering, just staring.”
His jaws clench, his cocky smile faltering for a moment—and then it returns in a rictus. “I don’t want to bore a pretty lady like you with all that.”
“Pretty lady? You're a charmer as well as a Numb, now?”
“What do you know about the Satan’s Martyrs?” he asks, looking down at me.
I don’t know, the way he looks down at me like that . . . it almost makes me feel safe. It’s mad, I know, that standing in a car park in the middle of the night with a strange man would make me feel safe, but it does. I have to fight the urge to collapse into his chest, to collapse into the solidness of him. Sometimes, I think, a woman just wants a strong man’s arms around her. But, hell, I’m not going to start gushing openly about it. Give the game away; give too much of myself away.
“Just what I’ve heard,” I say, giving no sign of my desires. It’s like we’re playing poker and, if I do say so myself, my poker face is pretty good.
“And what have you heard?”
“What everybody in the Cove has heard.”
“Just rumors,” he says, eyes glinting, lips twitching cockily.
“Fine,” I sigh. “But what about tonight? What . . . I just don’t get it. Patrick’s your big brother, right? And he just got out of prison? Surely that should make you happy.”
“Surely it should,” he agrees. “But we don’t need to talk about that.”
I throw my hands up. “Then why wait for me here if you don’t want to talk?”
“Who says I was waiting for you? Maybe I was just taking in the night air—”
“Don’t play games with me,” I interrupt. “Do you know how much money was in that envelope?”
“Yes,” he says. “Two grand, or thereabouts.”
“Then . . .” I shrug and tilt my head at him.
“You want to know why I gave you the money.”
“Yes!” I cry, louder than I intended. My voice fills the dead night air like a siren’s call.
“It doesn’t matter. Just buy yourself something nice. You have an amazing figure. Maybe a nice dress? I don’t know. Buy whatever it is women buy with that kind of money.”
“So you just gave me two thousand dollars like it was no big deal, and you won’t even tell me why?”
“Buy yourself something nice, pretty lady,” he says, as though I didn’t speak. “Look, all I know is that I rode out to Sapphire Lake tonight. To think, I guess. I don’t do that a lot, ride out somewhere just to think. It’s not my thing. But tonight I did. Had to get my head sorted. But when I tried to think, you were in my head. You weren’t just the bright spot during the party. You were the bright spot after the party, too.”
“All this for a woman whose full name you don’t know,” I mutter.
“Yeah, I guess so. That’s important to you, isn’t it?”
“If you’re going to stalk me,” I say, “you should know my name.”
“Introduce yourself then. I guess knowing your full name’ll help when I’m writing you a goddamn poem.”
“Ha, funny. My name is Hope Warren.”
He holds his hand out, the hand with the grazed knuckles. Poking out of his sleeve and crawling up his arm is a tribal tattoo, painted grey, wrapping around his wrist and ending at the top of his hand, just above the sleeve. I find myself wondering if his entire body is covered in tattoos. If his muscular chest is covered in tattoos. His back. His belly. I look his neck. Yes, a red-flamed tattoo pokes out there, too.
“Nice to meet you, Hope Warren,” he says, nodding down at his hand.
I swallow. For some reason, shaking his hand seems important. If I shake his hand, aren’t I agreeing that we’re no longer strangers?
But then I shake it anyway. His hand is large, strong, and warm despite the night. I look down at my small pale hand in his paw, and I’m suddenly struck by the power of this man. If he wanted to, he could break me in half.
My heartbeat gets faster and faster as we shake, a drum’s beat pounding in my chest.
And then he takes his hand away, and my breath catches.
“Now that we know each other, Hope, it’s time we took a ride.”
“What? A ride? Where?”
“That’s a secret.”
I spread my hands out before me, the way you do when you’re trying to explain something. “You can’t just expect me to ride into the night with a complete—”
“I can and you will. Do you know why?” He steps even closer to me, closing the gap completely. I smell oil and manly sweat and oak. I have never smelled anything so entirely manly.
Looking up at him, willing my voice to be steady, strong, I say: “No, why don’t you tell me?”
He breathes out, and the warmth of his breath touches my forehead. “Because you want to, pretty lady. Anyway, it’s a surprise. I don’t want to ruin the fun.”
“You can’t be serious . . .”
He steps away from me, reaches around the back of his bike, and stands back up with a helmet in his hand.
“I’m deadly serious,” he says.
He lays the helmet on the back of the bike and climbs onto the front, twisting his body so that he’s staring at me.
“Get on the back of the bike, pretty lady. You won’t regret it.”
“I’m not a whore,” I say. “I can’t be bought.”
“You’re not a whore,” he agrees. “You can’t be bought. But you’ll get on the back of this bike, sooner or later. We both know it. I can see it in your eyes, Hope. You want it.”
I’m stunned. It’s true. I do want it. But how can he tell? He doesn’t even know me! Every channel in my mind has tuned to one station: Get on His Bike Now!
I swallow, wondering distantly if I’ll regret this, and then walk to the bike and pick up the helmet.
“You won’t tell me where we’re going,” I say. It’s meant to be a question, but it comes out flat like a statement.
“It’ll make it more fun. Trust me.”
Trust me.
The mad part is, I think I do.
I wrap my hands around his belly and lay my head on his back, right against the word ‘Numb’, the raised lettering tickling my cheek through the open-visor helmet.
He is solid. He is strong.
Then the bike roars into life and we’re speeding away from Rocky Cove, a clear sky of diamond stars winking down at us, the darkness shrouding us so that it’s like we’re the only people on the planet.