Chapter 4

Kelly

As soon as Hunter left the diner, I felt a strange sense of both relief and regret. The scent of him was still hanging in the air, swallowing me and making my mind blurry to what and who had just walked in and out of my life. I felt like I was in a dream and hadn’t gotten up to start my day yet. He was just like every other work-a-day guy I’d ever met, with all his cheap small talk and bravado. Except for one thing. The bravado and arrogance in his voice seemed forced. Like he was pretending to be something he was not. The man whose eyes I looked into knew who he was and what he could do to me. Or to anyone else. He wouldn’t talk about it, he would just do it. He didn’t need to talk shit. He didn’t need to talk at all, and he knew it.

I wanted him. Or did I? It was more complicated than simply lusting for him. It wasn’t a want I felt inside me, it was a need. I needed to know who he was and what he was capable of. Why was I so drawn to him? Why couldn’t I shake the image of him holding me in his strong, muscular arms? He could be any old wrench monkey with a hard body and harder head, but I knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Not the way he made my head spin. I hated myself for giving him so much thought and luckily Grace snapped me back to reality.

“Kelly, guests,” she whispered forcefully motioning to the two men who had just sat down at a table by the door.

I always loved when she called customers guests. It was just one of the ways her kind heart shined through. I pulled two menus out of the basket and made my way over to the table, happy to have something to do.

As I walked toward the table, I could already smell the stench of whatever cheap liquor they had been into the night before. One was chatting loudly into his cell phone about some girl from somewhere and all the horribly raunchy acts he had committed with her the night before while the other just sat there howling in approval. I immediately wished I was some place else doing anything different.

“Good morning, gents. Here’s some coffee to get you started. What can I get you to eat today?”

“Holy fuck, will you look at this,” one of them slurred, barely pulling his phone away from his ear. “Sorry, dude. I’ll have to call you back. Got something here.”

Something. I suppose I had been called worse, but right now it didn’t feel like it. Especially coming from the sorry excuse for a man in front of me. I could see a beer belly sticking out underneath the V-neck shirt that was too tight for his body and despite the backwards cap he wore, he was too old to use the word dude, no matter how much he wished he wasn’t. He looked me up and down aggressively with his bloodshot eyes and slapped the table in front of his friend sitting across from him.

“I told you, dude. I told you it was a good idea to stop here, man. Look at this little piece we got taking care of us this morning. You’re going to take care of us, aren’t you, baby? We had a long night, but we saved a little for you. Don’t you worry.”

It was apparently going to be one of those days. I was less a waitress and more a piece of meat. Hunter had said as much when he came in. Except these two didn’t make me feel the way Hunter had. They had none of the power he carried, and there certainly was nothing passing between us. They didn’t make me feel anything but uncomfortable and I found myself wishing he hadn’t gone.

“So, I’ll give you a couple minutes with the menu then?”

I needed to separate myself from them until I knew how I was going to get them to leave. If I could get them to leave. We weren’t exactly in a position to be turning down customers, even the ones that made my skin crawl. I started to turn and walk away when, to his friend’s delight and my surprise, the talker grabbed me by the apron, pulling me back toward him, and wrapping his arm around my waist.

“No, no, no, baby! I see everything I want right here. You going to give us a spin and show off that fine ass?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was genuinely afraid. Grace had slipped into the storeroom to grab stock and Dennis was nowhere in sight. It was just me and these pigs and I didn’t know how to make it stop. He slid his hand down my waist, over my backside, and to my thigh. This couldn’t be happening. I felt him start to move his hand up my leg and under my skirt.

“Please,” I stammered.

I couldn’t even get the word out of my mouth before I saw the friend knocked out of his seat and onto his back on the ground. Before I could register what had happened, a cup of scalding hot coffee splashed across my attacker’s face. I was so confused and I felt dizzy in all the commotion.

Between the screaming of the one guy, frantically trying to wipe the burning liquid off his face, and the blur of a boot heel being brought down on the one on the ground, I had no idea what was happening. But somehow, I immediately knew who it was. Hunter.

Where had he come from? I didn’t even hear the door open or see him until it was all happening. When he turned his attention from the man on the ground to the one who had grabbed me, I saw his eyes. It was brief and he didn’t look directly at me, but he made sure I knew why he was there and who he was doing it for. It was the same intensity I’d felt when he touched me. Now it was firing out of him, but it was different. It was equally primal, but this time it frightened me. Not for my own safety, but for anyone that got in his way.

Was he enjoying this?

He got one hand wrapped around the collar on the man’s shirt and he brought the other down in a heavy fist knocking him clean out of his chair and silencing his screams. It was hard enough to hurt the man worse than anything he’d felt before, but not hard enough to satisfy Hunter. The man would have hit the floor had Hunter not held him by the neck of his shirt as he repeatedly hit him. All I could do was stand there. I didn’t know how to make it stop. I knew I couldn’t make it stop.

Suddenly, someone came running from the bathroom in the back. It was Dennis.

“Hunter. Hunter. What are you doing, boy? You’ll kill him.”

He ran over and attempted to wrap his arms around Hunter and stop what was happening, but it was as if he wasn’t there at all. With one effortless shrug of his broad shoulders, Hunter flung Dennis backwards and into the stools behind. He wasn’t hurt, but he stayed down for the same reason I stayed still. There was no stopping this.

I don’t know why, but as I stood watching him nearly beat a man to death in front of me, I felt less and less afraid of Hunter. I wasn’t bothered by what was happening. For some reason, I felt stronger the longer it went on. It wasn’t because I was mad at what had happened, though I was. The punishment these two were facing did not fit the crime. As I watched the power Hunter brought down over and over again on this unsuspecting man’s face, I felt the same heat rush over my body as the first time I looked into his eyes. The intensity, the sweat, the vein bulging in the side of his neck leading down to the rippling arm that was holding up a now unconscious body. I was light headed. It sent shivers from my head to my toes and I could feel heat coming from between my legs. Something about this seemed to be Hunter at his most truthful, his most primal. As much as I didn’t want to lose this feeling and sight of him, I knew it needed to stop. I wasn’t going to let a man die because of me.

“Hunter. Enough,” I shouted, surprising myself at how calm I was for someone seeing what I was seeing. My voice came out clearer and more confident than I felt. Even more surprising though, was that he listened.