BORDEN 2 (8 page)

She was struggling, and my heart tightened in my chest as I began to realize how fraught with nerves she was. I leaned over the table and settled my hand over hers.

“How short are you on rent?” I asked her gently.

Her eyes glistened. “Around two hundred.”

“And how much are you short on your phone bill?”

“With all the late fees, I don’t know, a hundred and thirty? Something like that.”

“Done. We’ll walk down to the ATM after we eat and I’ll float you. Alright? I got a nice nest egg going.”

She blinked rapidly, looking at me in surprise. “I’m not asking for the lot of it. I don’t want to make you go broke on me, Emma.”

“I’m not going broke. If I didn’t have the money, I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

“I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

“Consider this one time a gift.”

She sucked in a breath, and when she released it, her whole body gave out. She sank into her chair, looking like the weight on her shoulders had disappeared.

“Thank you, Em,” she told me sincerely. “I was losing my mind, you know? Denny’s place is going under, and I’ve been looking for jobs. Remember that dude I slept with a long while back? The Adonis –”

“Yeah, the mafia-looking one or some shit.”

“Yeah, well he called me before my phone went out, and I told him about my job situation. He offered me some job at a titty bar somewhere shitty, and he said I’d get great tips, but at the time I scoffed at it like it was beneath me. I feel like an idiot now because I’ve fallen so far behind on everything. I keep thinking I should have just taken it. Talk about desperate, huh? Because I’d still take it right about now. My shifts at the diner have been officially cut in half. Tessa’s working it alone some days, and the food’s shit with half the people in the kitchen now, so nobody’s really coming around. Not even seedy John these days. Can you believe that? You got out just at the nick of time.”

I frowned, feeling suddenly protective over her. “Don’t take that job, Blythe. If he offered it to you again, I mean, just say no.”

“Why?”

“Because there must be something else out there.”

She shrugged. “You know that’s not true. Besides, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, Em. You know that. All we have is ourselves to depend on, and if that means flashing my tits while serving drinks, I’ll do it.” Her eyes brightened at the thought as she added, “I’ll do it happily. Anything to get me out of this mess.”

Instead of begging her not to, I kept my lips shut. I understood her desperation. Who was I to tell her no? You’d do things you never thought you’d see yourself doing when it came to a roof over your head and a morsel of food down your throat. It was just… I didn’t expect her to look like
this
. Even at my worst, I still tried to look presentable, and she was always more of a fashionista than me.

“It’s crazy how fast shit goes downhill,” she went on. “One minute you got a little bit of money tucked away and a job you think is pretty secure because you’ve been at it for a long time. Then it just gets snatched away from you, and you end up begging your best friend for money.”

I shot her a weak smile. “To be fair, you didn’t beg.”

She rolled her eyes. “I was about to.”

“Honestly, Blythe, it’s not that big of a deal. If anything, you should know asking for money wouldn’t put a strain on our friendship, and I would never consider it begging.”

“Then you’re a damn good friend,” she replied, swallowing hard. “I asked Tessa for some help last week, and the second I did it, she shot me down, which I understood. I mean, I get it completely. But since then things have been weird, like she’s avoiding me as if she expects I’ll hound her for money again or something. God, everything’s pretty fucked up in my life right now.”

She looked down at the table, avoiding my gaze. It was hard to find my best friend the opposite of her usual upbeat self. I didn’t want to give her hope now, but I would ask Borden if there was any possibility we could employ her somewhere. Maybe he had a position available at one of his restaurants or something. I felt bad for her, like she was somehow my responsibility and I needed to make sure she was as happy as I was. I loved the chick.

Our food arrived, and she dug into her sandwich. I ate half of mine, and while I was still a little hungry, I placed the other half on her plate.

“You need to eat too,” she scolded me, though I could see her spirits soar at more food. “Don’t take pity on me, Em.”

“I’m not. I’m having dinner at my grandmother’s house tonight and I need as much space in my stomach as possible. She gets pissed when I don’t eat everything.”

Blythe laughed. “Sounds like my kind of grandmother. Tell her I said hi.”

“She probably won’t even hear me.”

“Why?”

“Borden will be there too.”

Blythe stopped eating mid-bite. Her eyes popped out of her face as she looked at me in horror. “Are you serious? She hates him. How the fuck did that end up happening?”

“She wants to meet him.”

And she didn’t give me much choice in the matter. She’d nearly had a heart attack after learning I’d been living at his place for a while. She’d said it was too soon, and I couldn’t exactly let her in on the whole situation with the text, otherwise she really would have died right there on the spot. I was fucked. Enormously. Because Borden wasn’t a warm and sweet kind of guy. It was going to be a disaster.

“Maybe she’ll like him,” Blythe said, though I could see the doubt in her eyes.

“She’ll loathe him,” I replied frowning. “And he’s going to love it.”

Borden had tunnel vision. All he cared about was me. He barely gave anybody the time of day. If you were against him, he simply didn’t give a fuck. Even if you were a sweet old lady. This was going to be interesting.

When I finished my first sandwich, I excused myself to go to the toilet. It was halfway there I noticed a familiar face seated a short distance from our table. In direct view of us, Hawke was spread out on his chair, arms crossed, eyes firmly focused on mine. I stopped immediately, my heart skipping a beat in my surprise.

What the hell was he doing here? He never followed me.

Feeling irrationally angry, I stomped to him, my own arms crossed, a deep angry frown on my face. I stopped in front of him, and for a split second I took in the sight of him. He looked like a creepy vampire or something, dressed all in black, his long dark hair loose around his shoulders, his face particularly pale today like he’d been deprived of sunlight. My eyes then dropped to the table and at the strawberry sundae he’d half demolished. “You like strawberry sundaes?” I blurted out, my brows furrowed. “Like, what the fuck?”

With that gravelly voice of his, he retorted, “What’s wrong with a strawberry sundae?”

Well, you’re a two hundred and thirty pound man – minimum – and you look like a fucking sun-deprived vampire feasting on a strawberry sundae! What was
not
wrong with that picture?

Instead of saying that though, I just shook my head. “Why are you here, Hawke? I have Graeme and a whole brigade of men around the street as it is. I don’t need a babysitter in here.”

“Just following orders,” he simply replied.

“Since when has Borden told you to follow me?”

He didn’t respond, opting instead to just stare at me with his dark eyes. They reminded me of his brother too much, and I felt a strange chill dart down my spine. I didn’t know much about Hawke, had never cared to in all honesty. He loathed me and he’d made no effort concealing that the entire time I’d worked for Borden. But after seeing his brother and the strange interaction they’d had with one another, I was suddenly a little curious about him. Maybe part of me didn’t think he was all that trustworthy knowing he was tied in with the bikers.

“Don’t have anything to say?” I pressed, leaning forward as I glared at him. “So you insult me any chance you get in the office, but now that we’re alone, you’re suddenly a mute?”

He still didn’t respond. Those dark eyes continued to peer into my own. He wasn’t going to back down, and I didn’t want to either. I could have had this staring contest all day if I wasn’t in the way of the waitress and Blythe wasn’t waiting for me at the table.

“Fine,” I told him with a hard voice, straightening myself. “But don’t get used to this, Hawke. I don’t need you around. There’s nothing you can do that another one of Borden’s muscle can’t. Go and enjoy your sundaes stalking somebody else.”

I turned around to leave, but not before catching the small smile on his lips. It infuriated me and it took everything in me to press forward. I went to the bathroom, and when I returned, he was gone, his sundae left abandoned, a ten dollar bill next to it. Had he seriously listened to me? I looked around the café as I re-joined Blythe, but there was no sign of him.

After we ate, I walked her down to the nearest ATM, making sure Graeme followed, or else he’d have my head. She remarked on his presence as he trailed us in his car at a snail’s pace the whole way, practically alongside us. He blatantly stared at us the entire time, his eyes narrowed, his bushy moustache extra bushy today.

“Borden’s…protective,” I explained to her simply.

She gave me a worried look. “He sends his men to follow you around, Em? That sounds like he’s a stalker.”

“It’s not like that.”  It was. I wasn’t going to lie to myself.

She continued to stare at me, waiting for more. I didn’t have the energy to defend him by making up shit, so I shrugged and turned to the task at hand. I took out the money she needed, along with another hundred on top for food. I didn’t let her count it, otherwise she’d have gone against the extra cash. Instead, I closed the money in half and tucked it discreetly into her purse.

I’d never seen her more grateful the entire time we’d been friends. She bopped up and down excitedly, her tired eyes lighting up. We parted ways on the promise she’d be a better friend from now on and keep in touch.

“Don’t even question it,” she told me determinedly.

On the way home, Graeme kept shooting me these glances. I caught him a dozen times, and he’d mindlessly turn back to the road…and then look back at me. I smiled. “Do I have a wart on my face or something? Is that why you keep looking at me?”

“No,” he answered, returning the smile. “I was just thinking how stupid you are for giving your friend money.”

My smile vanished in a blink of an eye. “What? Has Borden bugged me or something? Are you listening to my conversations now?”

I’d kill him if he did.

“No, but she shows up all withdrawn, and then afterwards you take her to the ATM. It’s fairly obvious what you did.”

“Why is it stupid that I gave her money?” I sounded offended, and I was. There was nothing stupid about what I did. I was helping out my best friend, and he was staring me down like a naïve child for it.

“She’s not going to use that money on what she said she would. That girl was filled with lies. You could see it from a mile away. She took advantage of you, knowing very well how close the two of you are.”

“How do you know that?”

He just looked at me for a long moment. “Why do you think Borden assigned me to look after you?”

“Because of your unnaturally good looks,” I teased.

He sighed. “Because I know these things. A silent observer, very rarely wrong. It’s a survival instinct. Don’t doubt me.”

I didn’t. And I hated that I didn’t. Graeme didn’t lie. I trusted him with my life, and he was telling me all this because he cared enough to let me know I was being taken advantage of.