Chapter 2 - Please Don't Make A Scene
His thumb was still just under my cheekbone when I heard the room change.
It wasn't loud. It was the kind of quiet that spreads table to table. Forks stopped mid-air. Someone near the windows whispered something I couldn't catch, and I felt it more than heard it, all those eyes on the side of my face. The candle in its glass holder flickered and threw heat up against my wrist.
"Harper, come here. Why do you flinch when people walk behind you?" That was still ringing in my ears from a minute ago, and then my own stupid lie about tripping, about bad shoes. And then his voice again, low. "Don't lie to me."
I couldn't breathe right with his hand holding my chin. Not because he was hurting me. He wasn't. His touch was light, careful, his tattooed fingers warm against my skin. It was because everyone could see it.
My eyes cut left before I could stop them. Toward the manager station by the swinging kitchen door. Denise wasn't there, but Marcus, the busser, was standing frozen with a tray of water glasses, staring at us. Beyond him, table six, the couple with the anniversary dessert, both turned in their red leather chairs. The woman's mouth was open a little.
I knew what it looked like. I knew what they were thinking.
He must have felt me go rigid, because his eyes followed mine for half a second, then came back to my face. The chandeliers made a sharp glint off his gold chain. Up close I could see the pulse moving in his neck under the edge of his tattoos.
I tried to pull back, just an inch. My ponytail caught on my collar.
"Please," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Please, don't make a scene."
It was the only sentence I could get out clean. Not the server voice. Just me.
He didn't pull away right then. He studied the bruise around my left eye, the way the makeup had worn off under the heat of the lamps. His thumb hovered, didn't press. I could hear myself breathing, too fast, and I tried to slow it.
"Harper," he said, quieter this time, so low I almost had to read his lips. "Who did this to you?"
The question landed harder the second time because his hand finally dropped. He lowered it slowly from my jaw, fingertips brushing once against my chin before he set his palm flat on the white tablecloth beside the dark menu folder. He didn't lean back. If anything, he leaned in, elbows on the table, keeping his voice between just us and the candle between us.
The air came back into my lungs all at once and it burned.
Behind me, someone walked fast past with a tray, and my shoulders jerked before I could control it. I hated that. I hated that he saw it. His eyes narrowed, not angry, just focused, like he'd filed it away.
I needed to move. I needed my hands to do something normal. I reached for the order pad in my apron pocket and flipped it open even though I knew his order by heart. It gave me somewhere to look that wasn't his face.
"Can I — can I get you started with something to drink?" I said. I heard the shift in my own tone, the bright server lift I used on every table. "We have the cabernet you had last time, and the specials are —"
He didn't look at the wine glasses. He didn't look at the menu.
"Harper." He cut me off, but gently. "You don't have to do that with me."
"I have other tables," I said, still holding the pen too tight. My hand was shaking and I pressed the pad harder against my palm to hide it. "If you're ready to order, I can put that in, and —"
I took a step back from the table. My heel hit the leg of the red chair behind me. The candle flame bent sideways and then straightened.
He sat back finally, just a fraction, his hands visible on the tablecloth. Letting me have the space. But his eyes didn't let go.
May you like
"I'll be here," he said. "We're not done."
I nodded like that was a normal thing for a customer to say. I wrote nothing on the pad and closed it anyway, and felt the whole dining room watch me back away with it clutched to my chest, still his server, still stuck to that table for the rest of the night.
