Page 5 of Just in Time
Chapter Two
Imade my way downstairs from the apartment at four forty-five. A little earlier than five p.m, but I liked to get things situated before my shift started. Tie my apron, buy out some change. Those kinds of things.
I served drinks on the weekdays at Jolene’s bar. I made them on the weekends. Maybe my high school GPA had predicted a more professional future than serving drinks in my hometown, but I wasn’t complaining.
I’d been doing it for years now. Ever since I made the fateful decision not to go away to college like Momma had wanted.
Perhaps Ihadmade a mistake and was wasting away here in Dawesbury, but honestly… this was my home and I didn’t knowwhatI wanted to do with my life anyway. Maybe I just wanted a quiet kind of life or something. Being twenty-four years old, it was possible I should already know, but I didn’t.
But none of that mattered because I was happy. I could handle this. I couldn’t handle the day to day stress in a college environment on top of honing my odd powers that nobody seemed to know what I should do with, but I could handlethis.
So no matter what Momma thought, I figured I’d done what I needed to do. I felt like this was where I belonged. It was certainly fortuitous that I’d been here when Brody had shown up at any rate.
As my feet clopped heavily on the wooden stairs that separated our apartment from the front stoop it shared with the bar, I remembered back to that night. It had been on my mind since the anniversary had passed a few weeks back.
It had been raining. It was chilly. And I’d known there was something different about him the second he’d stumbled into the bar. I’d thought maybe he was already drunk, but his eyes were too clear for that.
He’d said hello, wincing as he sat and I could tell his teeth were red with blood. His own.
It had been late, or early, depending on what way you looked at it, nearly two in the a.m when he’d opened the door. The rain was pouring down outside, diluting his scent, but I could still make it out. Rain. Wood. Fire.
He smelled like the outdoors. Between that and the way the steam seemed to rise off his skin in the cold air… I knew shifters ran hot, and Brody Rickard was no exception. And no, it wasn’t just his body temperature.
He was limping, soaking wet and hurt.
And he asked for a whiskey, plopping what was probably his last ten bucks down on the bar.
But I’d known as soon as I looked at him that he was there for a reason and so was I.
I hadn’t touched him. I just poured the drink and pushed away his money.
“You need somewhere to stay?”
That was the first thing I’d ever said to Brody.
He said later he didn’t know what to think. Some little slip of a thing behind a bar, her frizzy hair coming out of a french braid, didn’t even look old enough to drink the stuff she was pouring. Asking him if he needed somewhere to stay.
But he’d said yes.
And he’d come upstairs and slept for two and a half days on my sofa.
I’d found out bits and pieces about him. About how he was from just one county over, and had limped over here on foot after a fight with his pack.
His pack that he was no longer a part of.
They’d done some bad things. Terrible things. Horrendously evil things. He wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t dare. But he was bad news and he shouldn’t stay with me much longer. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
But he did.
Every time he’d tried to leave after that, something stopped him. Something. Until he couldn’t deny it anymore. We were meant for each other.
That thing that stopped him, that was our bond. Fledgling and young, but strong and obstinate as hell. Just like us, I guess.
I sucked in my breath when I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, bringing myself out of the recollection. I stepped out onto the stoop out in front of the bar. It had gotten colder as the day went on. Luckily, I didn’t have to walk far. Just a few steps to get inside the front door.
I pulled it open and walked inside amid happy greetings from the regulars.
“Hey there, Buttercup,” called Rawley. I was aware that the older gentleman probably had a first name, but I’d never been able to guess it, and he certainly wasn’t giving me any hints. If I ever tended bar on the nights he was here, I could likely ID him and find out that way, but he never came in on the weekends. Just on the weeknights on his way home. Two mugs of the cheapest draft we had and he always tipped as much as his bill ended up totaling. Rawley was a good guy, if a little odd.
