Page 46 of Wicked Temptations
Ash finished his protein bar and crumpled the wrapper but didn’t stand. Instead, he looked me dead in the eyes and did something super annoying. He made small talk.
“You eat before shifts?”
Fuck.
“Sometimes. Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether I remember.” I shrugged. “You planning my meals now?” I regretted it the moment I said it. Ash was trying, and here I was making everything into a challenge.
“Just wondering if you’re going to pass out on me mid-chase.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he had to one-up me. “Yeah, that’s never happened.”
“There’s always a first time.” He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. The fluorescent lighting made the shadows under his eyes look deeper. At least when he tried again, the question was more manageable.
“What’d you do before this?”
I raised an eyebrow. “We doing get-to-know-you twenty-questions now?”
“It’s better than sitting here in silence.”
He had a point. The alternative was staring at each other while pretending not to, which seemed more uncomfortable than small talk. “Retail. Clothing store at the mall. Hated every second of it.”
“Yeah?” Something shifted in his expression. Curiosity, maybe. “Why?”
“Quotas and upselling and pretending to care if some soccer mom found the right shade of beige? Really not my scene.” I twisted the cap back onto my water bottle. “You?”
“Warehouse work. Loading trucks, inventory management. Boring as hell but paid okay and let me do some budget stunt work when I could get a gig.”
“So we both escaped soul-crushing jobs to scare people for minimum wage twenty-nine nights of the year?” It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. A month of Halloween work didn’t pay the bills, even taking social media payouts into account, so we all still had our soul-crushing jobs. It just felt nice to ignore them for the spooky season.
“Living the dream.” His mouth quirked. It was almost a smile, and it was almost attractive.
The vampires erupted in laughter nearby. One of them had apparently spilled fake blood on a guest’s designer purse, causing quite a stir and a social media breakdown. I watched them reenact the scene, their animated gestures throwing shadows across the wall.
Ash’s attention stayed on me. “Did you grow up around here?”
“North side. You?”
“Same, actually. Moved when I was twelve, though. Parents split.” He said it casually, but I caught the tension in his shoulders.
I knew that tension, having lived with it myself. “Mine too. I was eight.”
“Shit.” He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward slightly. “That’s rough.”
Part of me wished we’d had the ‘relationship’ talk instead of this.
“It was what it was.” I peeled at the label on my water bottle. The corner came up in a damp strip. “Dad left, Mom worked three jobs trying to keep things together, then decided trying to date rich was easier. My sister basically raised me until she bailed for college.”
The words came out more easily than they should have. I didn’t like talking about myself, at least not in the way of childhood trauma and experiences that were best left buried in the past. Maybe it was the noise providing cover. Maybe it was exhaustion lowering my defenses. Maybe it was the fact that Ash had offered his own damage first, creating some kind of conversational equilibrium.
“Where’s your sister now?”
“Denver. Married to some tech guy, had two kids. We talk maybe twice a year.” I dropped the torn label onto the table and tried to switch the focus off of myself. “Do you have siblings?”
Why did I ask that like I cared?
