Brutally Beautiful(11)

“Does she dance here?” I asked.

“No. Neither of them do,” Dylan answered me, but his eyes were still watching her.

“I wasn’t asking about the blonde,” I stated.

“I knew exactly who you were asking about, Kade,” he murmured. “She’s not your classical beauty, yet stunning in her own way, yeah?”

I just nodded. Then…silence.

Shit…I wanted to know more about her. Just keep your damn mouth shut. How do you think getting to know more about her is going to end? Ugly. Fuckin’ ugly…

“They don’t look like the kind of women who would work here. What the hell are they doing here?” I snapped.

“Intriguing situation. They both showed up here about two months ago, beaten to bloody hell. The one you asked about is Lainey and the blonde is Bree. They work here a few nights a week. Both are really sweet. Both are the most intelligent women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and the blonde is sexy as hell, yeah? Both of them have tried to change their appearance as if they’re hiding from something. That’s all I know.”

Lainey looked up from where she was standing behind the bar. Her eyes collided with mine for a few gut-twisting moments before she darted them to Dylan. I wondered if he was sleeping with her. It angered me just thinking about it.

On one side of her face, her long hair was pinned back with a soft lilac ribbon that made her look indecently innocent. Shiny waves were cascading down from the little clip and fell around her face framing soft porcelain features. She wore a familiar emotion on her face that I knew all too well, haunted. The plain raw intelligence of her face was utterly breathtaking and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the correct adjectives to describe something. No mere words would have done her natural beauty justice or could have described the way she moved.

It was like…liquid.

That’s the only word I had for her.

Flowing, fluid, melting into everything with a precision that seemed naturally calculated. I felt like Adam looking at Eve for the first time, having never seen another woman before her.

What the hell did I just let myself think? I just need to drown myself at the bottom of my damn brandy.

Fucking…hell… I caught myself leaning forward, almost falling off my daft chair trying to watch her move around. Brilliant.

“Jesus, Kade. I never saw you look at anybody like that. You want me to tell her to come over here?” he asked.

“Fuck off,” I laughed, angrily. “You know I don’t play well with others.” I forced my fingers to relax their tight grip on my drink before it shattered under all the pressure. I didn’t clearly understand why I was unable to keep my eyes off the woman, or why my body reacted the way it did to her, or why my gut feeling told me she was more than she appeared. I took another pull on my brandy.

My brother’s mouth opened to say something but thought better of it. He raked his hand through his hair and hung his head in his hands. “How have you been, really?” He mumbled into his hands.

I dropped my head from my line of vision of her. That’s it for the next six months, no, year…I was already fed up with people. And talking. Talking with people. Stupid people.

And who the hell cared about a freaking waitress?

Yeah, she was pretty in such a different way, and intriguing, so damn what.

Dealing with thoughts about her would end up like all my thoughts did, in sickening violence. I would need to find more words to match her beauty and somehow mar her fictional existence in my head with the exquisite release of her last breath, or possess her with demons, slaughter her by the hands of a delusional lover, disfigure her in a gruesome accident or something equally horrifying.