Brutally Beautiful(49)

After locking up the trailer, I silently made my way through the park, staying on the road with eyes wide open. No matter where you might have met up with your nightmares in your past, you could always find new ones on cold dark country roads. Relief swept through me when I had the bar in my view. The neon lights of the shaking ass sign were like a beacon of safety to me, but I still had a strange gnawing fear in the back of my head. It was probably from reading the horror story, alone…but I just couldn’t shake the thoughts that someone was right behind me, reaching out their hand to grab me in the darkness of the night. You know that fear…that something is there just beyond your sight, waiting…watching you.

When my feet hit the asphalt of the parking area, I ran to the door of the bar and stumbled in, breathless and shaking. I could brush it off as being out of shape and cold, but truth was, I was dead scared. Because Kade Grayson wasn’t the only one who’d lived through a real-life horror and I remembered all too well what those hands that spring from the blackness of the dead of night felt like around my throat.

The bar was practically empty. Cynthia (aka Sin Dee) was on stage, surrounded by four men raptly watching her spin herself around the pole, and for the briefest of moments, I envied her sexuality, her lack of inhibitions and her confidence in her beauty. I would love at least one night in my life to feel that free about my body and myself.

Dylan, Bree, Fran, and Natalie, another dancer, sat around a table in the middle of the bar, deep in some sort of discussion. Natalie was still dressed in her thong and a sparkly bikini top, and Fran didn’t seem to own the ability to lift his eyes off her breasts. Good, maybe he’ll ask her out and leave me alone with my coffee.

Kade sat in his normal booth. Back to the wall, facing the whole bar nearest to the back door, and now I completely understood why. He would always need to see the whole of a room, always need to be nearest to an exit, just in case. Kade Grayson had a whole new personality to me now, and I understood it. God, I understood him.

Immersed, consumed in whatever he was writing, I took advantage of his distraction to study him raptly. Leaning forward, the chiseled features of his face illuminated by the glow of his computer screen, his fingers danced quickly over the keys. He looked a mess. Hair tousled, falling darkly across his forehead, tight gray shirt, a simple cotton one, clung to his body, demonstrating his powerful chest and hard solid muscular arms. A smear of ketchup covered his cheek from the half-eaten hamburger lying on the dish next to his laptop. I found myself drawn in, in front of him, softly wiping the smear from his cheek. “Shit,” he whispered, looking up with wide eyes.

“Nope. Just ketchup,” I whispered, feeling every beat of my heart as it banged hard against my chest. I couldn’t believe I had touched him. Quickly, I wiped my fingers on a napkin, then balled it up tightly and squeezed it spastically in my hand. “I’m sorry.” I gave him a watery smile and tried to hold back my tears, because I could still see the death and chaos around him. He wore it heavily on his face and in the tightness in his eyes. Like a soldier just home from war.

Slowly putting his drink to his lips, he took a long pull of his beer, his eyes never leaving mine. Swallowing, he placed his drink down and snapped shut his laptop, ceasing the screen’s glow against his skin. With only the flickering flame from the small candle on the table, it made his features look even more menacing and colder than ever before. His eyes were so light they seemed colorless. His hard angular face, chiseled as if from stone, tilted to the side in question.

“That was something a friend would do, no?” he whispered. Softly. Dangerously. Chilling me. His gaze dropped to my lips and it felt as soft as a touch.