Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(31)

Those flames roared, that storm spinning and spinning and spinning. Or maybe it was the room.

I was shaking, searching for the breath I had lost. My chest grew too full and blackness threatened at my eyes. I felt stuck somewhere between that vulnerable, stupid girl who I never again wanted to be, and the bitch who wanted to lash out at the world. To jump across the top of the bar and rip out this guy’s throat. To make him pay.

Like instinct, my hand wrapped around the neck of a big bottle of Jack.

I felt a solid arm around my waist, pulling me back, a placating voice at my ear. “Whoa there, sugar.”

Charlie.

I slumped with my back against his chest, catching the breath I was searching for in a wheeze.

“There now, there now,” he murmured as he hauled me away. He dipped us under the end of the bar and led me through the swinging door to the kitchen. Off to the left was an old grungy office, a single dim lamp burning from the desk that sat in the middle. He snapped the door shut behind us when he had me within the quiet.

He turned me around with his hands on the outside of my upper arms. I cringed when I saw his expression. His mouth was slack, those kind brown eyes filled with concern and completely lacking their near-constant ease.

His brows knit tight. “Hey there,” he soothed. “You in there, sugar? What’s going on with you tonight? You damned near clawed that guy’s eyes out.”

I huffed, though it was shaky. “He would have deserved it.”

“Have no doubt about that. Already have Nathan on it. He’s out. Don’t need scum like that mucking up my bar.”

He squeezed my upper arms in his hands. “But you and I both know well enough you deal with trash like that on a nightly basis. Normally you handle it without even a ruffle of your pretty little feathers, and tonight you’re about as agitated as my momma’s old washer.”

I ran an unsteady hand through my hair and glanced at the floor as I blew a puff of air between pursed lips. Reluctantly, I looked back at him. “Sorry, Charlie. I’m not exactly at the top of my game tonight.”

A tender smile appeared, and his voice dropped in sincerity. “Don’t expect you to always be on, darlin’. We all have a bad day every now and again.”

Creases dented his forehead. “But I don’t think I’ve seen you lookin’ so lost since the day you first came stumbling through Charlie’s doors. And you damned near broke my heart that day. Tell me what’s put that haunted look back on your sweet face.”

Sweet?

Is that what he saw when he looked at me?

Slowly, I shook my head, swallowed over the lump lodged at the base of my throat. I was searching for that smirk I loved to wear, but it just wouldn’t come. Instead, my bottom lip quivered. “It’s nothing.”

“Don’t go lyin’ to me now. I know you better than that.” His eyes narrowed. “This have something to do with Shea and Sebastian’s wedding last night? Knew it was gonna be hard on you.”

Knew?

How?

Did this man see right through me?

A frustrated sound jetted from between my lips, and I roughed a hand through my hair. “No, it wasn’t that.”

It was everything surrounding it. The stepping out. The putting myself on the line. The dangerous boy who’d seemed to haul in the monstrous load of my baggage with him.

“You looked beautiful, sugar,” he attempted. “Real beautiful.”

His head drifted just to the side. “Hope one day you’ll be lettin’ me walk you down the aisle, just like my Shea Bear gave me the honor of doing yesterday.”

And I knew he was digging, trying to get to the heart of me. Just the way he’d always done. I struggled to find the mask just as an excruciating pain clamped down on my chest.

Everything in Charlie’s tone was fatherly. Caring. Hopeful for my future.

Daddy.

Memories barreled through me. I was too weak and raw to stop them.

Charlie didn’t even know my father existed. He thought my parents were gone. Dead. That I was alone. I’d lied to this selfless, generous man who’d only ever cared for me, thinking it was the only way to protect myself.

And I kept doing it because I didn’t know any other way.

That hollow loneliness radiating from within was worse than I had felt in four years. Maybe in all of it combined. As if it was creeping in like a lost ghost, looking for a home, settling heavy within my soul.

Because I felt this life of pretense coming to an end.

I pasted on a teasing smile. The edges were a wobbly mess, clearly just as fraudulent as the flimsy, impetuous words. “Don’t hold your breath, old man. You and I both know that isn’t about to happen. This girl flies solo.”

He lifted my chin. The tweak of his lips was genuine and knowing. “Just who do you think you’re foolin’, sugar, because it sure ain’t me.”

“Charlie—”

“Don’t think for a second I don’t see you, Tamar King. That I don’t recognize loneliness when I see it. I’ve been livin’ in it for too long myself.”

God.

“Lonely recognizes lonely, don’t you see?”

I tried to speak around the lump clogging my throat. Diverting and obstructing and pretending as if what he said didn’t hit me like a landslide.