Before That Night: Unfinished Love Series: Caine & Addison, Book 1 (6 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

ADDISON COULDN’T
BELIEVE
she’d just said that to him.

And from his expression as he’d cursed when his second alarm had gone off, he was in even more gobsmacked disbelief than she was.

The interruption of a fellow officer stopping in for some coffee to take with him over to the station effectively extinguished any chance of them talking or doing anything really about her moment of female boldness.

It was a good thing too, because her cheeks felt like they were going up in flames, and her knees felt like they’d turned to jello.

It didn’t help one bit when Caine yanked the cup of coffee she’d just poured him away from his buddy like he wanted to keep the other man from even smelling it.

Lordy, why had she given him her personal blend? She’d caught on over the past few weeks that he didn’t like Joe’s coffee, and truth be told, she’d been tempted to pour him her personal blend before. But she hadn’t for the same reason why she suddenly decided today she should.

A lot could be read into that gesture.

Until now, the absolute last thing she needed, or wanted, was the complication of a guy in her life. In that regard, having Caine as her friend for the past month had been great. They’d talk, exchange quips that were
juuust
this side of flirting, and most important of all, leave everything in the diner.

Unlike his buddies at the station, he’d never once expressed an interest in asking her out. So she’d always felt…safe. To just be herself.

Herself around a man who was very likely cast from the same mold that served as the base model for all Disney movie heroes.

Tall. Eyes that were as dark as they were deep. A strong chin that could look menacing when paired with a frown, and just plain devastating when paired with a smile. A jaw that could undoubtedly crack crab claws with ease.

And a mouth specially designed for kissing.

The last observation was pure speculation of course. From what she could gather, she wasn’t the only one speculating about that fact. According to the gossip she heard on a regular basis in the diner—sometimes it was kind of nice that folks forgot waitresses had perfectly functioning ears—Caine was single, and seemingly uninterested in the women of Creek Hills.

He seemed plenty interested in you tonight
.

Addison ignored the dangerous observation that kept popping into her head long after he went off to start his shift. Similarly, she ignored how insanely tickled that new development was making her.

Therein lay the path to the land of impossibilities.

A half hour later, she was still thinking about all the impossibilities of the situation as she finished up the last of her nightly post-closing duties. Per usual, she waited for the janitors to start on the floors before waving them goodbye and heading out. The twenty-minute window she had once the janitors started working on the floors was just enough time for her to slip out to the van unnoticed. She’d discovered that trick within the first few days working there, and it’d been working like a charm ever since.

With one more furtive glance around the tiny back lot that Joe only used for vendor deliveries and to park his own vehicle when he was here during the daytime, Addison climbed into the quintessential 80s camping movie van to turn in for the night.

It hadn’t taken long for Addison and the kids to come up with their daily routine. It all started with her waking up at four-thirty in the morning to drive out of the lot before the morning crew arrived at five. She’d drive over to the supermarket from there to pick up a few things. They couldn’t keep much in the cooler so the daily trips to the market was both a necessity, and a way for the kids to get another half hour of sleep in every morning. Next, she’d drive them to the community rec center one town over that opened at five-thirty every morning for the early bird senior citizens. Since her annual membership permitted her two family guests, that’s when she and the kids would shower, use the facilities, and brush their teeth, under the cover of their early morning exercise laps in the pool.

After eating breakfast together in the car while they deflated their air mattress and covered up all traces of their living in the van, Addison would drop the kids off at school at around seven, when a lot of their friends were already on campus playing and hanging out. Then, she’d head over to her day job at Bernadette’s until noon. She picked up Kylie at the grade school first, and then Tanner a block over at the middle school, then tried to do something fun with them for about two hours. Whether that was going to the park or the library, or just watching some internet TV on the tablet computer they all shared, she made a point to spend that time with them before heading over to the diner about an hour before her shift—never any earlier, to avoid any questions.

Since the diner was always pretty slow at that time, there was always a booth for the kids to sit in and do their homework while she fixed them a quick snack. Since Joe was hardly there anymore, Addison and Shirley pretty much ran the place in the latter half of the day so Addison would do some light managerial things in between helping the kids with their homework until her shift. The bit of paperwork here and there was a nice trade-off for the free snacks and dinners she got to feed the kids every day.

Then, when her shift would start, the kids kept themselves entertained until dinner, which she timed to be about a half hour before her dinner break started. That way, she could spend her break ‘taking them home’ every night, which basically just consisted of her driving around while the kids closed up the curtains in the back of the van, flipped all the rear seats down flat, inflated the air mattress, and got ready for bed. She’d park for a bit then and read Kylie a bedtime story without fail every night before heading back to the diner to finish her shift.

In the beginning, the kids used to need to watch TV on the tablet to fall asleep—thank goodness for Joe’s strong wi-fi signal and the dark as night blackout curtains they drew closed over the van windows every night. But now, they were out like a light before she even parked back in Joe’s lot.

Then they’d rinse and repeat. They spent the majority of their quality family time together on the weekends when she wasn’t working for Bernadette, and the kids were off of school, so really, the van was just a place where the kids slept. And it worked for them.

In actuality, she’d managed to save up quite a bit of money already, and she probably could’ve moved them to an apartment at the start of this year. But, there was always the fear that a neighbor or a landlord would call social services when they realized how young she was. Her plan was to save up more money by staying in the van until the summer, and then moving them all to an apartment. Tanner would be starting high school in the fall so it was a good time to make that transition.

He enjoyed running, weirdly enough, so she wanted him to go out for cross-country or track. Maybe that would lead to a scholarship for college, but even if it didn’t, she would work double shifts if she had to, to make sure he got to go. And her sister was still young, but if she wanted to dance ballet or do gymnastics in a few years, Addison wanted to have enough money saved up to make that possible.

The extra money also couldn’t hurt when it came time for her to file for full custody of the kids on her twenty-first birthday next January.

At that thought she turned to look at the two reasons why her age was a number that had no bearing on how old she was in life. She’d damn near raised both Tanner and Kylie.

Back when she’d been the only eight year old among her friends that was allowed to babysit a newborn, she’d just thought it cool. As the years went on, and she started figuring out that her mom wasn’t so much ‘letting’ her babysit as she was ‘needing’ her to babysit because she was high as a kite and drunk as a skunk.

Addison had never really had a chance to do the things that other kids her age had done. But she never regretted her life. Those kids were her entire world. And if she could give them the love and care that she never had growing up, she would move heaven and hell to make it so.

Sure, their life wasn’t typical, but she took good care of them. The only thing they lacked was a home that didn’t have four wheels under it, and a guardian over the age of twenty-one.

They’d been doing better than fine without either.

For that matter, when they’d had both of those ‘lacking’ factors of a home without wheels and a guardian over the age of twenty-one, their quality of life had been worse. Way worse.

Now, she never had to worry about drug needles on the ground or other traumatizing things for the kids to get exposed to.

Now, she never had to worry about having enough food or money for field trips or really anything the children needed.

Now, she never had to worry about them feeling unloved or unwanted—when she wasn’t working, Addison was spending her time with them, whether it was to help them with their homework or go to the park or just snuggle up under a blanket to watch a DVD borrowed from the library, she was there for them.

She’d be damned if she’d let anyone say she wasn’t a good guardian for them and risk having them get taken from her, and each other.

That brought her full circle to the Caine situation. Mutual interest or not, they had to just remain in the friend zone. With her life, she couldn’t possibly date him.

So the man was ridiculously good looking, and criminally sexy. They could still be ‘just’ friends. She’d been doing it for a month now, after all.

By the time she closed her eyes for the night, she was pretty sure she had herself convinced.

Convincing the man who had practically devoured her with his eyes while he’d been drinking her special blend, however, was a whole different story.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT
,
Addison brewed double the amount of her special personal blend and waited for Caine to come in…so she could serve him Joe’s usual bland cup of coffee and see how he reacted.

She expected a response of near biblical proportions.

It was her way of re-amalgamating their ‘just friends’ friendship.

And have a little fun in the process.

Uneventful as her day-to-day life was, this little tiger-poking stunt she was planning was basically the highlight of her week. All morning, she’d been chuckling to herself imagining his face when he took his first sip. Which would lead to her wondering if he’d just glower at the green pot and make polite, teeth-grit demands that she pour him the good stuff, or if he’d simply stomp back behind the counter to pour himself a mug.

Her money was on the latter.

While he was pretty much like a big, gruff, usually-only-mildly-grizzly teddy bear with her, she’d heard him alpha out a few times outside of the walls of the diner and use his intimidating-as-hell cop voice on a few occasions.  She'd even seen him take down a tweaked out, knife-wielding guy in ten seconds flat once. 

The man just wasn’t a guy you messed with.

...Which just made the whole thing she was planning so much more fun.

Only problem was, he didn’t show up.

The next night? Same.

For a month, the man had come in for dinner nearly every night, and somehow, without her even noticing it, he’d become a mainstay in her day. The sneaky bastard. He’d been charming and unassuming the entire time. Friendly. And aside from the occasional innocuously pervy, mostly rather clever, and always darn funny comment he’d sneak in here and there, he’d never once hit on her.

She liked him.

Even more astonishing was the fact that she
liked
that she liked him.

Thus, it was strangely unsettling to not be able to chat with him, or at least see him. Though it took her a lot of heavy introspection to admit it, her days felt just a tiny bit incomplete without him in it. And that was insane, really. They barely knew each other. Yet, somehow, the sneaky man had found a way past her defenses and into her life.

Unbelievable.

Sure, she’d known all the other diner workers for a lot longer, and saw them in larger doses every day. But she never truly considered any of them a true friend the way Caine was. Mostly because she never felt comfortable sharing her life with any of them.

Caine, on the other hand…

You trust him.

It was true. She did. Of all the people in her life, if she had to pick one person to have watch Kylie and Tanner, there was no doubt in her mind that she’d pick Caine. And it wasn’t because he was a cop. She trusted him
despite
that.

Figured the universe would deem it fit for her to start liking and trusting a man whose actual job it was to stop women like her from breaking the law.

In spite of all that, by the time Day Three rolled around, with still no sign of Caine, Addison flat out started to worry. She’d even volunteered to run a big lunch order over to the station to see if she could catch him.

Nothing.

That is, until she was wiping down the counter before closing on Day Four and saw something a little off about the collage of Easter eggs she and the kids had drawn to put up on the wall nearest the register. It took her a minute to realize what it was.