Pas de Deux: Part One (A Cross and Pointe Novel Book 1) (22 page)

Sammi and Jazz worked the crowd at the register together, handling the large group with quick service and good-natured barbs to their regulars. An hour later, Sammi was pleased to see their tip jar was nearly full. 

“Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.” Jazz eyed the jar. “Did I ever thank your parents for only having the two of us as employees? More tips to go around.”

“Hell, yeah.” By Sammi’s best estimate, there had to be nearly two hundred dollars in the jar.

Jazz stretched and yawned. “We should be pretty slow for a while. I’m gonna go bake stuff.”

“And I’ll straighten up here.” Sammi glanced at the mess on the counters. It always happened this way—whenever there was a huge rush, there was always an equally huge mess to clean up afterward. “And sort the cash drawer.”

As Jazz retreated into the kitchen, Sammi wiped off the counters and the espresso machine, restocking cups and lids and sleeves.

As she cleaned, Sammi realized that she felt different somehow. Lighter. For the first time in a long time, the oppressive weight of her dirty little secrets that crushed her every day had lifted. How things would play out with Cillian was a mystery, but telling him made her feel so much better.

For now, at least.

Her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans and she pulled it out. She blinked at the screen; apparently, his ears had been burning.

CILLIAN
: Hey. I just wanted to check on you. See how you’re doing.

SAMMI
: I’m ok. Thanks for asking. How’s your day?

CILLIAN
: Ok. Busy. Working at Cliff’s tonight?

SAMMI
: Yes.

CILLIAN
: Got a ride home?

SAMMI
: Jazz.

CILLIAN
: Ok. Good. If anything changes, let me know.

Sammi chewed her lip, then typed quickly before she could change her mind.

SAMMI
: Could I stop by at the gym after I get off work at the café?

CILLIAN
: Of course. You don’t ever need to ask me if you can do that.

SAMMI
: Ok. I’ll see you in a few hours.

Sammi walked through the entrance of the gym, clutching a paper bag with string handles and glancing around. It felt like forever since she’d been to the gym, when it had really only been a few days. She hadn’t ever set foot in the place in street clothes, and she drew stares from a couple of guys, who eyed her in her unmistakably feminine outfit—skinny jeans, a ruffled cream-colored top, and an olive utility jacket with black leather sleeves.

Baz looked up from the front desk where he was watching ESPN.

“’Sup?”

“Hey. Good to see you’re hard at work, as always.”

“I do what I can.” He nodded to the bag she carried. “Smells good. You bring me grub?”

Sammi smirked. “You wish. Is Cillian around?”

“Ah, should’ve known you were here for him and not me.” He feigned a hurt expression, then grinned. “But, yeah. He’s in his office. Go on back.”

“Thanks.” She walked past the desk, her black peep-toe ankle boots thumping dully on the concrete floor.

Cillian was sitting on a corner of his desk, talking rapidly into the phone when she approached the doorway. She wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but she could tell it had to do with the tournament.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “Workouts have been good. Training’s fine. I’m set.” He paused. “Yeah. I’ll get back to you on that. Just send me the itinerary. Interviews? I dunno, man. Not my thing…Fine. We can talk about it.” He glanced up at Sammi, and though he didn’t smile, his face seemed to light up and he nodded at her and held up one finger.

“All right, man. Just send it to me. Okay. I gotta go. Something important just came up.”

Sammi bit her lip, trying not to grin.
I’m important.

He hung up and tossed his cell phone on his desk, then finally gave her a smile. “Hey. How you doing?”

Sammi held up the bag. “You got time for a dinner break?”

Cillian lifted his brows in surprise. “Sure. You didn’t need to do that, but thanks. I’m starvin’. Shut the door, have a seat.”

Sammi pushed his office door closed and set the bag on the desk, pulling out foil-wrapped gyros. “I got a grilled chicken gyro and a grilled steak gyro, on multigrain flatbread with sprouts and some other healthy crap.” Sammi held each one in her hands. “Which one do you want?”

Cillian smirked. “Which one do you want?”

“Chicken.”

“Good. ‘Cause I wanted steak.”

She handed him the sandwich and took a seat across from him. He studied her, then reached for a napkin. “You came all the way out here to bring me somethin’ to eat?”

Sammi sighed and pulled at a piece of chicken. “No. I mean, yes, but no. I wanted to talk about—about last night.”

Cillian nodded and dropped his eyes to his gyro. “Okay. What do you wanna talk about?”

“The fact that I’m sorry I fell apart last night?” Sammi flushed, shifting in her seat. “I sort of ruined the whole night, and I just wanted to apologize for that.”

“Don’t do that.” Cillian shook his head. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t ruin anything, I told you that.”

“I never intended to unload all my shit on you like that.”

“Look, we all got issues, we all got pasts. I think you’re someone who had a horrible experience and now you’re trying to figure out how to heal. That’s brave.” He took a bite of his gyro.

“There’s gotta be a part of you that thought it was so lame I snuck around here, dressed like a boy.”

Cillian shrugged. “Not at all. I think you were doin’ what was best for you, at that time.”

Sammi cleared her throat, glancing around, trying to find a new topic of conversation. Her gaze fell on a photo on his desk of a pretty woman with dark auburn hair with her arms around a boy and a girl. They were adorable. She’d never noticed it before.

Please let that be a sister…

“You’ve never really told me about your family.” She pulled sprouts off her sandwich, making a face as she dropped them on her sandwich wrapper. “You have siblings?”

“I got one sister, she’s younger than me. That’s her in the picture.”

Oh, thank God.

“And your parents?”

“Still married. Thirty-five years.” He smirked. “My mom always says that she’s never considered divorce. Murder, but not divorce.”

“Pretty sure my parents live by that philosophy. Are you and your sister close?”

Cillian nodded. “Best friends. She has two kids, Jenny and Christopher.” He pointed at the two kids in the photo with his sister.

“Aw, Uncle Killy.”

He smiled. “Those two are everything to me. I try to be in their lives as much as I can, since their real dad bounced years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as he’s gonna be, he ever shows his ass around here again.” Cillian shrugged. “Anyway, she struggles to get by, so I try to help her out whenever I can. Which is hard sometimes, because like you, I’m savin’ up money, too. I wanna buy this place.”

Sammi cocked her head. “I thought this
was
your place.”

“I own half of it. Well…thirty-five percent, technically. My father sold it when I was deployed, so I didn’t know anything about his financial troubles. I wanted to buy out the guy he sold it to when I got home, but I couldn’t get enough money from the bank. That’s why I’m trying my hand at the tournament.” He shrugged. “Part of the reason, anyway.”

Sammi saw the way his jaw clenched and his eyes darkened. “What’s the rest of the reason?”

Cillian sighed and shook his head. “Carl. We don’t see eye to eye on the future of the business. Long story. Anyway, I still got a chance for some runner-up money.”

“What if you don’t win anything?”

He shrugged. “Then I keep workin’ hard, like I always do. One way or another, this place will be mine, one day.”

“I hope so. I always hear people talk about when your father used to run it. It seems like it means a lot to so many people in this neighborhood.”

“Means a lot to me. I practically grew up in this place. Me and my sister.”

“Really?” She tried to picture the pretty girl in the photo wearing boxing gloves.

Cillian smirked. “Yeah. She’s five-foot-nothin’, buck-ten soppin’ wet, but you don’t want to be on the receiving end of her right cross. Personal experience.”

Sammi giggled. “I’m sure you deserved it.”

“What? Me?” He grinned. “Damn right, I did.”

“Well…maybe someday we’ll both be living our dreams.”

Cillian met her gaze across the desk and gave her a half-smile. “I believe it.”

Sammi felt her face heat up under his stare; his eyes were intense, but there was something soft in them when he looked at her, a softness that he seemed to reserve just for her. A softness he’d shown her last night.

She cleared her throat. “I wanted to finish the story from last night. I didn’t tell you everything.”

Cillian merely looked at her, waiting.

“I never told anyone what he—Roger—did to me for a while. I was so scared that he might actually kill me if I said anything. But a few months ago, I found out that he’d been arrested for the rape of another woman, in New York. And that as the investigation went on, he’s actually raped about two dozen other women.”

“Christ,” Cillian breathed. “What a fucking piece of shit.”

“Because of that, I decided to come forward. For months after, I was terrified that I’d be hurt somehow—again—even though Roger was locked up. That was when my therapist gave up on me.”

“Then that makes him an asshole.” Cillian’s brow lowered, his cheeks ruddy. “You’re better off without him.”

“Some days, I agree. Others, not so much. Anyway, I was contacted—subpoenaed—for my testimony at his trial later this month—May 26th.” She pulled an envelope from her bag slowly, and handed it to him across the table. “There aren’t a lot of his victims who are willing to testify.”

Cillian took the certified letter and unfolded it. He skimmed it quickly, then glanced up at her over the edge of the sheet.

“They can’t arrest you or anything if you don’t actually testify. They can’t force you.” He folded the paper, slipped it back into the envelope, and handed it back.

She took the envelope and stuffed it back into her bag. “My lawyer told me the same thing. But he also said that my testimony could potentially put him away for good. The prosecution is going for life.”

Cillian nodded, his face blank but his eyes sharp as he glanced at her. “What do you think about that?”

“I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to sit in a courtroom with him, in the same room as him, where he can look at me and think about me and remember what he did to me. But then I think about those women, all the ones that came after me, and how I could have stopped it had I just said something back then. I owe it to them to testify.” There was an old coffee-ring stain on the desk near her hand and she circled it with her finger, biting her lip. “I would’ve wanted the same thing done for me.”

“I think you’re brave enough to handle it.”

Sammi scoffed. “You joking? Where have you been the last couple months?”

Cillian shrugged. “You’re a warrior. You live by yourself, you take care of yourself, and you’re still working toward your dreams.” Cillian lifted his eyebrows at her. “That takes balls. The trial’s just one last ‘fuck you, you didn’t break me’.”

Sammi thought back over the panic attacks, the medication, the cutting, the fear, and bitter anger bloomed in her chest. “Maybe he did.”

Cillian shook his head. “No way.” He reached across the desk, touching her hand lightly. “I see you. I don’t know you as well as your family or Jazz, but I know balls when I see ‘em.”

There was a beat of silence, then they both burst out laughing. Sammi weighed his words.

He’s right. I’ve got balls. They might be the size of peas right now, but they’re there.

“We’ll see. I’ve still got a little while to decide.” Sammi folded her lips inward, casting about for a new subject. “I don’t think I told you—I’m quitting Cliff’s. This is my last weekend there.”

Cillian’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, yeah? I thought you need all of your thirty-million jobs.”

Sammi chuckled. “Three jobs are just too much. Much as I like earning money, I like my me-time more and it feels like I never get any. And I hate working nights, and weekend nights at that. It has to go.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of work, I better be on my way.”

He rose with her. “Thanks for the food. That’s twice you’ve fed me, now.”

She smiled and lifted a shoulder. “Anytime. Like I said, I feel like I sorta owed you.”

He held up a hand. “Stop. You don’t owe me anything.” He opened his office door and walked with her through the gym. Several women instantly looked over at them, and they all frowned and whispered behind their hands.

Sammi lifted a brow at them. “Looks like your fan club isn’t too happy.”

Cillian shrugged, staring straight ahead. “Not worried about them.” He pushed open the front door and a cool, misty blast of air hit them. “You takin’ the bus home or straight there?”