See Through Me (Lose My Senses) (10 page)

Devon stepped out from the beaded curtain, pushing the yellow and blue strands aside slowly. Draping herself over the doorframe, she posed with a hand to her forehead. I put my bag back underneath the counter. Her smile shone bright, but her eyes were glassy.

“Is it me or is the world really, incredibly beautiful tonight?” she said.

There wasn
’t enough coffee in the world to deal with this. “It’s just you.”

She giggled and took a seat at the counter. I had just filled another small plastic cup to the brim with ice and handed it to her when Ash walked through the café door. The strap of his beat-up messenger bag crossed his lean chest. My heart skipped a few notes of its own. He scanned over the room, but he didn
’t go to the stairs like practically everyone else. Instead, he chose to sit down at one of the wooden booths. He set his bag on the floor next to him.

Devon followed the direction of my gaze. She turned back around with a wicked smile.
“You can thank me later for texting him last night where to find you.”

“
Thank you?” How did she get his new phone number?

“
I almost died when I ran into him last week. I don’t think he’s ever said more than three words to me before, and suddenly he’s going on about you and asking a ton of questions. He told me to call him the second I heard from you.” She picked up a piece of ice. “Strangest way I’ve ever gotten a guy’s phone number.”

“
We lost contact.” I narrowed my eyes as he pulled a sketchbook out. He never drew in public. “He was just worried.”

“
Lucky you, having someone like him worrying about you.” She looked over her shoulder. “How did he get hotter? And how the hell did he go from a gawky weirdo to
that
?”

“
He was never a gawky weirdo!” To me, at least.

She raised her hands.
“I’m just saying, he did the late-bloomer thing with exceptional style. Relax.”

He raised his eyes from his sketchbook and arched a dark wing of an eyebrow. He must
’ve heard everything. A blush bloomed on my cheeks as Devon burst out in a fit of laughter.

“
It took you guys long enough.” She snickered into her cup. “For someone so smart, you’re an idiot. He wasn’t going to wait forever for you to make up your mind.”

I sipped from my empty mocha cup, the dregs of coffee
watered down from the melted ice. If I told her the truth, she’d only find more creative ways to push us together.

“
It’s not a big deal. We’re just having fun,” I said, tossing the cup in the trash.

“
You’re not fooling me.” She leaned over the counter and gave me an air kiss. “But I got my own someone who’s going to start worrying about me, or I’d make you spill your guts.”

She hopped off the stool and skipped to the stairs. Her ice rattled in its cup. She disappeared through the curtain and her light steps tramped up and away.
The band had stopped playing, and the sounds of quiet conversation in the dining room were like an exhale of hard-won relief. I picked out a dishcloth from a basket, and decided to start cleaning early.

Jess, the server from last night, walked across the room to Ash
’s booth. I slowly wiped at a permanent water stain on the counter. She stood much closer to him than necessary to take his order. Ash barely looked up from his sketchbook, giving her a brief twitch of a smile and pointing at the menu with his pencil. She sashayed her way back to the kitchen, and I seriously thought about shanking her with a spoon if she wrote her number on his check.

Sometimes, during our senior year, he would come in with his dates as I worked. He refrained from showing them any more than casual interest in public, and in turn, I refrained from poisoning their milkshakes. But tonight he was alone.

I picked up the pitcher of ice water and went through the small dining room, offering water to the few customers left before making it over to his booth, where he sat angled over his sketchbook. Training my face into a mask of sweetness and light, I asked, “More water, sir?”

“
Are you going to pour it over my head?” He leaned back and moved his arm away from his paper. “Someone recently told me I have a water fetish.”

He smirked, but my eyes were drawn to the paper in front of him. Bold lines contrasted with light shading to form a picture of my face in profile, my new shorter hair blowing in the wind. He
’d never showed me any of his sketches before. I took the sketchbook with me last summer because I thought that was all I would ever get the chance to see.

“
What are you doing, Ash?”

“
Getting dinner,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding the implicit question. The pencil twirled briefly between his fingers and then rested on the paper.

He wanted me to see. It was important to him for some reason. I filled his glass with water and murmured to him,
“Your drawing is lovely.”

The sketch made me seem fragile and fearless at the same time. Was that how he saw me?

“It’s not as lovely as my inspiration.” His fingers gripped the pencil and the tip broke off on the paper from the force.

I fumbled with the pitcher. I never quite knew how to take his compliments, they startled me every time with their sincerity. A bell rang across the room. At the counter, a guy
wearing a tight t-shirt tapped his fingers on the wood.

The bell rang at the counter. A guy with a tight t-shirt stood there, tapping his fingers on the wood. Ash hunched back over the sketch and waved me away.
“Don’t neglect your job duties on my account, slacker.”

I walked over to the register. The guy greeted me with a lazy smile. He could pass as a model, with his razor-sharp cheekbones and
artfully tousled hair.

“
Sorry about that.” I set the pitcher down. “Can I help you?”

His gaze crawled over me.
“I think so.” He rested his arms on the counter. “Are you Katie?”

“
For tonight, I am.” I tapped the name tag on my apron. “No promises on tomorrow, though.”

Over the guy
’s shoulder, I saw Ash sit up taller and shoot a protective glare in my direction.

The guy leaned in closer.
“I’m in the band playing upstairs.”

Ugh. Wearing a ton of cologne doesn
’t automatically hide body odor. I picked up the dishcloth. “That’s cool.”

“
I was talking with some of the guys, and I’ve heard some things about you,” he purred.

Fabulous. I began wiping down the counter.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“
When are you done for the night? Trevor told me a lot about you, and I think we could have a lot of fun together.”

He wrapped his hand around my wrist. I dropped the cloth, suppressing a flinch, and tried to slide my hand free. He imperceptibly tightened his grip, or maybe I was projecting my neuroses onto the poor, deluded fool.

My chest squeezed painfully as the stupid fear and panic emerged. I shouldn’t have let it get to me so easily. I should’ve been tougher and braver than this. But he needed to let me go and stop touching my wrist first. Ash got to his feet and stepped out from his booth. I shook my head at him. I had to deal with this on my own.

I leaned over and spoke low into the guy
’s ear. “Word of advice—don’t ask girls out by first calling them a slut.” I forced a high-pitched giggle. “You’re way too handsome to forget your manners.”

The guy let go and reddened across those stunning cheekbones. How did he manage not to cut himself on them while shaving?

“Maybe some other time?”

“
Probably not.” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “My boyfriend is like, super jealous and stuff.”

“
Oh.” He took a step back from the counter, finally giving me some space to breathe. “Trevor told me you were available.”

I
’m sure he did, the jackass.

“
Another word of advice?” I said with a saccharine smile. “Stop listening to Trevor. You don’t need his help anyway. I bet you do just fine all on your own.”

The guy slanted me a smug smile as he left. Hopefully, I
’d sated his ego enough to prevent any backlash.

I rubbed my arm while Ash came up to the counter, his eyes hooded.
“Boyfriend?”

So he
’d heard that part. “Yes, he’s blond, a Norse god, and he will crush anyone who opposes him with his mighty hammer. What do you think you were doing?”

“
I don’t know.” He visibly relaxed. “What was I doing?”

“
Getting up to take care of that guy for me!”

“
I don’t like seeing you being harassed,” he said flatly.

“
And I don’t like being harassed. But I wasn’t. Just hit on.” I picked up the dishcloth, and wrinkled my nose. “Badly, by the way. But if I was being harassed, I can handle it.”

“
With a mythical boyfriend you like to think doesn’t exist?”

“
Whatever it takes.” I wiped down the top of the espresso machine. “My mythical boyfriend can kick anyone’s ass who looks at me cross-eyed, which is why he’s a myth. Too high maintenance otherwise.”

He gave me a devilish, dimpled grin. It shouldn
’t have been as charming as I found it. Where were all my good intentions again? One look at Ash and they went running. Jess walked behind him, carrying a tray with fries and a hamburger, headed toward his empty booth.

“
Your food’s ready,” I said. “Stop bothering me while I am trying to be a productive member of society, unlike some people around here,
slacker
.”

He went back to his seat, moving with a lithe grace all his own, and settled down to eat. I busied myself scrubbing every crevice of the espresso machine in an attempt to stop myself from
watching him, but it didn’t work. He ate his burger with one hand, and continued to make small adjustments on his sketch with the other. Sometimes he would glare down at the paper, as if its very existence thwarted his vision from coming to life.

At the end of my shift, I went back to the kitchen. The dishwasher,
a skinny kid who looked like he was twelve, filled the sink with water while Helen towered over him with her arms crossed. Her favorite pots and pans were stacked on the counter, and she was eyeing him like she was daring him to do something to her precious cookware and see what would happen. From my own experience, nothing good. Save yourself the pain, kid.

“
I’m done for the night,” I said.

She turned to me, wiping her hands on
her apron. The water poured fast out of the faucet, and pearly bubbles slowly rose in the sink. The kid’s shoulders lowered now that her attention was diverted away from him.

“
I put you on the schedule like you suggested,” she said with a nod toward her office.

A clipboard hung on the door. I took down the calendar. Other than tomorrow night, she
’d scheduled me every night for the next week. She wasn’t about to let my guilt go to waste.

“
Wow, it’s almost like you missed having me around.”

“
Can you do me a favor and get the flats of strawberries out of the cooler? I need to prep them tonight for shortcake.” She plopped a pan in the water, splashing the poor new kid.

“
Sure,” I replied. “If you save me some shortcake.”

“
Sure,” she said, picking up another pot. “If you don’t run off in the middle of eating it, and leave me wondering what the hell is wrong with my food. Again.”

“
You’re never going to let that go, are you?” I hung my apron back on the hook by the staff table. “Your commitment to being evil takes my breath away.”

“
I’m a woman of many talents.” The pot went into the water with a bigger splash. The kid’s shoulders shot up to his bright red ears.

In the walk-in cooler off a small hallway, four huge flats of strawberries sat on the floor. I carefully carried them, one at a time, into the kitchen. On the third trip, angry voices shouted while footsteps
stomped in a semi-regular cadence above us. Probably a fight had broken out. Jerry must be in heaven tonight—he loved free entertainment. I grabbed the last flat. After I laid it on the kitchen island, I made my way to the front for my bag.

Ash was gone from his booth. He
’d left without saying goodbye. I scooped up my bag, and slung the straps across my chest. I hadn’t expected him to hang around just for me.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Saturday

When I opened the door to the alley, Ash was juggling an old can on his foot like a soccer ball outside the kitchen door. The can dropped to the ground with a rattle as he looked up. His bag was gone. He must have taken it to his car.

My breath quickened.
“Were you waiting for me?”

“
Always.” An enigmatic smile spread across his face.

I bit my lip to hide a giddy grin. My mind desperately tried to stop my heart from attaching more meaning to that one simple statement than was safe.
“No, really. What were you doing here tonight?”

“
A couple of the guys from the soccer team texted me about the band playing, and I didn’t want you to have to deal with a repeat of last night.” He flipped the can over with his foot. “Also, I thought it would be easier if we saw each other on neutral ground.”

“
What would be easier?”

The can rested on the top of his foot, and he bounced it into the air.
“For you to start trusting me again.”

I stared at him in disbelief as the can clattered onto the ground. The issue wasn
’t trusting him, it never was. “Are you insane?”

“
Probably.” He shrugged one broad shoulder.

Laughter bubbled up inside me at his deadpan exasperation. At first, it was a shocked little giggle. I covered my mouth and tried to hold it in, but it was no use.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“
You.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and kicked the can away.
“That’s not really what I was going for.”

I lost it, and laughed harder. He was so cute when I confused him.

“Are you going to let me in on the joke?” he asked as the last giggle escaped.

I grinned up at him.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“
Brat.” He scowled, but there was no bite to it. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your truck if you’re done mocking me.”

“
Why?” Was this another hijack for a sleepover at my house? Okay, maybe he was on to something about this trust thing.

The crowd upstairs roared with drunken approval as the band ended a song. An open bottle sailed out the window, hitting the far brick wall of a building. Sour foam sprayed all over the ground. Ash grinned, as if to say,
‘and there’s your answer.’ I sighed.

“
Fine, you can protect me from flying malt liquor attacks.” I gestured toward where I’d left my truck earlier. “I’m parked down the other way tonight.”

We walked down the alley; as the beat of the music died away, we were left with the sound of our footsteps on the crumbling asphalt. I thought back to what he
’d said that morning, how he wasn’t going to give up on me, and all he wanted from me was to try again. He had his own life now, free from the past. And he was already making far more of an effort than I deserved. I accidentally brushed against his arm, and without analyzing or rationalizing my thoughts to death first, I grabbed his hand.

He winced and stopped walking.
“What are you doing?”

“
Nothing.” I let go of his hand. So much for trying.

He shoved his hand in the pocket of his jeans.

“You were trying to hold my hand, weren’t you?” His mouth lifted up in another half-smile. He reached for me with his other hand, but I swatted him away.

“
Oh, no,” I said. “You had your chance with my hand and blew it. It’s no longer available for your affections.”

“
And there’s nothing I can do to convince your hand to change its mind?”

I purposely licked my bottom lip while he watched. His eyes grew heavy-lidded. We were flirting. The problem? I liked it too much to stop.
“My hand can be very fickle. It needs consideration, and maybe a little coaxing.”

He reached for my left hand again, and I let him take it. He
’d recognized the tattoo already. It would be silly to keep trying to hide it from him. The warmth of his charcoal-smudged fingers imprinted onto my skin. He brought my palm to his mouth, and his breath caressed the skin as he spoke in a deliciously low tone. “I am very sorry for my callous, inconsiderate behavior, and for anything else that may have brought you one single moment of distress, Katie’s very enchanting hand.”

He pressed a
tender kiss down on the skin. I melted into a pool of desire, concealing it behind a demure smile. For such an innocent gesture, it overflowed with eroticism. My imagination was already running naked. I meant wild. My fully clothed imagination ran wild.

My smile
slipped away. The moonlight and the fluorescent streetlights intersected on my arm, and I could see the slight raised edges of my scars. They were so faint under the colors, you’d have to know they were there to see them. And I couldn’t let him know they were there.

“
I’ve got to get going. It’s late and I’m tired.” I drew my hand back.

Intensity radiated from him as he let my hand slide free, his fingers gliding over my skin. When the connection was fully broken, a pang of loss reminded me of all I had missed in the last year. At my feet, a film of oil in a puddle of water reflected a dark rainbow from the moonlight.

I shouldn’t make trying again so complicated, even if it seemed overwhelmingly complicated in my head. There was always a chance I was overthinking things. It had been known to happen.

“
But I was thinking, I’m not that tired…” I lifted my face, and hoped the nagging exhaustion I’d struggled with all day didn’t read in my expression. “Maybe I wouldn’t kick you out if you just happened to show up at my house.”

“It was the kiss on the hand that did it, wasn’t it?” A shadow of a grin pulled at his mouth.

“Don’t gloat, it’s not attractive.” It was incredibly attractive.

We began walking toward my truck, sitting at the mouth of the alley.

When came up to my truck, I first noticed the flat tire on the driver’s side and cursed myself for not replacing the spare sooner. A lead weight formed in my stomach when I finally saw the smashed windshield, though. Green-tinted lines spiraled out from the glass. A piece of paper flapped in the wind under a rusting windshield wiper. I didn’t think a concerned citizen had left it.

Ash held out his arm, stopping me from going any closer.
“Stay here.”

He strode over to the sidewalk on the main street. The streetlamp above him glowed bright, drawing the outline of his shadow down the alley. He scanned up and down the street. I wrapped my arms around my waist. Muffled noises came from the party over the café and
echoed off the brick walls of the buildings surrounding us. I would hear any footsteps coming, but I couldn’t stop glancing over my shoulder as Ash prowled around my truck.

On the other side of my truck, he called over to me,
“This front tire is flat, too.”

I walked closer to the truck, and knelt down to a tire. Several puncture marks marred the dark, smooth rubber of the tire wall. I stood up to see Ash snatch the note out from under the wiper. He read it and handed it to me. A single word scrawled across the paper in child-like handwriting.
Freak.
Trevor was the only person who ever called me that. Everyone else was more polite to my face.

“
Do you think he’s still upstairs?” Ash’s voice sounded cold and remote.

“
I don’t know.” I shoved the note in my bag with shaking hands. “He could’ve gone in and out a dozen times by now.”

He gave me a long, hard look.
“You have to call the police.”

“
And tell them what?” My head started to pound, as if I didn’t have enough problems. “It’s my word against Trevor’s, and no one will believe me anyway.”

I leaned over the dented hood and examined more of the damage. In the middle of the glittering broken glass, a crumbling red brick lay on top, adding to the existing dents and scratches in the robin
’s-egg-blue paint. Ash pulled out his phone, and hit a button on the screen.

“
What are you doing?” I hissed.

I couldn
’t accuse the town’s golden boy of ongoing harassment and vandalism. No one would listen. And I couldn’t give the police any reason to put Ash on their radar. With his mother actively campaigning, I wanted to think Ash talking to the police wasn’t likely to come to anything—but when you’re dealing with a fucking psychopath, who really knows what they’re capable of? I ran around the truck to where he stood.

He ignored me.
“Yes, my friend’s truck has been damaged and she needs to report it.”

I grabbed for the phone. He spun around while calmly giving the dispatcher the address, like my distress didn
’t bother him in the least. He ended the call with a glare in my direction. Oh, hell no. He didn’t get to be the mad one.

“
What is your problem?” I demanded. “If I wanted to involve the police, I would’ve called them.”

He crossed his arms over his chest.
“You weren’t going to call them, that’s the problem. You’re convinced you have to handle everything on your own.”

“
Because I do handle everything on my own!” I flung out a hand toward my truck. “I just have basic insurance. I’ll have to pay for the damage anyway. There’s no reason to file a police report.”

“
The reason is because Trevor is escalating his obsession with you, and you’re acting like it’s in harmless good fun.”

That
’s right. I developed a migraine the moment I read the note because I thought it was so damn funny. But if I made a big deal out of it, Trevor would know he’d gotten what he wanted, that I was frightened enough to tell someone. I wasn’t going to let him win.

“
He’s just pissed that I didn’t want to be his next victim,” I told Ash through gritted teeth. “If you want me to trust you so badly, this isn’t the way to do it.”

“
I forgot,” he said. “Only Katie gets to make decisions about what’s best for other people?”

I sucked in a breath. He knew what I
’d done last summer. He may not have known the details, but he knew enough to guess why I left. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

Under the light of the streetlamp, the knuckles on one of his hands were bruised and swollen. The same hand I
’d just tried to hold a few minutes ago in the alley. That must be why he reacted the way he had when I tried to hold his hand. Everything clicked together. The fight I heard upstairs. His disappearance at the café, and his subsequent reappearance in the alley.

“
What happened to your hand, Ash?”

“
Why should I tell you?” He lowered his hand to his side. “You have to start acting like you trust me just a little before I can start telling you my secrets, too.”

I wasn
’t the only person talented at hiding the truth behind my words. He said he wanted me to trust him, but what he really wanted was to be able to trust me again. I pressed my lips together and said nothing.

Ash sighed, and then reached out to me.
“Look—”

I took a step backwards. It was always going to come back to the fact that I
’d lied last summer. He deserved someone he could trust. Someone he could believe in. And that someone wasn’t going to be me.

A cruiser drove up and slowed down as it approached us on the sidewalk. The cop parked on the street and flipped on his lights. The red and blue beams blinded me, and I focused on a spot on the ground. The cruiser door slammed shut, and I knew I didn
’t have any choice but to deal with this now. Too late to run. Ash rubbed my shoulder, and I jerked away from his hand. I didn’t want him to comfort me, I wanted him to go back in time and skip calling the freaking police in the first place.

“
Ma’am?” the officer asked. “Did you call about your vehicle being vandalized?”

I squinted through the lights. He was a young guy, probably only a few years older than us. There was an eagerness to him, like he wished he had a reason to Taser someone, judging by the way his hand kept going to his utility belt. Ash hovered by my side.

“Yes.” I pointed to my truck, deciding it was self-explanatory at this point. You couldn’t miss the busted-out windshield.

The officer walked around it, methodically checking it over with his flashlight. Radio static crackled, and he cocked his head to the side to talk, but I didn
’t catch what he said. Each flash of light sent searing pain to a point behind my eyes.

Another police car drove up, an SUV this time, and parked alongside the cruiser. My heart fell to my knees when the officer stepped out. Ash
’s father walked with stooped shoulders and a permanent scowl on his face. It took everything I had not to let my total hatred show on my face. He went over to the officer by my truck, and they talked quietly while glancing over to us.