“Are you drinking?” I repeat my earlier question, and the three of them look at each other, then climb up on the barstools in front of me.
“We will each have a water,” Lisa orders, and I pull out three glasses and fill them with ice then bring up the soda gun and fill their glasses with water. Pushing the full glasses toward them across the bar, I’m half tempted to tip them over onto their laps. But I don’t, because that would be rude, and I don’t really feel like cleaning up the mess it would cause.
“How’s your grandmother?” Lisa’s blonde friend asks, making my already tight muscles bunch almost painfully. “I heard she’s not right in the head.”
“I heard you only came to town to get her money, and when that didn’t work, you tried to kill her by setting her house on fire,” the brunette says, and my hands ball into fists at my sides.
“You need to leave now,” I growl, ready to jump over the bar.
“I think Rose would disapprove of you talking to paying customers like that,” Lisa says with a smile. “In fact, when I leave here, I’ll make sure to call and let her know how rude you’ve been to us.”
“Call her now,” I suggest, and her eyes turn to slits before they all stand at the same time like some well-planned performance.
“This is going to be my first and last warning,” Lisa sneers, knocking over the three full glasses, causing water to go everywhere and the glasses to fall off the bar and shatter at my feet. “Stay away from Colton.”
“It will be kinda hard to do that, when I live with him,” I tell her, and her body jerks back and surprise fills her eyes. I don’t even have it in me to feel bad for her, since she’s such a bitch. But I still think I should have kept that information to myself, because she is obviously crazy.
“Come on, Lisa. Let’s get out of there,” the brunette says, taking hold of Lisa’s arm and dragging her toward the door, with the other friend following along with them.
I wait until the door closes behind them to suck in a deep lungful of air. I didn’t even realize I wasn’t breathing until then. Tears burn the back of my eyes, but I fight them off and lean over, resting my hands on my knees and trying to calm down. My nerves feel shot and my body feels wired, like I drank way too much coffee. Gritting my teeth, I fight the urge to call Colton and tell him what just went down. I don’t want to worry him about this, or make him have to think about Lisa or deal with her. Especially when I know that’s exactly what she wants.
“Gia.” My head flies up when I hear Colton call my name, and I watch him come toward me with worry-filled eyes. “What the fuck happened?” he asks, looking at me then the mess of shattered glass and water at my feet.
“Nothing,” I say shakily, watching him set a bag on top of the bar. “You know me. I’m clumsy.”
His eyes narrow. “Tell me what happened and why you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Nothing happened.” I wave him off. “Like I said, it was an accident.” I grab the garbage can from under the counter and set it down in the middle of the floor then move toward the office to grab the broom and dustpan.
“Please don’t lie to me,” he says gently, wrapping his fingers around my wrist to stop me from walking away.
Turning to look up at him, I swallow over the sudden lump in my throat. “I’m not lying,” I state, and his eyes close. “Please let me go so I can get this mess cleaned up,” I whisper, and his eyes open then he dips his head and touches his forehead and lips to mine in a soft touch that makes me want to curl myself into him and tell him everything that happened with Lisa and her posse.
“Leave the glass. I’ll clean it up,” he orders, letting me go, and I let out relieved a breath.
“Eat your lunch. I know you’re hungry. I can clean this up.”
“I’m not going to let you clean up glass. Just go get some towels from the back,” he instructs while he heads toward the office.
Standing there, I watch him disappear before I head to the storage closet to grab a stack of bar towels along with the mop and bucket. It takes us a while to get all the glass and water cleaned up, and I can tell Colton is frustrated and annoyed, but he doesn’t ask me to tell him again what happened.
Which I’m pretty sure is worse than him asking me over and over again.
CHAPTER 8
Falling Fast
Gia
“GIA, CAN I TALK to you for a minute?” Rose asks, sticking her head out the office door.
Meeting her gaze, I set down my cleaning stuff. This morning, Colton didn’t drive me to work like he has been doing every day for the past week. He told me that he had some stuff to take care of, so he gave me his keys to the bar and instructions on how to go about turning off the alarm and rearming it once I was inside. He also told me that his mom would be here before opening so I wouldn’t be alone.
I didn’t ask him what he had to do, but I could tell that whatever it was, it annoyed him, which in turn worried me. He didn’t bring up what happened again, but I know he still hasn’t let it go, because things between us seemed different last night and this morning. Yes, he kissed me after I got home from visiting Grandma and before he went to bed last night, but it was just a soft peck to my lips. And this morning when he left to do whatever he had to do, it was the same, just a quick touch of his lips to mine. Nothing more. And totally opposite of the heated kisses we’d been sharing the last few days.
Shaking off the worry in the pit of my stomach, I quickly wash my hands and wipe them on one of the bar rags before resting it on the edge of the sink under the counter.
“What’s up?” I ask, stepping into the office, finding Rose sitting at the desk with her laptop in front of her.
“Have a seat, honey.” She motions to the chair at the edge of the desk. Taking a seat, I rest my hands in my lap and study her profile, noticing she looks upset.
“Is everything okay?” I ask quietly after a couple of minutes, and her jaw clenches as she turns the laptop in my direction. Seeing the image frozen in time on the screen, my stomach drops. It’s the moment when Lisa pushed over the glasses, right before they landed on the floor.
“Colton asked me to have a look at the video tapes yesterday. He said you seemed freaked when he got back here after picking you two up some lunch. He’s been worried. He wanted to make sure that if someone was bothering you, we knew who they were so we could prevent it from happening again. I thought he was just being overprotective, so I didn’t check the tapes right away. I see now I should have checked them sooner.”
I didn’t know there were video cameras in the bar, but I should have guessed there were.
“I—”
“Why didn’t you tell us what happened?” I lift my eyes to hers, unsure of how to answer her question, unsure of what to tell her. “Gia, this is not okay.” She points at the computer. “Not even a little bit okay.”
“I know.” I wring my hands together in my lap, dropping my eyes to the tops of my thighs.
“Honey, why didn’t you at least talk to me?” she asks, sounding concerned.
“I should have said something, but I didn’t want to give her what she wanted.”
“What did she say to you?”
Lifting my eyes, I bite the inside of my cheek. “Nothing really.”
“I can tell by the look on your face in the video that whatever she said upset you, so don’t lie to me,” she scolds gently, closing the lid on her laptop. “And don’t say nothing happened, because there was one part during the video that I could tell you wanted to jump over the bar to get at her.”
“She talked about my grandma,” I admit, and anger fills her eyes.
“Is that all she did?”
Shrugging, I mutter, “She told me to stay away from Colton, that he’s hers. That you have been trying to get them back together.”
“Has Colton talked to you about what happened to him?” she questions, and I nod, watching her shoulders slump. “When she broke up with him, I got where she was coming from. I understood the future they planned was ripped apart and that she was scared of the unknown, scared of being with a man who would never walk again. I understood that, because I was suddenly faced with the reality that my baby boy might never walk and that things with him might not ever be the same.” She pulls in a breath then lets it out. “I should have realized what she did was wrong in a way that it would never be right. If she really loved my son the way she said she did, she would accept him whole or broken. Some of this is my fault,” she whispers the end, and I see tears gathering in her eyes. “I didn’t think about what it said to him when she left him during a time when she should have held on tighter. I just wanted everything to be back to the way it should have been. I wanted to know my boy could still have the future he had planned for himself.”