Georgia was weeping silently as she stared at me. Her expression was etched with indecision. As for me, I was done with douchebag Donny and his threats. I reached up and pulled at his arm, trying to relieve some of the pressure before he caved in my chest cavity.
Unfortunately, in the bedlam of the past few moments, I’d forgotten one crucial fact.
My gloves.
I’d taken them off to help craft Rory’s costume. Which meant, the instant my bare fingers hit Donny O’Banion’s beefy arm…
A vision hit me.
Hard.
Chapter Twelve
God, grant me the confidence of a mediocre, medium-ugly man.
- Imogen Warner, psyching herself up
There was no time to prepare for it. Purple sparks showered in my peripherals. My body went limp as a rag doll. And, in the space between two heartbeats?—
The pretty young woman stands in the shadowy corner of a dingy bar, her hip braced against the edge of a green felt pool table as she waits for her husband to finish drinking. She wants to go home — she’s wanted to go for hours — but he’s with his brothers and when those four get together, there’s no telling how late the night could go.
She tells herself not to say anything, to keep silent, even though her ankles are swollen and her back is aching. She’d walk the ten blocks if it weren’t so cold out, and if it was only her health on the line.
Her hands flutter down to rest against the rounded curve of her stomach. She’s due in just a few short weeks. She loves the little life inside her already, so much it almost makes the rest of her marriage worth it.
Almost.
When she finally gets up the courage to call her husband’s name and ask for the ride home he promised two hours ago, she knows immediately she’s made a mistake. Her light brown eyes never blink as she watches him mutter something to his brothers, then slide off his barstool. He walks to her, grabbing a discarded pool stick as he passes the table, spinning it in slow circles like a baton. It looks flimsy in his gargantuan hands. As though, if he closed his fist even slightly, it would snap like a twig.
She doesn’t doubt it would.
She knows how strong those hands are.
The man doesn’t stop moving until he’s backed her away from the table, farther into his shadows, where no one can see. She takes a breath, holds it in her lungs until they start to burn. There’s a grin on his face as he twists the pool stick horizontal, then presses it to her breastbone so she’s pinned fully against the wall, one hand to either side of her frame. She tries to smile at him as he does this — like it’s a game. Like it’s a joke, and she’s in on the punchline.
She is fully aware just how fast he can flip from flirtatious to furious.
Her heart is hammering even louder as he leans in to bring his mouth to her ear. So loud, she wonders if his brothers can hear it from across the bar. So loud, she wonders if the baby inside her can hear it, a drumbeat echoing all around his tiny, floating limbs.
“Why is it every time we go out, you gotta embarrass me in front of my brothers?” her husband says in a voice that makes her quake. “Why is it you gotta make me punish you?”
The purple sparks filled my visual field again, and the dark bar disappeared. A new vision moved in on the heels of the first, so fast there was no chance to brace for it.
The man is at the kitchen table, a glass of amber-hued liquor clutched in his large hand. His small sons are moving around on the floor in the next room, steering toy cars down the tracks in the carpet. His wife is standing at the stove with her back to him, stirring spaghetti sauce for dinner. She’s still dressed from her day job — a new gig as receptionist at a local accountant’s office, answering phones and filing paperwork. His cold eyes move from the sleek coils of her hair to the slender curve of her waist in the fitted cardigan to the low heels on her feet.
“Call your boss.” His voice cuts through the kitchen like a knife. “Tell him you’re done.”
She whirls around so fast, sauce flies off her wooden spoon. It lands on the linoleum with a wet plop, but she does not move to clean it. Her eyes are on the man’s, wide with alarm.
“What?”
“You heard me. You’re done workin’ there.”
“Donny,” the woman says, her tone placating. “I just started last week. I can’t quit. I don’t want to quit. The money is great, the hours are great...”
“You think I don’t know what’s goin’ on?” He sucks down the contents of his glass in one gulp. “You think I don’t see what’s happenin’ here?”
The woman holds herself still. Her eyes flash over to the carpet in the living room, but otherwise she does not move a muscle. “What do you mean?”