“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“I couldn’t let you die,” I said.
“You almost died for me. You must have only had a second to react.” We sat back, but he kept his hands on my biceps.We looked at the wreckage in the street: his phone, our coffees pathetically on their sides, one rolling in the wind. “I feel so stupid.”
I tried to shrug, but he had too firm of a grip on me, like I was his mooring in a stormy sea. “I’m sure you’ll save someone someday. Pay it forward.”
With shaking hands and a tear in his eye, his fingers touched my cheek, pausing before he tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. His breathing was fast, or was that mine? And why was he looking at my lips like they might be his last meal?
For a moment, I was under his spell. Maybe all that stuff about trauma bonding was true. I felt drawn to him, like we existed in this weird snowglobe where it was just the two of us, sealed in and bound together.
He inched toward me, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. His name came out as a choked sigh. “Harlan.”
That snapped me out of it.Iwas sayinghisname. Hisfirstname. It surprised me that any part of my brain thought to call him by his first name. Except that one time I had a sex dream about him and woke up grinding a pillow. But he was essentially my bully, right? Everyone has a sex dream about their bully every once in a while.
Bully’s a strong word. He was just my annoyer. Annoyist.
This was not a sex dream. The adrenaline was wearing off. I was sitting on the frosty-cold curb about to kiss a guy ten plus years my junior who made it his business to irritate me.
What the hell was happening?
I pressed a hand to his chest.
“I’m late for work,” I rushed out. I tried to stand but stumbled. Hands the size of grizzly paws slipped under my arms to steady me. Were grizzly paws even that big?
“Careful,” he said. “Maybe I should walk with you.”
He patted me in various places, inspecting me for damage. I realized how rarely the players touched me, and well, that was probably with good reason. Beats the alternative. Working for the Rusties was like working for a nunnery compared to the very lax kitchens I’d worked in. Basic sexual harassment was a love language in the service industry. If a line cook didn’t tell me how beautiful I was at least twice per shift, I started to consider changing my skincare regimen.
But now, one of the players was touching me, and it felt a thousand times more intimate than any passing line cook’s compliments.
I stifled a pained groan and my legs shook as I took a step. Whatever moment happened between us was officially over. The moment only even happened because he made a careless mistake.
There was no way in hell that Harlan Royce wanted me.
I stepped away from him, straightened my clothes, and dusted off my pants. The broken skin on my back howled at me, but the show had to go on. “No. Thank you. I need to go help Miguel. Um. See ya in there!”
I walked away, hoping he couldn’t see me limp.
TWO
HARLAN
JANUARY
“Chef just saved my life.”
I felt like Scrooge on Christmas morning, except rather than being on bustling Victorian London streets, I was walking into the Rusties’ locker room. Everything had changed for me in a matter of seconds.
My life could now be seen as two distinct worlds: before the bus and after the bus. That split second where everything that was happening registered: someone calling my name, a bus headed toward me, being shoved to the curb and out of harm’s way.
That stuff about your life flashing before your eyes wasn’t just some lame cliché. A confusing mixture of life’s best moments and my greatest regrets passed before me, but maybe the greatest regret of all was just floating along in life. Not much of what I did was intentional, just a consequence of dominos falling. Sometimes it made pretty shapes, and other times, it fell off a table.
But no more floating for me. I would never be the same after what just happened. And Chef was the one to change my life. Chef Emma.
Emma.
The way Emma looked at me after she saved me was new and different. She almost seemed like she wanted me. And for a minute there, I wanted her too. Thinking about that look made me lose the urge to breathe, air suspended in my lungs in the way it had in the moment before we hit the ground.