Page 3 of Fire in Stone

The reply came almost immediately.

“I’ll see you at the Chicken Wing in twenty. My treat.”

Chicken Wing was a diner in the town thirty minutes from here. I had enough gas to get there and would at least get a breakfast out of this. But a heavy feeling pressed down on my chest when I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

* * *

“Hello, beautiful.” A crooked smirk stretched across Chris’s face in the way I used to find irresistibly attractive.

At first glance, he didn’t appear to have changed at all. He wore one of his usual band t-shirts, a trendy leather jacket, and a pair of designer sunglasses. Only when I took the seat across the table from him, and he removed his sunglasses could I see more lines around his eyes. Even in the couple of months since I last saw him, the bags under his eyes had grown heavier and the shadows deeper.

Chris was eleven years older than me, and time, aided by his many bad habits, was slowly destroying the good looks he was born with.

When I first met him, I was seventeen. It happened in a very similar diner. A teenage runaway, I hadn’t eaten for days and had snuck in, lured by the smell of fried food.

At that time, I’d survived mostly on what I could shoplift. Chris had bought me lunch. By the time I’d finished wolfing it down, he’d completely stolen my heart. For the seventeen-year-old me, he seemed so mature, confident, and in control.

I hated how similar my current circumstances were to those that had brought us together eight years ago. I hated that I still hoped Chris would feed me.

“Hi, Chris.” I leaned back in the fake leather seat of the booth, hoping my empty stomach wouldn’t make any loud noises in this place filled with delicious breakfast smells.

He passed me the menu, and I had no willpower to refuse it.

“It’s real nice to see you, baby girl.” He kept his pale blue eyes on me. Years ago, I’d found the contrast between his light eye color and his dark stubble alluring.

As a teenager, I’d seen Chris as my savior. By the time I’d met him, I’d been on the streets for months, fighting hunger, homelessness, and a lot of assholes who were always ready to take advantage of a lonely girl who had nothing and no one.

Chris had fed me and—at the beginning, at least—hadn’t asked for anything in return. He’d waited for three whole weeks before making any sexual advances on me. Then one day, he’d pumped me with some cheap wine, and I’d practically climbed into his lap myself, begging him to make love to me.

I was seventeen. He was twenty-eight. Back then, I thought we were in love. Now I knew better. That night, I was underage, drunk, and desperate for affection, and he was a groomer, taking advantage of my naïveté and situation.

Deep inside, however, some long-torn string still tugged at my heart when he covered my hand with his and said in that husky voice of his, “You ain’t looking too good, baby girl. Things must’ve been hard.”

“I’ll manage.” I jerked my hand away.

“I know you will. You’re a smart cookie. Always were.” He tilted his head, watching me as the waitress brought our food.

I tried to hold back, faking not being hungry, pretending I didn’t need his charity. As if I was doing him a favor by joining him for a meal, not the other way around. Gingerly, I picked up a strip of bacon off my plate and…finished it in three huge, hungry bites.

Dammit, it tasted so good! I grabbed another one right away, forgetting all about playing it cool.

Chris watched me with a knowing smile.

“I wish you’d let me take care of you, Amber, like in the good ol’ days,” he drawled.

The food stuck in my throat at the memories of those “good old days.”

It hadn’t been all bad. I’d been fed. At some point, I’d even thought I was loved. But I hadn’t been free. For years, I’d belonged to Chris—body and soul. He had to approve everything from the clothes I’d worn, to the friends I’d had. We had sex wheneverhewanted and only the wayhewanted it. I had no say in what I ate or what I did. Until recently, I’d had only a vague idea about what kind of person I even was.

Leaving him was the hardest thing I’d done, but there was no coming back.

“I no longer need to be taken care of, Chris,” I said around a mouthful of egg, toast, and bacon.

With that ever-present smirk of his, he ripped open a packet of sugar, dumped its contents into my cup of coffee, then added some cream, just the way I used to drink it. I’d switched to milk instead of cream recently, but Chris wouldn’t know that, of course.

“Rumor has it that realtor’s business you worked for went belly up.” He slowly stirred the coffee for me.

The rumor couldn’t be more than a few hours old, yet somehow it had reached Chris already. I said nothing, keeping my eyes on my plate while eating.

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