Page 82 of Ordinary Girl

“I guess.” I put the sandwich down, I’ve kind of lost my appetite. “Anyway, enough about all of that. We’ve got a shop to open tomorrow.” And we’re not having a bells-and-whistles opening event or anything like that, we’re just going to get up in the morning, throw open our doors, and see what happens. This business belongs to the Viking Bandits, despite Skip dressing it up as mine and Cady’s. As Joel kept telling me earlier, I’m not naïve. I know how all of this works now, this is nothing more than something to keep me occupied, and I’m okay with that. I needed it. I’m grateful for it. I’m not a fan of hanging around the club house, I’d rather be here.

“We sure have, kiddo.” Cady gets up and comes over to me, smiling. “We should celebrate.”

“Any excuse, huh?” I grin at her as I slide down from the counter.

“What do you fancy doing?”

“Shopping, and an early dinner, maybe?”

“Sounds good to me.” She leans back against the counter, crossing her arms and glancing around our new, super-cute little store. “We did this, Ana.”

“Yeah.” I smile. “We did.”

She looks at me and reaches for my hand, this kind woman who came out of nowhere and made me feel like I finally had someone who understood me. Could be there for me. And I still don’t know whether she did all of that because she wanted to,or because Skip asked her to, but I’m not going to overthink it anymore. She’s made my time here a little more bearable, and that matters.

“Do you still want to leave?” she asks, a question that takes me completely by surprise, because, in all honesty, leaving here hasn’t been something I’ve even thought about in a while.

“I don’t know,” I reply, that’s all I can come up with. “I’m never going to stop missing my old life, never going to stop missing Mama; Lars and Lea, I don’t think I’ll ever give up on trying to find them, and then, if I manage to do that, if I manage to find them…” I shrug, and I don’t finish that sentence. Cady squeezes my hand, and for the briefest of seconds I wonder if she asked that question because she was curious, or whether someone else was. Skip, maybe. Could he be asking Cady to test the water, so to speak? See how serious I am about staying here? Or moving on…? And then I remember I wasn’t supposed to be overthinking this anymore, followed by a realization that that isn’t going to be as easy as I thought it was.

“Come on,” Cady says, letting go of my hand. “Let’s go spend some money.”

I grab my jacket and follow her out of the door. I have a new life now. One I didn’t ask for, want or like, at first. But I can feel it slowly sucking me in. I don’t want to go anywhere, yet. Because, all of a sudden, I have business I need to finish here first.

Joel

“He’s playing us off against each other, Skip. It’s obvious.”

“Yeah, I get it. He’s coming for us, he wants Ana, but he isn’t getting shit.”

“Has Rik got anything else on him? Anything at all?”

“Not much. Seems like Renard is a man who can cover his tracks pretty well. A man who knows how to keep a low profile.Rik can’t find anything else on him other than his remarkable rise from someone who owed the Balke family big time to suddenly running the show. That’s it, that’s all we know.”

“What about his past? We know he wasn’t always involved in the criminal world, but was he really just Mister Average before he fucked everything up?”

“Seems that way. As far as we know he really was just an ordinary businessman who took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in trouble.”

“So, what do we do? We can’t just sit here and wait for shit to hit the fan.”

“No, we can’t.” Skip gets up and goes over to the window, looks outside, keeping his back to me. “By siding with the Hawks he’s obviously lulling them into a false sense of security.” He turns around and leans back against the window-ledge. “I mean, I don’t know what the fuck he’s told them, I’m guessing they have no clue who he really is, but he’ll bring them down, too. He wants us gone, all of us, that’s how we have to play this. It all makes sense now. It’s anyone’s guess who he’s coming for first, though.” Skip sighs and turns back to look out of the window. “He could also be paving the way for the Balke family to move in on our territory. And that’s a fucking problem.”

That’s a big fucking problem.

“Do we really need Ana to keep seeing him? I mean, if we have him sussed… Skip, it’s not a good idea. Putting her in that situation, it’s making me fucking uncomfortable.”

“Is she willing to do it?”

“Yes. She is. But it’s wrong. And it’s a move that could easily backfire on us, if we’re not careful. What if she listens to him? What if he convinces her we’re fucking evil…?”

“You’re not giving her a hell of a lot of credit there, Joel.” Skip turns back around, one eyebrow raised. “But, maybe you’reright. You’re right, it’s too risky. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea.”

Because your head isn’t in the right place right now, I want to tell him.

Because you’re too distracted.

Too hell bent on getting shit done at breakneck speed so you can fuck off into the sunset, to this new life you’re determined to start living.

“Thing is, though,” Skip continues, “she could always decide for herself that she wants to see him again. And there isn’t a thing we can do to stop that from happening.”

---