Page 4 of Fighting For You
She chuckled and gave me the soft, empathetic smile that’d cut through my sharp edges months ago. How someone hadn’t snatched this woman up was beyond me. In another life, maybe a different version of myself would’ve been that person.
“Tell me about you,” I said, not wanting to dwell on me. I wouldn’t tell her about the assignment with Pop, and anything else was… too exhausting.
She huffed but the reluctant smile told me she’d give. If Catherine was anything, she was humble and the least self-focused person I’d ever met. She gave endlessly, worked tirelessly, and it could get maddening to witness when she exhausted herself. She would never hint at needing help, nor would she tout her accomplishments unless I pushed her. We’d been back and forth about it enough that she finally gave in without my browbeating her to share her victories.
“The business is coming together. I’m picking up more work and my Instagram is growing well.”
She read my scowl right and laughed. “I know what you think of social media, but it’s making me money, so can we agree it’s a good thing?”
“You get money from Instagram?”
Her grin widened. “I can recommend products I use and like and then when people use my links, it gives me a tiny percentage of the sale. It’s not much yet, but the lastcheck I got was enough to buy a full load of the cleaning products I used on a deep clean in the Ridge.” She raised her eyebrows a few times.
I dipped my head. “Nice. Good work.”
She beamed. “Thanks. It’s small and kind of silly, but it’s making me happy.”
She glanced to the counter of the diner and just past it, presumably toward her boss, the chef.
“I’m glad.”
She nodded, accepting my comment, then sobered enough that I braced for her compassion.
“Anything I can do?”
I instantly shook my head. If only this situation I’d found myself in could be helped, but the only thing I’d figured out was to dive head-first into taking an out-of-town assignment with Pop. Beyond that, there was no helping some things.
She reached out and squeezed my wrist lightly, then released. Just a quick contact, a gesture of care, and she stood. “Keep me posted. I’ll see you Friday?”
She meant at Craic. Sometimes, I went for happy hour, but if I did, Pop left. Fair enough since we couldn’t manage to stand in the same room, let alone at the same table very well. But not this week, regardless.
“I’ve got work.”
“Ah. Okay then. Next Monday? Rick said he’s going to do apple cinnamon.”
She meant pie. “Sure.”
She greeted a couple who stepped inside right as she left the booth, and I tossed a twenty on the table, wishing I had any desire for a few more bites of the nearly untouched pie, and snuck out. She’d be mad at me for not waiting for change.
Go ahead and get mad.
A gust of brisk mountain air swept by me. The sun was setting, and the late afternoon already felt like evening. Or maybe everything lately felt like the sun was just about to go down and stay there.
I’d embraced that for a while—I’d let life exist in the sneaking dusk. But now, through the dark of the night, I could imagine seeing a glimmer of dawn. And as best I knew how, I was walking toward it.
“Hey, man.”
Kenny jogged toward me as I reached the parking lot, his boots crunching fallen brown and burnt orange leaves. Since Diner and Saint Security were practically next-door neighbors, I hadn’t had to come far.
I notched my chin up at him.
“You okay? You going to handle things with Pop?”
He’d been in the meeting, so he knew as well as I did what I’d signed up for. He’d also seen us butt heads over the years enough to know just how antagonistic things could get between us. For a peacemaker like Kenny, a man whose sunshine personality had literally garnered him the nicknameBarbieback in the EMU, I was fairly certain it killed him to know we didn’t get along and there was nothing he could do about it.
There was nothing I could do either. It wasn’t my problem she’d decided to make me the worst person in the world—that all her ruined plans piled on top of me instead of the reality she refused to acknowledge.
I’d never thought of myself as a particularly hateful person, but when she made it clear she genuinely blamed me for everything she’d lost, and actively, truly hated me?
