Unforgiven (7 page)

He returned his attention to the procession shortly thereafter, and when his eyes moved across the street and caught on Bailey, who was still staring at him like a buffoon, his face dropped. His expression turned to a glare, and he returned her stare venomously. Bailey’s cheeks burned, but she didn’t look away. She lifted her hand tentatively before she could stop herself, and the moment he took in her gesture, he turned, pushed his way through the crowd behind him, and disappeared with one final glare over his shoulder.

“Michelle, can we go?” Michelle looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Bailey didn’t want to get into the Darren discussion here, so she pleaded with her eyes. Michelle watched her for a moment, gauging just how much resistance she wanted to put up. With a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders, Michelle nodded, and they left.

Michelle was one of Bailey’s oldest friends. After high school, she’d ended up in Kansas City for college, and she’d returned to Savoy with her MBA a couple years ago to help her father run his furniture store. It was the only furniture store in Savoy, so being successful and profitable had never been a problem for them, but her father was nearing retirement, and he’d be handing over the reins soon enough. Bailey’s small cottage was furnished in damaged pieces from their store, and she’d spent an entire evening using furniture scratch cover-up to make it look decent. She’d been high as a kite by the time she finished thanks to the fact she forgot to open a window, but from a distance, her furnishings were quite nice for her small, moss-covered cottage in the woods.

When Michelle suggested a bar instead, Bailey inwardly groaned, but she had made Michelle miss the parade, so she ended up nodding, wondering just how much worse her afternoon of being a normal twenty-seven-year-old could get. She found out quickly it could definitely get worse.

He picked up his glare right where he’d left off at the parade the moment she and Michelle walked through the doors to the dingy old bar just on the edge of town. It was a watering hole type of joint, and Darren was playing a round of pool on the old retro seventies pool table. She watched as his lips mouthed, “What the fuck” at seeing her, and his expression was cold and pissed. Bailey recognized the two guys he was shooting pool with, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember their names. Didn’t really matter. The moment they followed Darren’s glare to Bailey, their brows arched in that “oh, shit” sorta way.

Michelle sat at the end of the bar, only just taking in Darren and the other two guys at the pool table. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath before standing and walking over to them. Bailey stayed planted on her barstool, refusing to even look up. There was just no escaping him in this town, and he seemed to be everywhere. Bailey glanced up once to see Michelle speaking with the group of three, but only the two nameless men were actually looking at her. Darren’s eyes were glued to Bailey.

“Hey, let’s get a booth in the back.” Michelle was suddenly standing by Bailey’s side, looking expectantly at her. Darren had returned to his game, though his attention seemed to be constantly pulled toward her as though he was just as powerless to look away from her as she was to look away from him.

“Or we could just leave, Michelle.” Bailey knew she’d never go for that one, but she couldn’t help but hope.

“Come on. Just pretend he doesn’t exist, okay? For one night. You won’t even have to look at him in the back room. Please?”

“You think this is about
my
wanting to be away from
him
, but it’s not. Do you think for one second he wants me here? ’Cause I’m tellin’ ya, he doesn’t.”

“He didn’t say a thing to me when I was over there—”

“That’s ’cause he was busy glaring at me! That’s what he does. He hates me; he glares at me; he destroys my job; he glares at me some more.”

“Well, he can’t glare at you if you’re sittin’ in a booth in the back room. ’Sides, this place is gonna fill up after the parade gets over. You won’t be able to find him even if you want to in a while.”

She was right. Soon there was a flood of parade goers walking through the doors, decked out in their green—their ridiculous plastic green hats, green beads, green just about anything. But even the green people of Savoy weren’t enough to save her. In fact, they ended up being the catalyst for her misery.

“Aren’t you that girl?” Bailey looked up to the woman standing beside the booth she and Michelle were hiding in.

“Umm . . . I don’t—”

“You are! You’re her!” The sneer on her face meant she wasn’t asking if she was that girl who once broke the Savoy high school record when she swam the 200 freestyle. Nor was she asking if she was the girl who won the literary award for creative writing when she was only a sophomore in high school. She was asking a far more loaded question than that. Bailey had the odd reaction of looking behind her at the back of the booth she was sitting in—as though perhaps hopping over the back and bolting might be a good option.

Instead, she turned back slowly to the woman standing with her hand on her hip and the other holding a green beer in her hand. The woman was waiting, swaying slightly in her drunken state, for a response Bailey was having a hard time coming up with.

“She’s the girl who’s just trying to have a pleasant drink with her friend on St. Patrick’s Day, just like everyone else.” Michelle challenged the woman beside them with her cold, dead stare. Michelle had always been good at holding her ground. Perhaps it was years of working in the store with her dad from the time she was old enough to run a cash register. Her glare meant business. Her glare meant, “Get the fuck away from my friend or deal with me instead.” Her glare meant, “I’m going to kick your ass if you open your smug mouth again.” Bailey loved her glare at the moment.

“Whatever.” The woman staggered off.

“You can’t pay attention to that bullshit, Bay.”

“It’s not bullshit. She has every right to hate me.”

“The hell she does. She doesn’t know you.”

Bailey just stared at Michelle. There were times she actually felt like Michelle did. She felt she deserved forgiveness; she felt she deserved a life—a real one that didn’t leave her incessantly followed around by ghosts. There were those times, but they were few and far between. Most of the time, Bailey felt like she deserved everything she got, and she was going to deal with it until the day she died because she’d earned this. That was her most-of-the-time perspective, and it really didn’t matter that her only remaining friend in the world didn’t agree.

When the group the drunk girl had returned to started eyeing her venomously, it didn’t take long for Michelle to return the glare with her own dose of lethal eye venom. It also didn’t take long for Bailey to excuse herself from the table to escape the attention.

“I’ll be fine, Michelle. I just need some air.” She didn’t give Michelle any time to respond before she stood and walked to the back door that led onto a wooden deck that wrapped from the back of the bar around the side. Like most other places in the Ozarks, the trees grew right up to the railing surrounding the deck, and Bailey stood alone in the near-darkness listening to the sounds of the woods around her. She hated this place—almost as much as she loved it.

Her mother really was the only reason she was here anymore. Her father had passed away nearly two years before while Bailey was sitting in a prison cell. Her mother dealt with the loss on her own because her daughter had been too stupid to keep her ass out of trouble. And now her mother was alone, trying to eke out a living in a town that had taken its toll on her almost as much as it did on Bailey. Her father had died of lung cancer after years of secretly smoking outside back doors and side doors of whatever non-smoking establishment he happened to be at. Nobody smoked anymore; it could kill ya, didn’t ya know? But that was Bailey’s fault too.

Her father had all but conquered that addiction years ago when Bailey was still in high school. That was until his daughter wound up in jail. Funny how such things tended to shit on everyone around you, including your own father, who ended up smoking himself into an appointment with death far sooner than what he deserved.

“You know you were supposed to have those sutures removed after seven days, right? Or maybe you didn’t know that, seein’s how you chickened out and ran.” His voice broke her concentration, and she jumped as she wheeled toward him. He was standing behind her, a couple feet away. His expression was impassive and sent a chill up her spine. There was a time he was incapable of being so impassive with her.

“I just hadn’t gotten around to. . .”

“It’s fine by me, of course, if you want them growing into your skin. It’ll make removing them all the more fun for you.” His eyes had the glint of hatred, and his smirk was mean. All she could do was swallow over the lump in her throat and try to hold his gaze.

“I should find Michelle. She’s probably worried.” She walked to the back door, listening as his steps followed her. When they entered into the crowded backroom, every eye in the room snapped to them. They walked through the crowd, his body following closely behind her own as the room stared in absolute shock at the two of them together. Finding her table empty, Bailey started scanning the room desperately as Darren chuckled behind her.

“Seems Michelle isn’t that worried about you.” He was leaning down to her ear from behind her body as her eyes found Michelle sitting at the bar with a drink in her hand talking to some guy. “Doesn’t she know how much trouble you can get into on your own?” His hand had found her waist, gripping her tightly as his lips remained at her ear. It was the type of touch that would have set her body on fire once upon a time, but now . . . now it was a taunt. He was trying to make her uncomfortable, and he was succeeding.

She pulled away, stalking to the bar. “Michelle, I think I should go.” She didn’t even wait for Michelle to notice her before she started talking.

“Bay! Sorry. I needed a drink, and they’re so damn busy I had to. . .” Her words trailed off quickly as she took in Darren, who was still shadowing her every move. “Oh! Dare. How are you?”

“I’m fine, Michelle. I’m going to take Bailey home.” Michelle’s jaw hit the floor at the same time as Bailey sucked in a shocked breath of air.

“No!” She turned to him quickly as his gaze shifted from Michelle to her.

“Yeah, maybe not a great idea.” Not even Michelle appreciated his offer.

“Relax. I’m not going to hurt her. I’m just going to take her to the hospital to remove her sutures. I’ll see she gets home safely.” His eyes were staring at Bailey deadpan. He’d somehow mastered the art of impassivity since six years ago, and he was giving her nothing at all to gauge what he was saying. She wasn’t stupid enough to think this man wanted to help her. “And seeing you’re busy with your drink, and about every last person here hates Bailey, you should probably just thank me and let me get on with it.”

“I don’t need a ride, Darren.”

Michelle’s eyes moved back and forth between them as they stared at one another. Bailey was confused—more than confused. She didn’t trust him. She had once, and he’d deserved that trust.

“Come on, Bay. I would never hurt you.” And then leaning to her ear, he whispered. “Not physically anyway.” He righted himself, still piercing her with his cool gaze that left her wanting to shrink away from him. It also left her wanting to touch him, remind him of who she was, remind him that he’d been her friend once. She was mesmerized by just how familiar he was to her, and yet, just how much of a stranger he was now. She wanted the old Darren back so much it felt like a hand in her guts twisting her insides slowly as she watched him. “You know you want to.” His voice was nearly seductive, and Michelle’s eyes were still dancing about between them.

“Okay.” She was whispering when she said it, and she wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. Her cheeks started burning. She had an obvious blush—always had, and she knew damn well he could see it. His jaw tightened, his nostrils flared, and just when she thought he might say something, Michelle interrupted them.

“You’re sure, Bailey?”

She nodded, still unable to look away from him.

“I said she’ll be fine, Michelle. You know me better than to think I would do anything to her.”

“I also know you well enough to know you’re acting weird as hell.”

He finally broke eye contact with her as his attention snapped to Michelle with an amused laugh. “Fine. I’m acting weird. Aren’t I allowed? I am being forced to deal with
her
again after all.” He nodded toward Bailey.

“It’s fine, Michelle. I’ll call you later.” She snatched up her small clutch that Michelle had brought with her to the bar, and then she stood awkwardly by as Michelle watched her. Michelle didn’t have a clue why Bailey was agreeing to go anywhere with him. She wasn’t sure she quite understood either. He’d asked. That was her rationale. He’d asked, and she wanted to see what would happen. If she didn’t go, she’d wonder. And truth be told, she knew she was safe with him—at least physically. He might torment her emotionally, and he was likely implying he would, or at least that he could, but he’d be hard-pressed to keep up with her own self-torture. She was the queen bee at emotionally putting herself through the ringer. Hell, going with him might just be another brand of self-destructive torture. Only time would tell.

Six Years Before

The music was loud, and the crowd was too. The bar was on Seawall Boulevard, or to be more accurate, it was on the beach. You could literally step right out of the bar onto a patio and down the patio steps to the sand. Couldn’t possibly be smart to put drunk people so close to the water, but hey, it was Galveston, and people liked to get their drunk on at the beach. Bailey was no exception to that equation—not on spring break when she’d been talked into going out by the illustrious Jess.

It wasn’t that Bailey didn’t enjoy a night out on occasion; it just usually involved going to the movies or out to dinner. Bars really weren’t her scene—at least not hopping tiki-style bars with entirely too many drunk people spilling their drinks on one another. It really was best just to get a few drinks in you. Made the drunks far more tolerable when you could just join ’em rather than trying in vain to stay out of their way. So, she was being a joiner tonight. One Mai Tai and two shots of rum later, and she was well on her way. The Mai Tai was weak, the rum was watered down, so while it might’ve been a good start, she was really quite lucid.