He opens his mouth to answer, but the waitress is bustling over us, placing our plates down and warning us about what's hot. I'm sure I murmur a thank you. I feel the fork and knife in my hands and make cutting motions. I love Eggs Benedict, but I have no clue if it’s good or not, because it's like I'm ice-coated inside.
Winch doesn't pretend to enjoy his breakfast and keep up polite, respectable appearances. He reaches across the table and takes my wrist in his hand, leaving my forkful of egg and buttery, delicious Hollandaise sauce suspended in midair.
"You are not a secret girlfriend. I'm proud to be with you."
"So I'm just your girlfriend no one knows about?"
I yank my wrist away and a few drips of yellowy sauce splatter on his white shirt. He doesn't even notice.
"No one knows about you because the problem is them, not you." His grip tightens for one harsh second, then relaxes. I look up at him, a little shocked, and he releases my wrist. "I've never been happier than I am with you, Evan. But my family doesn't think you should be with people because they make you happy. Like I said, they're old fashioned. They'd judge you before they even got to know you, just because you're...not like us."
"What does that even mean?"
I continue to cut and eat my food, because, since I burned down a very influential family's orchard, I don't like to bring negative attention to myself and my family while I'm out. Even if I'm choking with undignified rage and upset, I try hard to put a high-sheen polish on any situation and always bust out my best company manners.
"What makes your family so different? Are you in the mob or something?"
I expect him to laugh, not because it's such a witty or original joke, but because not laughing implies there could be some possible crumb of truth.
"Winch?"
It's becoming nearly impossible to cut neat squares of food and eat them politely with the desperate need to know his answer tugging at my guts.
He's sent his plate cruising to the middle of the table and is rubbing his temples, eyes screwed shut. When he finally sits straight and looks at me, there are a thousand shades of regret in his eyes and my bite of buttery, egg-soaked bread turns to an unswallowable lump in my throat.
"Not the mob," he clarifies, but that only makes panic bob closer to the surface for me. "Not exactly one hundred percent above the law." He leans close and his voice drops. "We handle a lot of business. We make a lot of deals, and we have a lot of secrets that can't get leaked, you know? So we tend to not trust anyone outside our circle."
Most of what's going through my head involves the bloodiest, goriest, Martin-Scorsese-directed monstrosity of gangster violence and mayhem imaginable. I want to get up and go to the bathroom, splash some cold water on my face, grip the sink tight and take deep, controlled breaths. But I just keep cutting my food and eating calmly.
"Say something," Winch instructs.
I look at him with one raised eyebrow and go right on eating, the only sign of my irritation the aggressive scrape of my knife on the plate.
"Eat. Your breakfast is getting cold."
My words come out frost-coated because Brenna was right. I was wrong. And I like him.
I like him so much, he just told me his family is legitimately bad news, and I'm trying to think of reasons why that might not be such a big deal.
He eats, looking up at me with nervously shifting eyes between bites. "You have a right to be freaked out. It's a lot."
My plate is almost empty. I lay the fork and knife across the top edge and wipe my hands on the napkin.
"I need to use the restroom."
He gets up to follow, but I rush by too fast, my sandal heels clipping on the checkerboard floor. By the time I'm in the cold, shiny bathroom, I have to bite my bottom lip hard to hold the swell of tears back. I knock my forehead into the stainless steel stall door over and over.
"Why did you have to prove me right, Winch?" I whisper into the echoing tiles.
Winch 8
Fuck this breakfast. Fuck this date, fuck this already long ass day following the shittiest night I've ever had. Fuck the truth, fuck believing in some fairytale happy ending. Fuck my responsibilities and fuck, fuck, fuck the fact that I just, no doubt, no questions asked, lost my shot at being with Evan Lennox.
My appetite is shot to shit. I pay the bill and wait at the far end of the counter, my mood crap and my face probably one big fucking moody-ass glower that confuses the hell out of Lisa, the waitress who always chats with me.
'Cause I'm always in a damn genial mood. 'Cause I know how important it is to keep up appearances, show off my best side, keep my emotions off my damn face.
But all the rules get tossed and shredded when Evan's in the picture.
I wait forever. I wait so long, I get worried, and, even though I know I'm the last person she wants to see, I crack open the ladies’ room door and rap it with my knuckles.
"Evan?"
I listen for sobs or a tantrum or the silence of an empty bathroom, but she answers.
"I'll be out in a minute."
Her voice is ice-rimmed and flat.
Five minutes go by. Ten. The place starts to fill up with people. Women and little kids go in and out, but Evan doesn't make an appearance. I keep tabs on the frazzled moms and elderly ladies entering and exiting, and when the bathroom finally
