My brows drew together. “What was wrong with him?”
“He was like Jekyll and Hyde. Just the sweetest boy, but behind closed doors…” Rosie shook her head. “An animal. Lucky for me, I have big knuckles,” she said, making a fist.
I finished my pickle and licked the juice off my thumb. “I don’t like fighting; maybe that’s why I bailed all those years ago from my home life. Yours is the kind of story that scares me because… it happened to me. I feel so stupid, like I should have seen who he was.”
Rosie leaned forward and patted my hand. “Honey, the devil paints the prettiest masks. Some of us learn that the hard way, but don’t blame yourself. I did that for years, and no good ever comes of it. Someday you’ll meet a man and you’ll be awful to him. You’ll say mean things and push him away, but he’ll keep pulling because he’ll see beyond your pain. Just don’t keep pushing. At some point, you have to let him in or you’ll lose him for good. Don’t look at every mark on a man as a reason to leave him—we’re all marked. Maybe it’s the ones who seem too perfect that are anything but,” she said contemplatively, tapping her chin. “The one thing I remember is how perfect George appeared. Everyone just loved him and said I was a lucky girl. I felt undeserving of that kind of man. Only later did he show his true colors, but maybe a man who hides his flaws is hiding something more wicked.”
“So you’re saying I need to find a flawed man with issues?” I sat back in my chair and thought about Jericho. With him, I knew all his imperfections, so there wouldn’t be any surprises.
Hawk was another story. But in retrospect, I could see the warning signs. He’d known slapping me in the morning made me volatile and sometimes shift, so why did he provoke me that way? Maybe that was a subtle hint of a larger fissure on that man’s soul. Jericho had never done anything so thoughtless. His flaw wasn’t that he would hurt me physically, but I knew the risk that he could break my heart.
“Who’s the guy who’s been watching you all night?” Rosie asked, sipping her drink.
I snapped out of my fog. “What?”
She craned her neck and peered over the divider. “The man who… well, he’s gone now. I thought maybe you were dating him, or he was the ex.”
“What did he look like?”
The ice in her glass clinked when she set it down. Rosie pulled out her makeup mirror and applied more lip liner. “I haven’t seen him in here before. He ordered one beer and watched you for the last hour, but not the way a man looks at a woman when they want to sleep with them, you know? Kind of… mad.”
Her eyes should have been on the mirror, but they were on me.
“He’s not the ex. What did he look like?”
“Plaid shirt, tight jeans…”
“I don’t mean what he was wearing.”
She clipped the mirror shut and slipped it in her purse. “He’s a little taller than you—not a big guy. Stern. He looked like anyone else wandering in. Either he was naturally bald or shaved his head—I couldn’t tell which. He also had a tattoo on his hand, but I don’t remember what it was.”
That gave me the creeps. “Was he a Shifter?”
“I can’t always tell unless I get up close. He sat in the corner by the door; we don’t get many customers who fill that area.”
Chills ran up my arms. I wondered if Delgado had sent someone else in to follow me. God, was I going to be paranoid for the rest of my life?
Heck no! my brain shouted. Get out of Dodge before it’s too late! Time to bail and get out of this city before you end up buried in it.
“Is Jake going to fire me? I haven’t been the best employee,” I asked, ignoring that irritating voice in my head.
Rosie chuckled with her mouth closed. “Not as long as you’re keeping Jericho around. Plus, I think he likes having a redhead on staff. You don’t see many redhead Shifters, so it’s a treat for the boys. Some of them stay a little longer and drink a little more, just so they can watch you work.”
“Then maybe all the girls should dye their hair red.”