As Jake slowly turned, her hand slipped from his shoulder and stung at the loss of contact. “It is you, isn’t it?” Her voice came out low and breathy.
He reached out, but dropped his arm sharply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stepped back, but she grabbed his jacket’s sleeve.
“Yes you do.”
He glared and pulled his arm out of her grip. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“Yes you have. I can prove it.” Her chest squeezed and heat rose in her face. “Your mother died of cancer when you were twelve. Just like mine. Then your father died too. You regretted how you’d cut him out of your life and blamed him for things he couldn’t control. You blamed him for not being your mother.”
He stared at the ground, his jaw clamped so tightly she wondered if his teeth might crumble. So stubborn.
“You ran away at fourteen. Just like me. And you regretted that, too. Had to live hand-to-mouth and work nights to finish high school and land a job that paid enough to cover your rent.” She sucked in a sharp breath. Had his stories all been lies designed to manipulate an impressionable young runaway?
If so, they’d worked.
She stomped her foot like a child — felt like one. “I did what I promised. I went home. I apologized to my dad. I kept away from drugs. I finished high school.”
He didn’t move.
“You’re why I became a cop. You inspired me to help people.” Her voice hitched and she hated how her throat kept strangling her words. “You saved my life.”
His head snapped up, eyes soft, but his expression quickly switched back on to cold. “If that’s true, I’m glad.”
“So you admit it’s you.”
He nodded.
“Then talk to me. Where have you been? Why didn’t you call me like you promised?”
“I never promised.” He backed up a step.
“Tell me what’s going on.” She reached out to rest her hand on his forearm.
He jerked back. “There’s no point.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Believe me, Kara. I can.”
Her breath hitched. He remembered her name.
That small fact melted the iciness he was casting towards her. She had to keep trying. If nothing else, she owed him. She owed him her life.
“You have three or four dollars in your pocket. That’ll barely get you a coffee. At least let me buy you breakfast. Please.”
His mouth cocked up in a half-smile. “What will the waitress think if I let the lady pick up the tab?”
She laughed, hoping to lighten the mood. “What year did you step out of?”
He didn’t laugh back.
Jake, on round two of breakfast, swallowed a huge bite of pancake and wiped syrup off his chin with the back of his hand.
Across the table in the diner’s window booth, Kara pushed congealed egg yolk around her plate with a crust of toast as she told him about her still-shaky relationship with her father.
Even though her black sweatshirt and jeans weren’t exactly feminine, she was so much softer in street clothes. Unconstrained by that cop hat, little tendrils of hair had fallen around her face, and he gripped his fork to kill the temptation to lean over and brush one back. The angry young girl he’d met fifteen years earlier had turned into one hell of a beautiful woman.
“You still like butterflies,” he said without thinking.
She raised one hand to her earring and a smile lit her face, the whole room. “I can’t believe you kept my necklace all these years — or the ridiculous coincidence you had it with you, today.”
He stuffed his mouth with pancake and bacon. He’d been trying to quash the persistent notion that the necklace was no coincidence. The last time he’d felt hope it’d almost killed him.
“Look.” She reached her hand across the table. “You completely changed the course of my life that day. Seriously. And now you seem down on your luck. I’d like to return the favour, help you.”
“I’m beyond help, honey — sorry — officer.”
She pulled back. “Why are you being a jerk? I just spilled my life story, and you’ve barely told me a thing. Not even why you were sleeping in the park.”
Her eyes were coaxing him to say more, so he studied his last slice of bacon. He was a shit for caving in on the free breakfast, a shit for acknowledging they’d met before, and an even bigger shit for revealing a second of joy when she’d told him she’d dumped her last boyfriend almost a year ago.
After today, he’d never see her again.
Frustration urged him to pound his fist through the plate glass window beside him, but he turned back and her concerned expression released some of the pressure. He rested one elbow on the table. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a real conversation.”
“These are tough times. Being homeless isn’t anything to be ashamed of.” She stretched out her hand and he longed to touch it so badly he ached.
He leaned away. “Homeless sounds great compared to my life.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.” She drew a deep breath and her breasts pressed against her top. “No way have you been living on the streets for long. I swear you haven’t aged.”
Damn. She wasn’t going to give up easily. Maybe it would help if she thought he were crazy.
He patted his full belly. “Thanks for the breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since 1824.”
She smiled. “Funny.”
“Might be, if it weren’t the truth.”
Her expression hardened. Not what he’d aimed for, but angry would do. Time to toss lighter fluid on to the flames.
“You want more truth? Well, here it is.” He pushed his plate to the side and leaned on to the table. “On my thirty-second birthday, a hippy in the park gave me a tab of acid. Like an idiot, I took it, and ever since then, no matter where I am or what I’m wearing, no matter what I’m doing or where I fall asleep, I wake up every morning in that same spot, on the same day, but a different year, in the same fucking clothes, with the same fucking things in my pockets.”
He slapped his palm on the table. “I can’t even count how many days I’ve endured since this started, or how many different years I’ve been to. Can’t keep track, because the paper’s never there when I fucking wake up.”
He’d never used the f-word in front of a lady. His mom would’ve been disappointed. Dad would’ve slapped him. He barely cared.
Her posture had stiffened during his rant, but she softened and stretched her hand out again. “Why are you telling me this crazy story?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Do you hear how ridiculous you sound? Explain to me how one thing you’ve said is even possible.”
He pounded the table. “You think I know? You think I understand how, even if I change out of this suit, even if I tear it or burn it, I wake up in it every morning as if it’s brand new? You think I know why, even if I go to bed with cuts and bruises from a beating, or fall asleep in the arms of a whore, I wake up alone and in the exact same state of health as I was in 1967, the last year I lived a fucking normal day?”
Face burning, he thumped back in the booth and realized he’d shouted and a few heads had turned.
Worse, her eyes had glassed over. She was trying so hard to help him, to recapture the closeness they’d felt when they’d met before.
And he was an asshole.
He reached for her hand, still resting on the table, but she jerked it away and blinked back the tears.
One escaped and she swiped it away, clearly angry at its unwanted appearance. “How dare you yell at me? All I did was ask a question and you act like a jerk. You might look the same, but you’ve changed.”
He wanted to apologize, but what was the point? Civilized conversations were something from his past. He focused on the table’s scratched surface.