CHAPTER NINE

Broken plates, spilled coffee, eggs smeared on the floor.

There’s butter on my boot and jam on my jams.

Nearly dropping that container of maple syrup last week is nothing compared to the destruction that I just caused.

I dropped an entire tray of breakfasts, and it’s all his fault.

“What the hell, Izzy? You suddenly forget how to do your job?” Clyde asks, shaking his head as he grabs the broom and brush and shoves them into my hand.

I stoop down and start sweeping the food into the pan, but my attention isn’t on the floor. It’s on him.

James.

He walked in, alone, and two seconds later, twenty dollars’ worth of food was on the floor.

“Do it quickly. The rush is about to start, and I can’t have our customers slipping and breaking their neck. God knows we can’t afford a lawsuit,” Clyde grumbles to me as he passes by to greet another group of customers entering the diner.

I nod and quicken my pace, managing to get the floor back to its semi-sparkling state in under five minutes. When I come back from dumping the pan of broken mugs and chipped plates into the kitchen trash, Clyde shoves a menu into my chest.

“Table in the back,” he tells me, and I peer around him to look at who I’ll be waiting on.

Of course it’s James, and of course his eyes are trained on the table because God forbid he make eye contact with me.

I adjust my apron and tighten my ponytail, wishing I’d worn something other than a plain white t-shirt and jeans to work today.

“Hey.”

Sharon sidles beside me and grabs my arm, squeezing it gently.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s just grumpy,” she tells me, smiling good-naturedly.

“I know,” I nod, trying to smile back, but I’m pretty sure it looks more like a grimace.

“You okay?” she asks. “I can take your table if you want. I don’t mind.”

“No!” I say, faster and with more feeling than I mean to. Sharon raises her eyebrows and lifts her hands up.

“Okay, okay. You need the tips that badly?” she jokes, but I can tell she’s suspicious. I’m not normally that protective of my tables.

“Yeah,” I say, jumping on the excuse. “Our electricity bill was really high this month.”

“Gotcha. No worries,” she says, and I scoot past her and make my way toward the back of the restaurant.

James is sitting at the same table the Gamma normally takes, and even though it’s just him, he seems to take up all the available space with his legs spread wide, his elbows on the table and his chin balancing on his hands.

He looks even more devastatingly gorgeous than he did last week, and It. Is. Not. Fair.

“Hey,” I say, placing the menu in front of him.

“Mmph” is the sound he makes in return, but I don’t take the hint. He must have come here for me. There are plenty of places in town to eat. Right?

“I haven’t seen you in a while. I didn’t get a chance to tell you how much fun I had the night we went for a run.”

This time, he doesn’t even give me the courtesy of a grunt. He stays silent, his gaze stubbornly stuck to the menu.

I put my hand on top of the smooth plastic, moving forward and stepping into his space.

I can feel the heat of him, smell his woodsy, comforting scent, and all I want is to turn his chin up to me so he has to meet my eyes.

Instead, I lean down and whisper, “James, talk to me. Please? You’re my mate. You’re supposed to talk to me.”

He exhales a frustrated breath, and I see his jaw twitch like he’s clenching it. His brow is furrowed and he looks like he’s at war with himself, struggling to get command of his emotions.

I know exactly how he feels, because it’s what I’ve felt every damn day since we saw each other.

“Please,” I whisper, letting a little bit of my desperation seep through in the hopes it spurs him into action.

Finally, he raises his head and looks at me. He takes my hand, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to pull me toward him and kiss me.

Instead, he drops my hand by my side and holds out the menu.

“I’ll have sweet potato fries and a soy strawberry milkshake. To go,” he says, pushing the menu into my chest. I curl my arms around it and have to swallow the sudden sob that rises in my throat.

“That’s it?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yup,” he says, turning his shoulders away from me and looking out the window.

“You’re not even going to acknowledge that I’m anything other than a waitress to you?”

His shoulders rise and fall in a shrug, like he couldn’t care less about me.

“I knew it. I knew you were just like the rest of them,” I tell him. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

“Why would you trust me? You don’t even know me.”

The words are so quiet I can barely hear them, but their meaning hits me like a punch to the stomach.