Wild Nights (Hell's Highway MC) (5 page)

He eventually made a circle around my part of the townhouse before retiring to his truck. I saw him climb inside, and I waited for him to start it up, but it never happened. I watched and waited patiently, hoping he’d be driving away any minute, but the truck remained dark. He stayed parked on the side of the street right in front of my place.

I thought about calling the police, but I didn’t want him to know I was home, and I didn’t want him to know that was for sure where I lived. I hoped maybe by ignoring him, I could inadvertently convince him he had the wrong place. There were probably a lot of Molly Sumners in the U.S. I told myself.

I double checked the locks on the front and back doors and made sure each and every window was sealed and locked tight before heading upstairs. I was exhausted and still not back on a good sleeping schedule since my trip to Tulsa. I wanted to stay up all night and make sure he didn’t try to break in or do anything crazy, but I physically couldn’t. I had reached my limitations. My eyes were jamming shut and there was nothing I could do about it.

Before heading upstairs, I grabbed an arsenal of knives and kitchen shears from my kitchen drawers and tucked them all around my second floor. I put some in the bathroom cabinet. Some in my nightstand drawers. I placed one under my mattress and the biggest one under my pillow.

I locked my bedroom door and pushed my dresser in front of it. I climbed under the cool, clean sheets, and rested my head on the fluffy, down pillow. I might not have been able to rest easy, but I was going to go to sleep knowing I was as prepared as I could be.

I sat my cell phone down on my night stand and plugged it into the charger. The battery was almost dead, but a couple hours of charging would’ve been all it needed. I typed in 9-1-1 so it would be ready to press at a moment’s notice, and within seconds I fell asleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I’d almost forgotten about the night before. The birds were chirping loudly in the maple trees outside my windows and the sun was peeking through the curtains. I sprawled out in my bed, stretching my muscles from head to toe, and took a deep breath. As soon as my eyes came into focus, I glanced up and saw that my dresser was sitting in front of my door, and immediately it all came back to me.

I hopped out of bed as fast as I could and ran to the front window of my bedroom. The truck was gone. He wasn’t there anymore. At least that’s what I assumed.

I wondered when he left, how I didn’t hear it, or where he went. I hoped against all hope that he’d gone back to Tulsa, never to return again, but I had my doubts. That would’ve been too good to be true.

I pushed my dresser back to its original place against the east wall and made my way to the bathroom. The clock on the wall read seven am and I had to be to work by nine. I had plenty of time, if I could keep myself on task and not be so distracted.

I brushed my teeth and flipped on the shower, turning it to the hottest setting I could stand. The entire room filled with steam. I just wanted to feel clean. In a weird way, a hot shower was always like a fresh start for me.

I tore off my nightgown and stepped into the shower, one foot at a time. The water was almost scalding at first, but I quickly grew used to it. I lathered my body with a coconut body scrub and massaged a generous amount of clarifying shampoo into my long, blonde hair. I rinsed off after a bit and doused my hair in my favorite peppermint deep conditioner and stood under the running water.

As I let the water mist around me and run down my soft skin, I thought I heard something downstairs. I suddenly froze and tried to remember where I hid all the knives. I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair and flew out of the shower, wrapping my robe around myself and tying it tight.

I grabbed one of the knives I’d planted in the bathroom and opened the door. The steam escaped around me and I was soon enveloped by a burst of the cool air from the other side. My heart pounded in my chest as I quietly walked down the hall and towards the stairs.

I stepped down each stair as quietly as possible, trying to avoid the known-to-be-squeaky steps. I stopped when I got to the bottom and looked around the main floor, trying hard to see if anything looked out of the ordinary.

I glanced over at the front door, which was still locked and dead bolted. The back door was also still locked. A wave of relief washed over me as soon as I saw the cat’s dish overturned. It was my freaking cat. The cat I couldn’t stand but didn’t have the heart to get rid of. My ex, Jeremy, and I had gotten it on our first anniversary, and when we broke up, he didn’t want her. She was a bitch of a cat, but I wasn’t a cruel person, so I kept her. She mostly hung out in the basement for whatever reason, so most of the times I never saw her or heard her. Half the time I would forget that I ever had one.

“Are you hungry, Delilah?” I asked as I walked over to her overturned dish. She rubbed her gray fur against my leg and purred. She was only nice when she wanted something or when she was about to get fed. That was about the extent of our relationship.

I grabbed some kitty kibble from the cabinet and put a scoop in her dish. I topped off her water and padded back across the townhouse to the living room. I opened the coat closet to make sure no one was in there, and I checked every nook and cranny on the entire first level. I looked outside one more time for that pickup truck, but it was definitely gone.

I shook my head, refused to let myself be scared any longer, and went upstairs to get ready. I turned my favorite music on my iPod, took my sweet time applying my makeup, and dried and curled my hair. I put on my work uniform of a black top and black pants, and headed out to the garage.

The house was locked up, the garage was locked up, and there was nothing more I could do except continue on my merry way and go to work like a normal person. I had a full day of appointments, and the last thing I wanted to do was cancel out on my clients because I was being paranoid.

One thing was for sure, I’d learned my lesson about being impulsive and sleeping with strange men. I don’t care how attractive or sexy they are, I refused to do it ever again.

My face reddened on my way to work as I couldn’t help but be embarrassed about my poor decisions in Tulsa. I was lucky I didn’t end up on an episode of 20/20 or Dateline.

I pulled up to the salon around ten ‘til nine. Through the window, I could see my first client, Mrs. Maki, sitting in the waiting area already. She was always early. I should’ve known. She was a little bit of a curmudgeon, but she was an easy client who always wanted the same thing and always tipped well.

“Hello, hello!” I called out to her as I walked in. “Ready to come back?”

She seemed annoyed at me for a split second before standing up and following me back to my station. She took a seat in my chair and whipped out her cell phone, immediately going into work mode. This woman owned her own cleaning company, a very profitable one I might add, and was never not working.

She wasn’t ever big on conversation, and she never asked me about myself, but that day she saw something different.

“You’re different today,” she said. “Something’s changed. Something is different about you. Did you change your hair?”

“No,” I replied as I massaged hair dresser’s oil into her scalp. “Would you like a hand massage today as well?”

“No,” she snipped. “What’s different about you? This is going to bug me until I figure it out.”

“Ha,” I laughed, trying to pass her off. “It’s nothing.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t buying it. She probably just sensed that I was a little out of sorts, a little distracted. I wasn’t being as chipper or talkative as I normally was with her.

“Let’s go shampoo you,” I said.

She followed me back, wrapped in a black cape, and took a seat at one of the shampoo bowls. I selected some lavender shampoo. The purple would help rid her blonde hair of some of the brassiness and the lavender scent would calm me. It was win-win.

“Ugh,” she sighed. “What are you using? It smells awful!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback. “Do you not like lavender?”

“Ew, God, no,” she said, as if I was supposed to know that.

“I’m so sorry,” I said as I worked to rinse it out as fast as I could. “I’ll use something else. How about raspberry?”

“I guess,” she huffed. She was such a grump.

I massaged copious amounts of raspberry shampoo into her hair to rid the lavender smell and followed up with a matching conditioner. I couldn’t get her back to my chair fast enough. I was ready for the appointment to be over already.

We made our way back to my station where I clipped and snipped her hair into her usual style, sprayed and misted several products into it and blow dried it into nothing short of a masterpiece.

I handed her a mirror and spun her around so she could look at the back. After several discerning seconds, she cracked a small smile that told me she was pleased and handed me the mirror back. I walked her to the front and let the receptionist take care of the rest. I was just glad to be done with her.

“Your next appointment is here,” the receptionist whispered. I checked my schedule and didn’t recognize the name, so I knew it was someone new. I sometimes loathed new clients because building up that relationship took a lot of effort. You had to connect with them and keep the conversation flowing so they’d want to come back to you in the future. Sometimes you could do really bad hair, but if they really like you as a person, they’ll want to come back.

“Melanie?” I called out. A shy, awkward, overweight teenager stood up from one of the chairs. She walked towards me with her head down. “Hi.”

She said nothing and just nodded as she followed me back to my station. I was 0 for 2 on the good clients so far that morning. I knew it was going to be like pulling teeth to get any sort of conversation out of Melanie, and I didn’t have the energy for it that day.

“So what are we doing?” I asked with a smile.

She shrugged one shoulder as if to say she didn’t care. Her hair was the mousiest shade of brown I’d ever seen. I needed trimmed badly. She could use some layers and some hi lights, but I wasn’t about to tell her any of that.

“Just do whatever you want,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She nodded.

“How about I give you some layers and paint on a few hi lights?” I proposed.

“Okay,” she said. She reached forward and grabbed a People magazine from my station table and began rifling through it.

“I’m going to go mix up the color. I’ll be right back,” I said.

I walked off towards the back room to mix color, but before that I happened to glance outside the shop windows. There was a pickup truck parked in one of the spots, and I could see someone sitting in the driver’s side spot. My heart leaped up into my mouth as it pounded hard and fast. Instinctively, I ran to the backroom and hid.

“What’s wrong with you?” Tess asked as she walked to the back room after me. “Why are you acting so weird?”

I sighed, not wanting to get into it with her. I didn’t need another lecture. I knew I’d fucked up.

“You going to tell me or what?” she asked, as if I owed it to her to tell her what was bugging me. She was really getting on my nerves lately, but we were business partners and I refused to let drama ruin that.

“I thought I saw a mouse over by the shampoo bowls,” I lied, terribly.

“Seriously?” she asked as she shuddered. “That’s disgusting. Should we call an exterminator?”

“No,” I said. “If I see it again, I’ll call one. It could’ve been a dusty bunny or a clunk of someone’s hair.”

Tess laughed. “True.”

I mixed up a batch of color for my client, put on my apron, and wheeled my cart back to my station. Melody hadn’t moved an inch since I’d left. She was still sitting there paging through her magazine. She didn’t even look up at me when I returned.

I got started on her hi lights while sneaking glimpses outside every so often. The truck was still there, but after a half hour or so, he’d driven off. My station was too far in the back of the shop to catch a glimpse of who the driver really was, but I was just glad he didn’t come inside.

Tuesdays were my late night, which meant I was working until 8pm that night. Everyone else was done by six, so it was just me and the receptionist.

“Your 7:00 cancelled tonight,” she lamented as she walked up to me later that evening. “Said she was having car trouble or something.”

“Ugh,” I sighed. “There goes the hundred bucks I could’ve made. Did she reschedule?”

“No,” the receptionist said. “She’s going to call back.”

“Like they always do, right?” I laughed.

“So, what should we do?” she asked.

I knew the kind thing would’ve been to send her home. It wasn’t necessary to keep her there and on the clock when we had no clients, but I also didn’t want to be in the shop by myself. I also didn’t want to go home yet and be there by myself either. Working that day had been a good distraction from what had happened the night before, but now reality was setting in and the fact that I had to go home soon was gnawing away at me.

“Why don’t you straighten up the waiting area and tear foils. Maybe wash some towels?” I suggested. Selfishly I decided against sending her home.

I planted my butt in the seat of one of the chairs in the back room and pulled my phone out of my purse to keep me preoccupied. There was always the chance that we’d get a random walk in, but that rarely happened this time of night.

I watched the clock on the wall tick by, minute by minute, and waited until the eight o’clock hour truck. By seven thirty, I heard the chimes on the front door tinging and knew someone had walked in. Hopefully it was someone just wanting to buy products before we closed, but sometimes we’d get those late, last minute walk ins that wanted the full monty.

I heard the clicking of the receptionist’s heels on the laminate floors as she walked back to the back room.

“There’s a guy here who wants a haircut,” she said causally.