Shifting Gears Read Free Page A

back.
He’s not getting any more tears.
    I give in to the fact that my mind
isn’t going to allow sleep. I sit up in bed and toss back the
covers. A glass of milk and my e-reader is what I need. A good book
always saves the day, or at least helps me escape reality...for a
little while.
    ****
    I wake after eventually falling
asleep, e-reader in hand. Saturday-come-over-in-your-pajamas
breakfast turns into Saturday-and-still-in-my-pajamas lunch. Clay
and Ang saunter in around eleven, the same time Cass decides to get
up. Clay and I get to hear all about the adventures of Cass and Ang
from the night before, which is almost as entertaining as watching
Clay circulate the dance floor.
    As I am clearing the lunch dishes, Ang
follows me into the kitchen. “So what’s up with that Holt
guy?”
    My lunch almost comes back up. I turn
and glare at Cass, thinking she’s told Ang about Holt.
    I try to settle myself so I can speak,
but before I can, Clay chimes in. “Who’s Holt?”
    And so the conversation about Holt
Maddox begins as if I am not even in the room.
    “He’s just this dick Niki knew a long
time ago,” Cass says.
    “What’d he do to be a dick?” Clay
asks, turning to me with a look of anger, concern.
    I try to speak, but the words won’t
come out. I can’t bring myself to talk about that day without it
revealing all the pain, all the humiliation I still feel. I
would’ve said or done something, anything, different if I’d known
that day was going to end the way it did. With me alone.
Heartbroken. In the twenty-five years of my life, that day still
stands out as one of the worst.
    Instead of answering Clay, I push past
him and run down the hall to my bedroom. It’s been less than
twenty-four hours since I saw Holt Maddox, and already I’ve broken
my promise not to cry for him again.
    I try my best not to think about it,
not to remember, but the memories take hold of me. I’d done so well
all these years, pushing them away, learning to forget. Pretending
I was better...
    Holt left town much the way he’d come
in. One day he kind of showed up, and three months later, he was
gone.
    He’s a bounty hunter, and he came to
Coral Springs that first time following his mark. He told me back
then he was working for this man in Atlanta, Sid Rotham. I knew
Rotham from television. He owned several nightclubs and had been in
the news many times after being arrested for “suspicious
activities” in his clubs. He’d never actually been found guilty of
anything, but it’s known he’s a shady something, and it seems he’s
smart, covering up whatever it is he’s doing illegal.
    Holt had been hired by Rotham to find
and secure someone “of interest” to him. The man was on the run,
but I don’t know if Holt ever actually caught him because he never
told me. He really didn’t tell me much of anything about himself,
his work, his life. What I had learned was as a result of one of
those rare nights when he gave me a small, sometimes miniscule,
piece of himself. It didn’t matter how irrelevant it was, I held
onto it. Cherished it.
    The red flags were there from the very
beginning. I ignored them. I should’ve known by the way he looked,
how secretive he was, not to mention working for a shady
businessman like Rotham, that he was no good. But I didn’t, and I’d
had to learn the hard way.
    It was clear back then that none of
the men in town would’ve fucked with him, but the women secretly
wished they could. I could see it in their faces, their mouths
dropped just as much as my own. Turned out I got the chance to be
with him, but, after it was too late to matter, I discovered I
wasn’t the only one. That was a knife twisting in my
heart.
    Up until I met him, I’d always been
safe Niki. Cautious Niki. Think-things-through-before-acting-rashly
Niki. All those safety nets disappeared when he walked into The Rox
that night. I was sitting at the bar with Cass, listening to one of
the bands, when I felt a presence. I