On Every Street by Karina Halle Page B

needed. I was in here for revenge, for the strife I’d been subjected to for the last ten years. I was here to even the score with Travis. Yet Travis was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was Javier and what he was going to do to me next. He excited me more than anyone ever had.
    I thought, maybe, it was okay to just be excited. For now.
    When Javier came to pick me up in the morning, my excitement and expectations suddenly tripled. Instead of going out for lunch like I had imagined, we actually swung by a medical clinic. Yes. A medical clinic.
    It wasn’t terribly rom antic, yet in some ways it was. He wanted to make sure I was going on birth control. He then made us both get tested for STDs. I didn’t know what he was expecting to find in my virginal blood, but the fact that he was taking control of the situation, especially a situation that many couples never discussed, meant a lot to me. Like, a strange amount.
    “You’re my woman,” he told me, as we left the pharmacy, a bag of new birth control pills in my hand. “And I’ll be responsible with you. And for you.”
    I was his woman. Two dates in and I was his woman. And who was I? A liar. I tried hard to bury those thoughts and found a bit of relief when he dropped me at my shift later. Things were moving so fast once again.
    “So, how is Mr. Wonderful?” Julie asked me in her thick Southern accent, snapping me out of my thoughts. It was Monday night, the bar was totally dead, and we were wiping down the counters, straightening bottles, and doing everything we could to busy ourselves.
    I smiled at her petite round face, the cascade of wav y brown hair that went all the way to her lower back. She was built like a porn star, but I knew she had a very sweet boyfriend that she was completely over the moon for. His name was Andrew and she wouldn’t shut up about him, day in and day out. If it wasn’t for Javier—for my Mr. Wonderful—I would have been jealous.
    “He’s good,” I told her, feeling my cheeks heat.
    “Oh he’s very good, sug,” she said. “You know there’s nothing sexier than a man who can take charge, and believe me, Eden, he took charge of Thursday night.”
    “I thought you said I took charge,” I teased her.
    “Well behind every good woman is a good man,” she said, then noticed I was glaring at her sexiest remark. She jabbed me playfully in the ribs. “And vice versa, of course. He’s got such a way about him.”
    “Javier?” I asked, surprised to see that same dreamy look on her face, as if she were talking about Andrew.
    “Yes, your Javier.”
    “Okay, he’s not exactly my Javier,” I said, as though he hadn’t just told me earlier that I was his woman and he was responsible for me.
    “Oh, whatever!” Julie exclaimed, nearly slapping her thighs in overreaction. “It took Andrew two years and a trip on a Disney cruise ship with Nana before he even looked at me that way. I think it’s because he finally saw how much of a bad-ass I have to be to put up with my family. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Between the food poisoning and the Catholic versus Protestant discussion, I almost lost him.”
    And she had totally lost me. But it didn’t matter. I was biting the bait.
    “How does he look at me?” I asked as casually as I could muster.
    Julie placed her small hands on both sides of my face. “He looks at you like this.”
    Her eyes drooped and she just looked drunk. And like she was maybe having a stroke.
    “Inebriated?”
    She let go and smacked me on the arm. She was an animated little thing.
    “No! Like he’s been searching for you his whole life, and there you turned up, under a pile of garbage.”
    “That’s…poetic,” I said, frowning. “But I’ve only known him a few days.”
    “Oh that doesn’t matter,” she said, before sliding a beer down to a gentleman who hadn’t even asked for it yet. He was a regular, I knew that much. “Love at first sight happens. They say it doesn’t,