"It's still dark out," she managed. The corner of his mouth lifted. "Then it's not morning yet." Her eyes flicked to the mugs. "Is that for me?"
"Yes," he said. "Sit." She sat at the table because her body did what his voice told it to do before her brain could decide whether or not she liked that. "Eat." He said, sliding a plate toward her.
Toast, eggs, bacon. Real bacon, not whatever thin supermarket pack she sometimes bought on Sundays if it was on clearance. "I'm not hungry." She said automatically. He didn't blink. ""Eat anyway."" She picked up the fork. ""You always talk to people like that?"" ""No."" ""Just me?"" ""Yes."" Her stomach did something that should not have felt good.
She took a bite and her body betrayed her immediately. She had been hungry. She hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon. Marco watched her silently for a few seconds, not in a creepy way. More like he was checking.
"Are you actually okay or should I be hunting someone down right now?" Finally, he said it. ""They came after you because of me."" Lisa's fork paused in midair. He continued, voice even. "Bennett's people don't care about you. They care about optics.
His daughter humiliates a waitress, video goes online, his kid looks bad. He can't touch me without starting something he won't survive. So, he tried to get to me through you. That's why they were there." Her chest tightened. ""So, I got pulled into this because you stood up?"" "You got pulled into this."
He corrected, "because a spoiled little girl thinks service workers are beneath her. And her father taught her that money erases guilt." "I just interrupted the part where you were supposed to swallow it and say thank you." Her throat burned. He said it casually.
Like he'd been sitting in that dark corner booth for months watching people like Olivia Bennett spit on girls like her, and he'd finally had enough. Lisa looked down at her plate. ""Nobody has ever stopped something like that for me."" His brow lifted slightly. ""Nobody ever wiped your face before?" Her eyes snapped up. "Don't say it like that." "Like what?"
"Like it was nothing." His jaw flexed like he wanted to say 10 things and swallowed all of them. He leaned forward instead, forearms on the table, lowering his voice. "It wasn't nothing," he said. "That's the point."
Silence pressed in for a few seconds. Her face felt hot. She didn't know where to look. She tried to breathe around the weight in her chest. "Everyone's saying your name."
"I know." "They said you're dangerous." "I am." That directness should have scared her. It didn't.
Not the way it should have. She swallowed. "Dangerous to who?" A slow breath moved through his chest. Then he said it, steady and truthful.
"Not to you." Every muscle in her body went tight. Her instinct told her not to believe that. Men said things. Men promised things.
Men swore they'd never and then they did. But something in the way he'd walked into that diner at 2:00 in the morning, something in the way two grown men with fake badges had backed up the second his eyes cut toward them. That wasn't a lie. That was evidence. He wasn't asking her to trust him.