Page 20 of Absolutely Pucked (Punk as Puck #3)

CHAPTER

TWELVE

KILLIAN

The guy who was training me was named Decker, and I wanted to ask him if his parents hated him, but my name was Killian, so I didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Fuck, I was pretty sure that phrase was offensive, considering the company I was keeping these days.

Anyway, Decker was an annoying dickhead with a superiority complex, who was probably ten years my junior, so listening to him boss me around all afternoon had been a blow to the ego. Not that I had an ego intact these days.

Luckily, the job was simple, and the inventory system was easy to figure out. By the time six o’clock rolled around, I was on my own, working my way down the pasta sauce aisle and emptying boxes that had been sitting around long enough to gather dust.

I was ready to go home, but Decker asked me to stay until closing, which was going to help pad my first paycheck, so I wasn’t about to say no.

Also, employees got a free meal every six hours, so I could fill my stomach at the little hot food bar and wouldn’t need to burden Ford with cooking another meal for me.

“I’m taking off,” Decker said, coming around the corner. “You can clock out as soon as you finish the dairy section. The assistant manager will be in soon, and he can help you out when you need it.”

Not if I needed it. God only knew what this kid thought about me. But that didn’t matter. My stomach swooped because I knew who that assistant manager was.

“Catch you later,” he said, then turned before I could ask if it was actually Ford coming in.

The store was quiet. There wasn’t ever a real rush like most supermarkets, which I appreciated, though I also wasn’t sure how this place stayed in business.

Most of the shoppers were geriatric millennial Karens who hadn’t let go of their Posh Spice haircuts, fingers covered in tarnished gold rings, and Gucci handbags with cat claw marks along the sides.

Which I knew was judgmental as fuck, and I had no room to be doing that to anyone. But after the fifteenth sneer I’d gotten as they passed me in the cereal aisle, I kind of wanted to kick them in the backs of the knees and watch them topple over.

Tucker and I used to do that to each other as kids, but thinking about him made my stomach hurt, so I shoved the memory aside and focused back on work.

Checking the time, I realized it was close to my second break, so I set the box to the side and wandered up to the front. Decker had taught me how to clock out, which was helpful, considering there were only two cashiers at the front and no one at the customer service desk.

I tried not to feel their gazes, but they were a heavy weight on me as I made my way to the computer.

It wasn’t like they knew who I was…right?

They couldn’t? Though it was possible they knew my brother, and I had zero reason to believe Tucker hadn’t told everyone within a hundred-mile radius what a bastard I’d been, so…

Yeah.

I might already be the town pariah. Even with my name badge reading Ian, and even with Tucker’s scars, we were still identical twins.

“Hi.”

I was so lost in thought I hadn’t realized a person had walked up to the counter. My gaze shot up and saw no one. Oh fuck. Was I being haunted by Ford’s not-real ghost?

“Hi.”

The voice was small—obviously a child. I peered over the edge of the counter and looked down to see a very small little girl with wide eyes and long black hair. There was something about her gaze that seemed…different.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

Her eyes went even wider. “Coach T!”

Coach…oh. Oh! “No, kiddo. Sorry. I’m not?—”

“Coach T! I can’t find my mom.” I realized what was going on with her eyes. They were dancing back and forth without any control, which meant she was blind.

“I can help you with that, but I’m not Coach T. My name is Ki—uh. My name is Ian. ”

Her nose wrinkled, and she took a step backward, shaking her head. “That’s not nice. I don’t like pranks.” Her chin began to wobble, and she looked on the verge of a hysterical meltdown.

That was the last thing I needed on my first shift. Coming around the counter, I crouched down beside her. “Hey.”

Her head whipped around to face me, her bottom lip between her teeth so hard I thought she might break the skin.

“My name is Ian. I promise I’m not Coach T.”

She swallowed heavily. “You gots legs?”

I shouldn’t laugh. Right? Laughing would send me straight to hell, and it wasn’t funny funny. It was nerves. I took a breath. “I have legs. Do you want to check?”

Her hand shot out, and after a beat, I gently touched her wrist to guide her to my knee. She squeezed hard, then crouched to move her fingers down my calf, then sighed. “Mr. E?”

E? Right. Ee-an. That worked for me. “You want me to help you find your mom?”

“I got lost,” she said. She squared her shoulders suddenly, then said, “My name is Regan, and I have LCA, which means I can only see a little bit of light. That means blind.” It was very obviously a rehearsed script that I had to assume her parents created for this scenario exactly. “Do you know what blind is?”

“I do,” I told her.

“Mmkay.” She hesitated. “Do you see my mom?”

“Were you two shopping here?”

She sniffed. “Um, but there was an ice cream truck so I went outside because I heard the music and then I didn’t have my cane and then I was stuck so I went inside but I don’t think this is the same place and I’m scared. My mom’s gonna be so mad.”

“She’s probably just worried. Moms don’t like when their kids run off,” I told her. “I used to run off, and I’d get in so much trouble.”

She grinned. “Me too.”

With a small laugh, I stood back up and glanced out through the front glass doors, but I couldn’t see a frantic parent searching the parking lot. Yet. There were only a couple of shops in this strip though, so I doubted it would be hard to find her.

“Why don’t we walk next door and see if we can find her.”

She stuck out her hand, and after a second of hesitation, I took it. “Mmkay. She’s nice. She has curly hair.”

That was actually helpful. “I can work with that.” I had never done this before, of course. I’d guided Tucker around his hospital room a little and outside along the garden path, but he’d been in a wheelchair, so it was nothing like this.

She seemed entirely unafraid and unbothered though, so I let her take the lead as I headed past the doors and toward the craft store a few hundred feet away. Between one step and the next, a question began to burn in my chest, and though I knew I had no right to ask it, I couldn’t help myself.

“Is Coach T’s name Tucker?”

“Yeah. You have the same voice. Do you know him?”

Fuck. “We’ve met before.” Seemed a safe half-truth. “He’s your coach? ”

“Mhm. He teaches me to skate. I wanted to do hockey like the other kids, but my mom doesn’t like it. But he’s not my coach now. He got another job, so Coach Jonah took over and he’s nice and he’s funny but he doesn’t give the same kind of hugs like Coach T. My mom said it’s okay to be sad.”

“It’s definitely okay to be sad anytime you need to be.”

“Did your mom teach you that?” she asked me as we turned toward the entrance of the craft store.

I felt a dark wave rising in my chest. It was such an ugly feeling every time I thought about my parents. “Ah. No, she didn’t teach me that. I learned it as I grew up. It’s better to learn these things when you’re a kid.”

“Regan?” A familiar voice had me freezing in my tracks, and I turned slowly to see Ford rushing up to us, leaning heavily on his walking cane. He looked confused and worried. “What is happening right now?”

Regan’s face brightened. “Ford!” She let me go and flung herself in his direction, and he caught her like he was expecting the rush hug. “This is my friend Mr. E.”

‘Mr. E?’ he mouthed.

“My name is Ian,” I said, stressing the pronunciation.

Ford snorted and rolled his eyes as he set her back down. “Right. Cool. So…what’s happening? Regan, pumpkin, where’s your mom?”

“I don’t know. I wanted ice cream, and I got lost.”

He sighed. “Ah. Like the time you left the rink because you thought you heard a circus across the street, and we almost had to get the police helicopter to search for you. ”

She blushed but grinned and shrugged. “I like the circus.”

“And ice cream,” Ford said. “Your mom is going to murder you.”

“Too damn right I am!” came a half-hysterical voice as a tall woman with long, curly black hair, light brown skin, and wide, frantic eyes burst out of the craft store.

“Child, I am too young to be worrying about my heart.” She had Regan in her arms in half a second and squeezed her tightly before turning back to us. “Ford. And…random man who looks like?—”

“I’m Ian,” I said quickly, glancing over at Ford in panic. Fuck, this was not going to work. I was going to get busted immediately.

Her brows lifted, but she didn’t call me on it again. “What happened?”

“Ice cream,” Regan said, clinging to her mom.

“She said she heard the ice cream truck,” I clarified, then stuck out my hand. “Sorry. I work at the supermarket next door. She came up to the service counter to ask for help.”

“Well, thank God she learned something from our safety practice,” she said, giving me a quick handshake.

Regan wrinkled her nose and grinned, her cheek resting on her mom’s shoulder. “Mmkay.”

The woman rolled her eyes and took her hand away. “I’m Clara. It’s nice to meet you, Ian. We need to get going, but I hope to see you around.”

She was gone before I could figure out a way to beg her not to say anything when she saw my brother again. My heart was sitting in the soles of my feet when I finally turned around to face Ford. He was staring at me strangely, and I felt itchy all over.

“Come on,” he said before I could attempt to explain the situation. “You’re on the clock, right?”

“Shit.” I was. I hadn’t gotten the chance to clock out before I noticed Regan. “Sorry. God, I don’t know if this is going to work,” I said as I matched his pace. He led the way back to the store, and I followed him into the little office behind the customer service desk.

The door shut with a heavy thud, and then he sighed and looked me up and down. “How many things did you fuck up today?”

My eyes widened. “What? None! Well, okay, the clocking-out thing. I was going on break, but then the little girl appeared out of freaking nowhere and?—”

“Chill,” Ford said. He dropped his cane against the wall, then sank into the chair and leaned back, groaning in a way that made me hot around the ears. “She does that. She was a frequent source of Tucker’s work frustration.”

I attempted to swallow, but it got caught in my throat. “Yeah, about that. Clara is most definitely going to tell your brother about the doppelg?nger she met today.”

“Tucker doesn’t work with her anymore. She was on the skate team, and he’s only seeing a couple of his private students now that he’s got the coaching job.”

Right. The coaching job. There was a tiny part of me that was resentful that he was moving up in the world while I was moving down. Yes, it was karma kicking me in the ass, but I wasn’t going to pretend like it didn’t hurt .

“Still, I should probably, I don’t know, stay in hiding. I mean, how many people around here know who I am?”

“None,” Ford said with a tiny snort. “My friends don’t shop here. Hell, I rarely shop here, and I have a sweet-as-fuck discount. You can unclench, alright?”

That was so much easier to say than do. When I met Ford with more tense silence, he sighed and leaned forward, firing up his computer. His fingers flew over the keyboard, and a second later, he leaned back again and propped his arms behind his head.

“There.”

“Um?”

“You’re off the clock. Go steal one of those croissant sandwiches and a sparkling water and sit in the breakroom for half an hour.

” I continued to stare, and eventually, he waved his hand at me.

“Go. You didn’t do anything wrong today, alright?

And I wouldn’t have suggested this job if I thought for one second someone was going to sell you out to your brother.

My ass is on the line about this too, you know. ”

That was true. Ford had a lot more to lose than I did. Bowing my head, I nodded. “Thank you.”

He waved me off again, and while the dismissal hurt, I was glad for it. I felt like I’d lost my ability to do anything besides follow orders, which was new for me. I had no idea who this whole experience was going to turn me into, but I wasn’t really curious to find out.

There were more and more moments I found myself not really wanting to wake up in the mornings. I had to fix it. I had to find myself again.

I just didn’t know how.