Page 18 of Playing Hard to Hate

TATUM

PRESENT

It was Sunday night, and instead of joining my best friend at some bar, I was picking up fruit from the local grocery store after one of the most intense and interesting gym sessions I’d had in a while.

Never in a million years did I think in the span of one weekend Griffin Silver would steal my first kiss and then correct my form in the gym.

I’d recently started a new health cleanse, a new diet that was strictly fruits, vegetables, and white meat, and in the last week, I’d lost nearly three pounds.

Buying fresh strawberries for my dessert tonight seemed like a better idea than drinking my night away at a bar with Millie. Scanning the twenty different strawberry cartons, I analyzed each one, looking for the biggest, juiciest strawberries.

“Can you hurry up?” a teenage girl asked from my right, rolling her eyes as she looked down at a list in her hand and then at me.

Teenagers. Rude much ?

“I’m not stopping you,” I retorted. The thought of smacking her crossed my mind. Man, if I was only just a few years younger…

She sighed and reached around me to grab a carton and then hurried off. I rolled my eyes and focused back on the strawberries in front of me, hoping my peace wouldn’t be disturbed again by some bratty girl with no manners.

Finally, after choosing what I deemed the best, I put it in my shopping cart and then focused on the Honeycrisp apples.

Twenty minutes later, I was browsing the rest of the aisles, my cart full of more fruit than I intended to buy and some protein yogurt to add to my smoothie mix.

Just as I was exiting the frozen food aisle, a loud commotion at the front of the store caught my attention. I quickly looked that way, my heart stopping and lurching into my throat at the sight.

“Don’t move!” a gruff voice yelled.

Panic seized my body, leaving me frozen as I took in the three men running into the store, faces hidden behind black masks, guns pointed in front of them.

My hands shook, growing clammy. I couldn’t bring myself to look away, to move—anything.

Something in my mind was screaming at me to get down, to hide behind something, but I just continued standing there, making myself an easy target.

My body was completely disconnected from my brain.

Everything and everyone around me came to a halt.

A child cried. Someone whispered prayers.

And I froze as the three men walked briskly and confidently toward the cashiers, guns raised at the clerks.

Things like this never happened in our town.

You could leave your door unlocked, and nothing would happen. This was beyond terrifying.

What was I supposed to do? Had I really survived my mom dying to go out like this? Shot in a grocery store. Tell me this was a sick joke .

“Open the drawers now,” one of the men demanded, his gun pointed at the male clerk, Joe.

He was one of my favorites. One of the sweetest guys who you know wouldn’t harm a fly.

He was fifty years old and still struggled with acne, his black hair was always slicked back and kinda greasy looking.

He always wore a vest and dress pants even though the job only required black attire.

He was so sweet to me and the other people he talked to, even though everyone made jokes and mocked him because he drove a Mercedes SUV working at a supermarket.

He got the SUV after his mother passed, and she had always wanted one, so even though it was ten years old, he treated it like it was brand new.

Was this the last time I’d get to see Joe?

He didn’t deserve this.

None of us did.

He always remembered things I told him, and he went to school with my mom. He’d told me so many stories about her. Even from here, I could see his pulse beating wildly at the base of his throat, his eyes wide with fear. His face was so pale. It looked like he’d faint at any moment.

“I…I can’t without a transaction,” he whispered, voice quaking with fear.

Move, Tatum.

“Get out of here,” Joe muttered.

My body still refused to unlock and obey my brain.

The robber looked up, his dark eyes immediately landing on me. I squeaked. Like a stupid little mouse. I squeaked. He lifted his hand and crooked his finger at me.

I was going to vomit. Pretty sure I was about to throw up everywhere. “You! Come here now.”

Breathe, Tate. Breathe. Just breathe. I was going to die sweaty and in my gym clothes in the middle of the grocery store.

I looked around, seeing nothing but fear and panic in the eyes of every shopper around me as the man’s voice echoed in the eerily silent store. Even the obnoxious music wasn’t playing anymore.

“Did you hear me? Make your transaction!” He shifted the gun to me, and I willed my feet to move. My knees knocked together, adrenaline making my body tremble. “Don’t make me pull the trigger. I didn’t come here to hurt anyone, but I will if I have to.”

Move. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Move your feet, Tate! I screamed at myself, sliding my heavy feet against the floor, my cart bouncing into a metal bin of discounted items, knocking it over in my panic. I couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe?

The man walked over, his strides long and purposeful. His gloved hand wrapped around the end of my cart, and he yanked it forward, pulling me along with a gasp. My fingers wouldn’t unlock from around the handle of the cart.

This isn’t happening. I should have gone for drinks with Millie. I’m going to die in a grocery store buying fruit for a stupid diet.

“Hurry up!” he growled, his dark eyes glaring at me as I shakily lifted the items out of my cart and onto the conveyor belt.

“Scan the items!” he yelled at Joe, who shook his head, refusing.

I rolled my lips into my mouth, trying not to plead with him to just cooperate.

This man may shoot someone. Was a few hundred dollars in a drawer worth a human life?

The robber then pressed the cold metal of the gun to my temple, and I froze. Pinching my eyes shut for a moment, I willed myself not to scream. To not open my mouth. I feared it would only make the situation worse.

What had I done to deserve this?

“Scan them, or I’ll blow her brains out!”

The gunman moved closer, far too close for comfort. He reeked of cigarette smoke and stale sweat. “Wouldn’t want a pretty little woman like yourself to get hurt now, would we?” he whispered.

I was going to die. All because of a stupid diet. Because I so desperately wanted to be thin to get a man. To find someone to share my life with. A life that was about to end. At least I got my first kiss. But I was going to die a fucking virgin. What an absolute horror.

My frustration grew, and Joe couldn’t sit back and watch this go on any longer.

“The cops will be here any minute,” he whispered, just making the situation worse.

I glared at him, fear gripping every cell in my body as this man held my life in his hands.

Why couldn’t he just scan the stupid strawberries?

“For your sake, I hope she’s still alive, or you’ll have to live with her death on your hands.”

A loud bang came from the other side of the store. Someone had thrown something at one of the hanging ceiling lights. Within seconds the atmosphere changed, the gunman’s attention shifted to the other side of the store. “Boss, it’s a can of tuna, still open.”

In seconds, I was suddenly yanked backward behind a strong wall of muscle. My hands automatically curled into the fabric of the man’s shirt, and I held onto the stranger like my life depended on it, all while fighting to keep my balance from the sudden movement.

“Shoot me instead.” The man’s deep voice, strikingly familiar, washed over me as I clung to him.

“How sweet,” the gunman cooed. “I always love a pathetic hero. How about I just shoot you both?”

No. No. No.

“Boss, we gotta get it now or…”

Before the gunman could finish his sentence, another can went flying at full speed, hitting the robber in the head. Time seemed to freeze as the gunman took a few startled steps back almost losing his footing .

Everyone stayed low to the ground, praying the next move wouldn’t end in bloodshed.

Approaching the dazed shooter, my rescuer stepped from behind me and grabbed the shooter by the throat with one hand and his wrist holding a gun in the other. It was Griffin.

“Leave now, or you’ll be leaving on a stretcher!” Griffin yelled at the top of his lungs.

A cry escaped my lips at the glimpse of red and blue lights approaching the front entrance. They had to hurry. Or we would die .

“Time to go!” one of the other robbers yelled, already making a run for it. Fear, panic, and relief crippled me as I started to sink to the dirty floor, my knees officially giving out on me.

Griffin turned, his strong arms wrapping around me before I could collapse, holding me up as the tears flowed freely from my eyes. Sobs racked my chest so strongly it hurt.

I almost died.

Griffin came to my rescue.

I almost died.

I almost died.

Opening my eyes, blinking past the tears, I looked up into familiar gray eyes, my heart squeezing with a different type of fear. Oh god. Griffin. What the hell was he doing here?

“I’ve got you. You’re okay now. You’re okay, Tate.” His deep voice soothed, washing over me, his strong arms still holding me up. Those gray eyes scanned my face and then my body, looking for wounds that didn’t exist.

“Fin?” I whispered, voice cracking with emotion.

He nodded and drew me fully into his arms. I sank into his embrace, crying harder now. Holding me firmly to his hard body, he absorbed my tears and trembles of fear. “Everything is okay. You’re okay. ”

“We almost died. There was a gun. A gun. Pointed at me. At you. A gun,” I rambled through my tears, my mind struggling to process and make sense of the last five minutes.

Cops surged into the grocery store, guns drawn, scanning the crowd for the robbers who were long gone. The crackling of police radios filled the air. People began sobbing and crying. Others were yelling. The officers immediately tried to contain the situation.

“You’re safe. You’re alive,” Griffin whispered, his gray eyes holding all my attention despite the chaos around us. His hands ran over my hair before he cradled my face, his thumbs brushing the tears off my damp cheeks.

“Because of you,” I croaked.

I was only alive because of Griffin Silver, this stupid man who, despite everything he’d ever done to me, I loved. He said he never hated me, and he’d stolen my first kiss, and now had placed his body in front of mine to protect me. Because he decided my life was more valuable than his.

Nothing made sense. And I wished more than anything that my mom was still alive so I could ask her what it meant because Millie was going to suggest it meant that he had feelings for me. Which was impossible in the extreme.

I was falling for him.

I was falling for the guy who had been my best friend, and he would never feel the same way, not when he could have any girl he wanted.