Hell, he wished that he could forget them, but the eerie silence that had taken over the small diner made it impossible. He could hear every startled breath taken, every heartbeat racing with excitement, and every subtle shift on the vinyl covered seats as they did their best to get a better view. When the hushed whispers broke through the silence he wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or pissed.

Definitely pissed, he thought a minute later as he was forced to sit there and pretend that he couldn’t hear what they were saying about him.

“I can’t believe he’s here!”

“He never goes anywhere without his hood!”

“He’s such a freak!”

“Oh my God! He looks exactly as he did thirty years ago! Wait until I tell Mavis!”

“I hear she’s living with them!”

“I wonder if she’s a freak like him.”

“I thought he didn’t eat. What’s he doing here?”

“They should have run him out of town years ago!”

“Hank needs to kick him out. He doesn’t belong here!”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Cloe said, bringing his attention back to her and away from the whispers that seemed to be getting louder with each passing second.

It took him a minute to realize that most of the customers had stopped whispering and were now talking loud enough for Cloe to hear what they were saying. They were probably hoping that he’d take the hint and get the hell out. If it weren’t for the woman sitting across from him, he’d probably do just that.

What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t left the house in over forty years without a hat or a sweatshirt, because he hadn’t wanted to deal with this bullshit. He still earned stares and whispers wherever he went, but never to this degree. Then again, they’d probably still be reacting like this even if he had brought his sweatshirt, he realized. He hadn’t stepped foot in a restaurant since he’d moved here over forty years ago. He was also out with a woman who wasn’t his elderly sister, something that he’d never done before since most women in this town took one look at him and ran screaming the other way.

“I’m fine,” he said, opening his menu and forcing himself to ignore everything going on around them.

“Do you know what you’d like?” their waitress asked as she approached the table, sounding normal and giving him some hope that at least one person was going to stop treating him like a freak.

When he looked up and met the waitress’s petrified gaze he was forced to bite back a few words that would have probably had the terrified woman screaming for help. Instead, he looked back down at the menu filled with food that he’d never even heard of before, never mind tasted. What the hell did humans eat these days?

“I’d like a chocolate frappe with extra ice cream, a cheeseburger with fries and coleslaw, please,” Cloe said, saving him from playing a guessing game.

“I’ll have the same, please,” he said, taking Cloe’s menu from her and handing it over to the waitress who seemed too stunned to do anything but stare at him.

“You’re going to eat?” she finally asked, sending a pleading look over her shoulder at the equally stunned waitresses cowering behind the counter.

“Yes,” he said evenly as he prayed for patience.

“O-okay,” the waitress said woodenly as she turned around and walked off, but not before she threw a cautious look over her shoulder, probably making sure that he wasn’t following her.

“You really know how to turn heads,” Cloe said, earning a glare from him. “Wanna tell me about it?”

“No,” he bit out.

“Alrighty then,” she said with a careless shrug as she opened her purse and pulled out her phone, leaving him to frown as she started typing something on the small keypad.

“What are you doing?” he found himself asking.

“Sending my contact at the agency an email and asking her if she has any job openings on the west coast,” she said, never taking her eyes off her phone.

Scowling, he plucked the phone from her hand and shoved it in his pocket. “I thought we were going to talk,” he said, ignoring the hand that she held out for the return of her phone.

“No,” she said with a sigh as she dropped her hand away when it became painfully obvious that he had no intentions of returning her phone, “I came to eat. You came to talk.”

Still wondering why she hadn’t eaten the sandwich that he’d made for her if she was so hungry, he forced himself to focus on getting her to stay without having to resort to kidnapping her. It would probably draw more unnecessary attention his way, he mused as he watched her every move. He needed to figure out a way to make her stay without her finding out that she really didn’t have a choice.

“What will it take to get you to stay?” he asked, deciding to go with bribery first. Giving her a raise or buying her something would be a hell of a lot easier than convincing her to stay, he decided as he waited for her demands.

“Nothing,” she said with a shrug, making him wonder if she was trying to play hardball and see just how much she could get out of him.

“You’re going to be difficult about this, aren’t you?” he asked, rubbing his hands down his face and wondering just how many hoops she was going to make him jump through to get her to willingly stay.

“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head as she looked around the restaurant, “I’m just not staying.”

“Why not?” he demanded, hoping to buy himself a little more time so that he could think up a better approach, one that didn’t involve chaining her to the house.

“Because this job just didn’t work out for me,” she said with a shrug, not quite meeting his eyes, he noticed.

“This job or because of what happened last night?” he demanded, having a pretty good idea that if he hadn’t f**ked up yesterday and ditched her that she would still be willing to stay and drive him out of his f**king mind.

“What happened last night?” the woman sitting behind him asked, startling him and bringing his attention to the fact that the forty-something year old woman sitting directly behind him was turned around in her seat and shamelessly eavesdropping on their entire conversation.

Before he could tell her to mind her own f**king business, Cloe beat him to it. “I forgot the safe word last night and was brutally punished for it,” she said dryly, staring at the nosy woman until she got the hint and turned back around in her seat.

“It has nothing to do with last night,” she said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as she looked away.

“You’re lying,” he said, because he knew without a doubt that she loved her job. She loved working with his sister and she sure as hell loved driving him crazy.

“So what if I am?” she asked, sitting back when a large plate of food was placed in front of her.

“Is there anything else that I can get for you?” the waitress asked as a large plate of food was placed in front of him.

He was just about to tell her that they were fine when he looked up and realized that they had a different waitress. Frowning, he looked past their new waitress to find their old waitress standing just outside the kitchen doors with a small brown paper bag stuck to her face and two women trying to get her to calm down before she passed out.