The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [106]
But he wasn’t going to do that. Oh, no. Because first, she had to understand exactly what was going on. She had to understand that he made the rules.
Beside him Ted was remarkably steady on his feet, almost excited. Faint strains of music from the jukebox came from inside, the neon rope that spelled out the name of the bar painting their faces with a reddish glow.
Abee nodded at Ted before raising his leg to kick open the door.
Dawson slowed the car to a crawl, every nerve ending on high alert. In the distance, he could just make out the lights of Oriental. He was overcome by a sudden sense of deja vu, as if he already knew what was coming but was powerless to stop it, even if he wanted to.
Dawson leaned over the wheel. If he squinted, he could make out the convenience store, the one he’d passed on his morning jog. The spire of the First Baptist Church, illuminated by floodlights, seemed to hover above the business district. The halogen streetlights cast an eerie glow on the macadam, highlighting the route that led to Tuck’s, taunting him with the possibility that he might never make it there. The stars he’d seen before had vanished, the sky above the town was almost unnaturally black. Up ahead on the right squatted the low-slung building that had replaced the original copse of trees, almost exactly central to the curve in the highway at the edge of town.
Dawson scanned the landscape closely, waiting for… something. Almost immediately, he was rewarded by a flash of movement beyond the driver’s side window.
He was there, standing just outside the edges of the headlights’ beams, in the meadow that bordered the highway. The dark-haired man.
The ghost.
It happened so fast, Alan couldn’t even comprehend it.
There he was, chatting up Candy—or trying to, anyway—as she was getting ready to drop off another beer, when all of a sudden the front door of the bar was shoved open with such force that the upper half was torn from its hinge.
Before Alan had time to flinch, Candy had already begun to react. Recognition flashed across her face, the beer bottle halting in mid-delivery. Candy mouthed the words Oh, shit before she suddenly let go of the bottle.
By the time the bottle burst into splinters on the concrete floor, Candy had already turned and was sprinting away from him, a scream rising in her throat.
Behind him, a roar echoed off the wall.
“WHO IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!”
Alan shrank into himself as Candy raced for the far end of the bar, toward the manager’s office. Alan had been coming to the Tidewater long enough to know that the manager’s office had a reinforced steel door with dead bolts, because that was where the safe was kept.
Cringing, Alan watched Abee zero in on her as he rushed past him, chasing Candy’s blond ponytail to the end of the bar. Abee, too, knew where she was going.
“OH, NO, YOU DON’T, YOU BITCH!”
Candy threw a terrified look over her shoulder before grabbing the doorjamb of the office. With a cry, she catapulted herself through the opening.
She swung the door closed just as Abee planted a hand and lunged over the bar. Empty bottles and glasses went flying. The register crashed to the floor, but he got his legs out in front of him.
Almost.
He hit the floor, stumbling, knocking liquor bottles off the shelf below the mirror as though they were bowling pins.
They barely slowed him down. In a flash, he was solidly on his feet and at the manager’s door. Alan saw everything, each scene unfolding individually with surreal, violent precision. But when his thoughts caught up with what was actually happening, panic flooded every inch of his body.
This isn’t a movie.
Abee began to pound on the door, hurling