Fall Hard by J. L. Merrow Read Free Book Online

from her flat—just one of the bland, identikit chains that had sprung up all over London like a pox.
    It was quiet inside, post rush hour but before the midmorning mothers’ meetings. There were no customers waiting to be served, and a whip-thin young woman was halfheartedly wiping tables by the window. The good-looking, twenty-something barista behind the counter smiled to see me, not fazed by my walking stick. I wasn’t sure if I smiled back or not. I was mesmerized by the cascade of skulls tattooed on his upper arm, left bare by the sleeveless T-shirt he wore under his green apron.
    “What can I get you?” he asked, his accent startlingly American.
    “I—filter coffee. Please.” I had to force myself to stop staring at his tattoos and look him in the eye.
    “Sure thing. You want tall, grande or supremo?” The skulls seemed to tumble with the movement of his arm, as if some spirit still animated them. There was a memory hovering at the back of my mind, frustratingly unreachable.
    “The…middle one. To drink in.”
    “Coming right up.” He turned away to pour the drink, and I rested my hip on a stool at the counter. There were other tattoos on his back; I could see teasing glimpses of them peeking out from under his shirt, not enough detail showing for me to recognise what they depicted. I stared, trying to work out the patterns, until he turned with a smile and my coffee.
    “Thank you.” I took a deep breath and kept my gaze on his face. I was probably coming off like some creepy, ink-obsessed stalker. There was no sense in trying to force memories out; I’d learned that by now. “You sound like you’re a long way from home,” I said with stunning originality. Was that how I’d chatted up Sven? Then again, we’d both been far from home at the time.
    The barista just laughed and leaned on the counter. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before either. Are you just passing through, or did you move into the area?”
    “I’m staying with my sister.” I shrugged. “But yeah, just passing through, really.”
    “Pity.” His lazy smile surprised me by tightening a knot of desire in my lower belly, for the first time since the accident. He had clear blue eyes and shaggy, overlong dark blond hair, with a fresh-faced, boyish smile.
    Not my type, I told myself. “How about you?”
    “Here for three years. This is just a part-time gig. I’m a student at LSE.”
    I stirred my coffee. “Oh? I’m an academic myself. What subject?”
    “International relations. So I figure I should get extra credit working in a place like this. How about you?”
    “Nothing so modern or practical. Icelandic literature.” I took a sip. It was disappointingly flat, but drinkable.
    “Postgrad, right? Or are you a mature student?”
    “Postgrad,” I confirmed. Postdoctoral, actually, but it seemed a bit pretentious to say so.
    We chatted some more, on and off, as I slowly drank my coffee. Customers came and went or hunched at tables, reading papers and staring out of the window.
    I asked about his tattoos.
    “Got these in San Francisco,” he said, turning to display the skulls on his shoulder. “Hell if I know what the guy was on, but he did some pretty cool stuff. Did my back too—all kinds of mythic shit.”
    He leaned over the counter to give me a better look, and I traced the lines of black and red with one finger. The memory was tantalisingly near. “Wish I could see them,” I said without thinking.
    His voice dropped, that lazy smile teasing once more at the corner of his mouth. “I could show you, if you like. I was just about to go for a break.”
    I froze. It shouldn’t have surprised me, after the way I’d acted, but somehow it did. Of course he’d think I was coming on to him. Maybe I had been, a little. For a moment, I could see it happening, could see myself following him into the staff toilets, pounding into him desperately, feverishly, as if it would somehow bring back my lost year.
    My