Chapter 2
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— Handful —
It had been three days since I’d gotten kicked out of The Velvet Hour, and I’d spent approximately seventy percent of that time replaying our conversation in my head.
The other thirty percent was dedicated to eating, showing up to work, and trying to figure out why a woman who’d kicked me out of her bar was living rent-free in my head.
Austen.
Even her name was sharp. Like the rest of her.
I’d never met anyone like her. Club girls laughed at my jokes. Women at bars tolerated my comments because they knew what they were signing up for. But Austen? Austen had looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe — and then she’d kicked me out of her bar.
It was, pathetically, the hottest thing anyone had ever done to me.
“Handful. Hey. Earth to Handful.”
I blinked, forcing myself back to the present. Colt was staring at me from across the garage, a wrench dangling from one hand.
“What?”
“I asked you three times if you’re done with that carburetor.”
I looked down. The carburetor was still sitting on my workbench, completely untouched. I’d been looking at it for at least ten minutes without doing a damn thing. “Yeah, just… thinking.”
Colt’s eyebrows rose. “Thinking. You. That’s new.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m serious. You’ve been weird for days.” He set down his wrench and crossed his arms. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
I sighed. There was no point lying to Colt. The VP’s bullshit radar was finely tuned thanks to the antics of his nine-year-old hellions.
“I met someone.”
Colt’s expression didn’t change. “A someone or a someone?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
“Okay.” He grabbed a stool and sat down, settling in like this was going to take a while. “Tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I met this woman at that cocktail bar downtown — The Velvet Hour. She’s the bartender. We talked, I was my usual charming self, and she kicked me out.”
“For?”
“Rating her waitresses.”
Colt winced. “Fuck, Handful.”
“I know, I know. It was stupid. The point is, she called my behavior out and then showed me the door.” I ran a hand through my hair. “And I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Because she kicked you out?”
“Because she wasn’t impressed by the cut.” I looked at him. “Looked at me like I was just another asshole in a bar. Told me to apologize or leave. And when I apologized, she wasn’t impressed. She just expected it.”
Colt was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed, which surprised me. “What’s so funny?”
“You. This is hilarious.” He shook his head. “One woman says no and you fall apart.”
“I haven’t fallen apart. I’m… intrigued.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s really not.” Except Colt wasn’t wrong and I knew it. I’d been running the same conversation in my head for three days — her voice, the look on her face, the way she’d handed me the door like it was nothing. That wasn’t intrigue. That was something I didn’t have a clean word for.
The garage door opened before I could argue further, and Holden walked in. He took one look at us — Colt grinning, me scowling — and sighed. “What did you do now, Handful?”
“He met a girl,” Colt responded before I had even opened my mouth.
“A woman,” I corrected automatically. I’d done it without thinking.
Her voice in my head, sharp and certain: “My name is Austen. Not ‘this one.’” If she’d heard Colt call her a girl.
Hell, if I had. I could picture the exact look — the one that said she’d already filed you under idiot and was just waiting for you to prove her right.
No. Austen was all woman.
“He met a woman,” Colt amended, his grin widening. “She kicked him out of her bar.”
Holden’s eyebrows rose. “For?”
“Being himself.”
“Ah.” Holden nodded like this explained everything. “So what’s the problem?”
“He can’t stop thinking about her,” Colt said.
“That’s not a problem. That’s called attraction.”
I didn’t have an argument for that. Which was the problem with talking to Holden — he had a habit of stripping things down to exactly what they were. Same with Colt. “It’s a problem when she thinks I’m an asshole.”
“Are you?”
I shrugged. “I was just acting like I always do.”
Holden and Colt exchanged a look. It was the same look Luca and Knox did — that weird silent twin shorthand. Holden and Colt weren’t twins. Weren’t even blood. But they’d spent enough years riding together that they’d built their own version of it somewhere along the way.
All the brothers had some of it. You couldn’t ride formation for a decade without learning to read each other off a head tilt or the way a guy braked into a turn. But Holden and Colt were on a different level. Whole conversations in a glance.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing.” Holden leaned against the nearest workbench and crossed his arms. “Are you serious about her? Or is this just because she turned you down?”
I opened my mouth to give him the easy answer — just having a bit of fun — and stopped. “It’s not the usual thing,” I said finally.
Holden looked at Colt. Colt looked back. Something passed between them again.
“Then go back,” Holden said. “Show her you’re not the asshole she thinks you are.”
“How?”
Holden fixed me with that steady stare of his — the one that had made him such a good road captain, the one that said I see through your bullshit. “Have you tried treating her like a person instead of a conquest?”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” he cut me off. “You’ve always done it. Women are either targets or obstacles to you. They’re never just people. This one sounds like she sees through that. So either prove her wrong, or admit she’s right and move on.”
The thing was, I couldn’t argue with it. I opened my mouth to, and nothing came out. Women are either targets or obstacles. I’d never heard it framed that way, but I ran through the last ten years in about three seconds and couldn’t find a single exception.
It was an uncomfortable thing to know about yourself.
I stared at him. Holden had always been the quiet one — the thoughtful one — but since he’d gotten together with Bea, he’d become annoyingly insightful. Therapist girlfriend rubbing off on him, no doubt. “When did you get so wise?” I asked.
“When I almost lost everything.” He held my gaze. “Don’t wait until then to figure your shit out.”
?
That night, I went back to The Velvet Hour. Alone this time. No brother to distract me, no excuse to hide behind. Just me and whatever the hell I was trying to prove.
The place was quieter on a Monday. I spotted Austen behind the bar immediately, her copper hair catching the light as she worked the shaker with practiced efficiency. She looked up as I approached, and her expression shifted from professional welcome to cool assessment.
“You came back.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.” She finished the drink and slid it to a waiting customer before turning to face me fully. “Most men who get kicked out don’t come back.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No. You’re something else.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Her insults were like oxygen to me. What the fuck was wrong with me? “Can I sit?”
She studied me for a long moment. “Bar only. And if you make a single comment about any of my staff—”
“I won’t.”
“—I’ll have security drag you out by your ears,” she finished, totally ignoring the fact that I’d interrupted her.
“Understood.”
I slid onto a stool and waited while she finished with another customer. When she turned back to me, her expression was still guarded, but there was curiosity there too. Buried deep, but present.
“What can I get you?”
“Old Fashioned. Same as last time.”
“My Old Fashioned made that much of an impression?”
“I remember everything about last time.”
Her brow pulled in slightly. I didn’t know what I’d said wrong. “I can’t tell if you’re going for romantic or creepy.”
“Let me know when you figure it out.”
She made the drink without speaking, her movements smooth and precise. I watched her hands and tried not to think about how they’d feel on my skin.
Down, boy. You’re here to prove you’re not an asshole, remember?
“Here.” She set the glass in front of me. “Sixteen dollars.”
I handed her a twenty. “Keep it.”
“You know tipping well doesn’t make up for being an asshole, right?”
Asshole. She’d said it out loud. So I’d been right about what she thought of me. “I know. But you’re good at your job. You deserve good tips.”
She blinked. That had caught her off guard.
“I’m not trying to buy you,” I added. “I just… I was an asshole last time. I wanted to apologize. For real.”
“You already apologized.”
“I apologized because you told me to. That’s different.” I wrapped my hands around the glass, watching the ice spin. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About how I talk to women. About them. And you’re right. I was, I am, I don’t know. It’s just how I’ve always been.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I know it’s not. That’s my point.” I looked up at her.
“I don’t have an excuse. I just… it’s what I do.
What I’ve always done. And I’m aware enough to know it’s shit, which makes it worse.
” Austen was quiet for a long moment. I couldn’t read her expression — she had an excellent poker face — but she hadn’t walked away. That was something.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want to see you again. Not as a customer. As…” I struggled for the right word. “As someone who wants to get to know you.” I’d said variations of that line before, smoother and faster. It had never felt this hard. And I’d never been nervous about the answer before.
“A date?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“That’s literally what it is.”
“Then yes. A date.” A date. I hadn’t gone on a date in years. I didn’t date — I charmed, I flirted, I fucked, I moved on. This was different and I had no idea what I was doing.
She laughed. “You’re unbelievable.”
I couldn’t tell if that was good. I was used to knowing where I stood with a woman. Austen was a blank wall to me. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a no.” She leaned on the bar, bringing her face closer to mine. “I don’t date customers. Especially customers who treat women like you do.”