Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gage
Jesus.
I stare at the doorway of Tin Anchor and the woman who just walked in.
Katie is drenched to the bone. Her blonde hair is a wild wet tangle around her face from the wind and rain. The red skirt she’s wearing hugs her every curve and the white blouse clinging to her is see-through, revealing a white lace bra underneath.
She’s never been more beautiful than she is at this moment.
Her gaze scans the room until it lands on my face.
Anger pouts her pink lips the way it always has.
She marches toward me, the bouquet of roses I ordered for her, clutched in her fist.
She slams the flowers onto to the top of the bar, scattering wet petals everywhere. Only a few heads turn in our direction. The baseball game on the wide screen TV is the main attraction tonight.
Katie’s hazel eyes reach mine in a heated gaze. “What the hell is wrong with you, Gage?”
Years ago, I would have stripped her bare and fucked the rage right out of her.
Katie never went to bed angry. I was between her legs before any of our arguments reached their stride. I’d eat her to orgasm and then she’d ride me, taking whatever she needed from my cock; from me.
Frustration was never the norm for her. It always took something big to push her over the edge from calm and peaceful to fury.
Dammit, I wish I could touch her now, taste her, fuck her.
“I see you got the flowers, Katie.”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t want flowers from you.”
I glance down at the tattered remains of the roses. “Duly noted.”
“I don’t need flowers from you.”
I know. She needs the impossible. She needs me to turn back time to a day five years ago when I ripped her heart from her chest and tore it into a million pieces.
“Tell me what you do need,” I tempt fate by putting that out there.
Her top teeth latch onto her bottom lip as she thinks it through.
She’s inside my bar. I want her to stay. I don’t want her to walk out of here yet.
I step in to give her more time and to keep her in place. “I’ll make you a whiskey sour.”
“No,” her reply is instant. “I don’t drink those anymore.”
The declaration spears my heart. It’s just a drink, but it was our drink. I was the person who introduced her to hard liquor. I poured her a shot of straight whiskey the night we moved in together.
Her throat burned, a tear welled in her eye, and when I leaned forward to brush my lips over hers, I could taste the whiskey on her mouth.
Weeks later, I made myself a whiskey sour, and she sipped it too, stealing kisses from me between swallows.
“What do you drink?” I ask even though I can guess.
When you spend enough time behind a bar, you get a sense for what people crave when they walk in.
The woman across from me now is elegant and sophisticated. She carries herself with an unspoken grace that wasn’t there when she was twenty-two-years-old.
A martini. She drinks martinis.
“When I do drink it’s usually a dirty martini.” Her eyes scan the withering rose petals covering the top of the bar. “I’m leaving.”
“Do you have plans?” I have no right to ask her that, but I do.
The thought of her rushing off to see the suit from last night knots my gut. It’s not my business, but I haven’t been able to shake the image of her holding his hand as they walked down the sidewalk.
“I’m not answering that.” She says harshly, her arms crossing her chest.
“Are you seeing him again?” I push for more because I want her to tell me that he’s nobody.
Her bare ring finger gives me hope, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not in love with the guy.
“Who?” she spits the word at me.
“The guy you met up with last night.”
Her eyes narrow. “Preston?”
I don’t want to know his goddamn name. That only adds to the hell I’ve put myself in.
“Preston,” I repeat it back in a low voice. “Is Preston your boyfriend?”
Her fingers skim over the top button on her blouse. “He’s a man I’ve been seeing.”
The heavens must be smiling down on me tonight. He’s not her boyfriend. She would have confirmed that. It’s a casual thing.
I take that as a sign and jump in with both feet. “I want to talk, Katie. I want to explain what happened five years ago.”
Her gaze darts to the shelves on the wall behind me. I watch her face intently as she scans each of them. I see the moment when realization hits her.
Memories of the life we shared back in California are on one of those shelves. I’ve never let them go. I’ve carried them with me everywhere.