Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
OLIVIA
“W hat’s your favorite position?”
Trent’s face, although objectively beautiful, is hazy with the buzz he already had when we showed up. Ivan snickers from the other side of the booth we just moved to, hiding his mouth behind both hands as he looks down at his lap.
“What?” I ask, though I heard him loud and clear. My gaze slides across to Charlotte, and I see hesitation in her pinched brows that I’m sure matches my own.
“What’s your favorite position?” Trent repeats, and Charlotte sighs. The apology in her eyes shines beneath the stained-glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling, one of several odd details I’ve spotted since we got here.
It’s my first time at Spurs, a brand-new bar in Williamson County. Despite its name and the country music blaring, there isn’t much else that makes it feel like a country bar. It actually still looks a lot like the restaurant it was before.
Italian, if I had to guess.
I give Char a soft smile—there’s no reason for her to be sorry. Sure, she may have dragged me out here for this awkward (and blind, on my part) double date, but she’s not the one asking rude questions before we’ve even ordered our food.
I turn back to Trent, finding him eyeing me with curiosity. The heat from his body so close to mine in this shared booth puts me on edge—only twelve minutes in and I already know I never want to see him again. “Who let you out of your cage tonight?” I quip.
The insult doesn’t land as intended. Instead, Trent belts out a high-pitched laugh, nodding his approval. “Sassy.” He scratches at his beard and looks down at his phone as he fires off a quick text to a contact I can’t help but notice is saved as Houston Big Tits . “I like it.”
I roll my eyes.
I suppose there are worse situations to be in. I could be stranded in the rain with a flat tire and no one around for miles to help me. Or I could contract a violent flu that wipes me out for days. Still . . . when I agreed to drive the half hour to get here, I didn’t anticipate having to deal with such an asshole.
“I’m going to get some drinks,” Ivan says. “Do you guys want anything?” He looks nervous, and I don’t blame him. He and Charlotte only started dating a few weeks ago, and she trusted him to bring a friend tonight that I might like. Unfortunately, I think the one he chose is going to lose him a lot of points.
I look back to my best friend and see the question in her eyes. Do you want to stay? they seem to ask. She met Ivan last month at a Noah Kahan concert in Dallas. Despite not being able to find anyone to go with her (I couldn’t get away from the café that weekend), she’d decided to go it alone and ended up standing near Ivan and his group of friends in the amphitheater’s crowded lawn section. At some point, Ivan realized the girl beside him was there by herself, so he ushered her into his huddle of people.
Charlotte said it was fate, and she’d been giddy the next day when she recounted the way he couldn’t keep his eyes off her when he thought she wasn’t looking. How, in the few quiet seconds between “Dial Drunk” and “Your Needs, My Needs,” she’d brazenly fisted the front of his shirt and kissed him.
I give her a discreet nod—I’m not going to let some stupid guy in a Demon Slayer T-shirt get in the way of my chance to get to know her new man better. She likes him—like, really likes him, I can tell—and if anyone deserves the heart-swooping roller coaster drop of a new fling, it’s Charlotte.
It’s just clearly not my turn to have that sort of thing. Not yet, anyway.
Trent nudges my knee with his under the table, and I have to fight back a grimace at the contact. “Let’s get these ladies some shots. What do you like, babe? Tequila?”
I swallow a sigh, shaking my head politely. “No thanks. I’m driving tonight.”
Ivan eyes me warily. His regret is evident, which makes me wonder if it’s possible that Trent isn’t normally like this. Maybe he’s having a bad day, letting loose a little too much. Maybe he’s normally a stand-up guy who wouldn’t treat a girl he just met so . . . offensively. I find it hard to believe, but still . . . it’s possible? I give Ivan a small smile that I hope conveys my assured forgiveness and add, “I’ll take a ginger ale, please.”
He nods, turning to Charlotte who asks for her standard vodka cranberry and treats him with a quick kiss on the cheek before he scoots out of the booth. “So.” Charlotte angles toward Trent, propping her chin in the palm of her hand. I know that look , I think. She’s about to get a few licks in. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
Trent’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times before he settles on, “What do you mean?”
“Asking a girl what position she likes literally minutes into meeting her? What kind of animal are you, Trent?”
His brow furrows. “I . . . don’t understand.”
Charlotte grins. “I imagine you wouldn’t, honestly. But here’s the thing”—she leans in real close—“Olivia is my best friend. She’s actually one of the best people I know. But she’s way too tolerant of asshole behavior. I , however, am not. I think it’s clear you’re not going to get anywhere near Liv after this, so let’s make a deal, yeah?”
She waits patiently for Trent to respond. To his credit, he gives her a wide-eyed nod.
“Cut the shit. In fact, maybe just don’t speak for the rest of the night. I have a feeling we won’t be here long anyway.” She pushes her hair behind her shoulder. “Can you do that for me, Trent? Can you be quiet?”
I watch as Trent registers he’s being bested, the divot down the center of his forehead splitting his face in two with an effect that I might find comical if not for the anxiety this entire confrontation is giving me. As someone who’s worked in hospitality since the ripe age of twelve—when I was finally strong enough to hold a tray full of plates and drinks—my go-to response to conflict has always been de-escalation.
“What the fuck?” he says, just as Ivan returns with a handful of drinks. “Why are you such a bitch?”
“Hey!” Ivan snaps. “Don’t call her a bitch. What the fuck is wrong with you, Trent?” He sets the drinks down in a disorganized jumble that sends liquid spilling over onto the table, but he remains standing at the end of the booth, towering over us all. There’s an icy heat in his eyes I would never have guessed he could conjure, and my anxiety spikes as I realize I’m trapped between him and the target of his hostility.
Damn . He must really like Charlotte.
Maybe I could just slip down to the floor and crawl out around Ivan’s legs . . .
I’m just about to try my luck when the screeching sound of metal dragging on hardwood precedes a shuffle from somewhere to my left. No one else seems to notice, but something pulls me to lean back so I can get a better view of the bar behind Ivan—and that’s when I see him.
Rhett Bennett.
My stomach lurches at the sight of him. He’s standing next to a high-top table, and he’s looking right at us. Another man in a tan cowboy hat sits at his side, staring up at Rhett with surprise splashed across his dark features.
My gaze jumps back to Rhett, and I find him watching me with so much blatant interest that it causes the hairs on the back of my neck to rise with a shiver. Rhett Bennett, a man of mystery with a reputation in Saddlebrook Falls for trouble, is looking at me like a coyote who just found a plump rabbit.
I nearly shiver again at the implication of what it would mean to be his rabbit.
But he also looks . . . angry.
“I’m sorry, man,” Trent says next to me, pulling my focus back to the booth. “But she’s acting really rude, calling me an animal and shit.”
“That’s because you fucking are, asshole!” Ivan’s voice is laced with frustration. “You’ve been a jackass from the moment we got here. You knew this night was important to me. What’s gotten into you?”
I catch Charlotte’s eyes across the table, widening my own to convey that we need to talk. “I think I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I sputter out.
She tilts her head as she tries to translate my face. “I’ll . . . go with you!”
Trent huffs and reaches for his drink, distracting himself with his phone. As if ignoring Ivan’s glare might somehow get him out of trouble. “What is it with chicks and the bathroom?”
Ivan sighs, moving out of the way so I can stand. “Honestly, dude? Hundred bucks says they’re going to talk shit about you.”
Charlotte smacks his arm as she slides out the other side of the booth. “Ivan!”
“What! You know it’s true.”
“I’ll give you that. Also, thanks for defending me.” She leans in and plants a smacking kiss on his cheek, then turns back to me. “Let’s go.”
I follow her through the crowded bar and down a dark corridor with a RESTROOMS sign hanging above it. There’s a line for the bathroom, but I don’t even care at this point. I slump against the wall, letting it cool my skin.
“I’m so sorry about Trent,” she’s quick to say. “I had no idea Ivan would be friends with someone like that. Everyone he was with at the concert was way cooler.”
I shrug. “Not a big deal, and not your fault. I’m a big girl,” I tell her, brushing it off. “But, um . . . did you see who’s here?”
“No, who?”
“Rhett Bennett.”
Charlotte’s eyes grow wide. “No way.”
I nod. “Yeah. Sitting at a high-top across the dance floor. And he was looking right at us.”
“Hm,” she considers. “I mean, he probably recognizes us—I’m sure you’ve served him coffee after a bender or two.” She grins when I tsk at her—his reputation is no secret, but everyone knows it’s customary to feign ignorance, not speak of it aloud. “Maybe we should go talk to him.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Why not?”
“ Because . You know that family is dangerous. Especially Rhett. Didn’t he beat Scotty Pearce to a pulp for asking him for a cigarette?” Rhett and Scotty were a few years older than us and had graduated by the time we got to high school, but there were tons of stories about all of the Bennett brothers. The youngest, Wells, was in our grade—but he hardly talked to anyone. The whole family keeps to themselves . . . except for when they’re causing trouble, I guess.
Charlotte rolls her eyes. “I heard Scotty was talking shit about their dad and deserved it.”
I blink at her. “Who could you have possibly heard that from?”
“Micah’s girlfriend’s older sister was in their grade and at that party—she saw it happen. She said the rumors about Rhett punching him over a cigarette weren’t true, and that Scotty was practically egging him on and looking to start shit.” Micah is Charlotte’s older brother, and he’s been dating Eileen, his girlfriend, since they were in middle school. I forgot Eileen had an older sister. “You know how things get twisted over time,” Charlotte continues. “I also heard the gazebo fire might not have been him.”
“Wow, really?” Of all the stories about the Bennetts, that fire is one of almost legend at this point. Apparently Rhett, who was drunk and angry about a girl standing him up, set the wooden gazebo in the town square on fire. The whole thing collapsed before they could douse the flames, and it took months to replace it. For a long time, you could still see the charred remains of the surrounding grass, but it’s since grown back.
“Yeah,” Charlotte says, taking a deep breath. But then, before she can dump every detail she has on standby about this, something flashes on her face—a look of pure shock.
“Evenin’,” a deep voice rumbles from behind me. The sound expands in my gut as I grow rigid, the wall behind me now my personal support beam.
Charlotte’s eyes flit back and forth cartoonishly from mine to a spot just over my shoulder, and it doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know who’s behind me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I internally count backward from five before pivoting around and opening them again.
Rhett Bennett is standing less than two feet away from me, gaze moving across my face as if he’s looking for something. A black hat with a simple band sits low across his brow, dark curls begging to be freed barely held in along his temples. His gray eyes—or maybe they’re a pale blue—spark even in the low light of the hallway. They’re near thunderous, and the corners of his mouth are tipped down into an obvious frown. I can’t help but feel like I’ve done something wrong.
“Um . . . hi,” I stammer. “We were just talking about you!” I say way too loudly. I regret the words before they’ve left my mouth.
His frown deepens, and my stomach sinks with it. “I’m sure,” he says, so low it’s a wonder I can even hear him. He’s got that familiar hotheaded anger on full display, and I’ve never been more uncomfortable in my life to be on the receiving end of it.
A group of girls burst out of the bathroom like fireworks, laughing at something I’m sure is far less stressful than the awkwardness I’m stuck in, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “It looked like those guys might’ve been bothering you.”
It’s not a question, and my mind blanks as I attempt to draw out a response from . . . somewhere . Surely there’s a single neuron still firing. Thankfully, Charlotte must sense my frozen state. “Oh, that’s just my boyfriend and a friend of his,” she says, stepping up beside me with a confidence she wears like a suit of armor.
Rhett’s gaze moves to her, and the relief I feel is nearly tangible. “Your boyfriend was shouting.”
Charlotte waves a hand like it’s nothing. “Yeah, his friend called me a bitch. Honestly, his friend sucks. Liv and I just met him tonight . . . but I doubt we’ll see him again.” She laughs, and I can hear how forced it is.
Rhett’s focus moves back to me, and . . . yep , I feel the damning effects of it all over again. “You good?”
Something sparks to life inside of my chest, like the click of a gas burner. I don’t understand his question. “Am I good?” I parrot. But he doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at me with that stoic frown. I flip the question around in my mind before finally finding my voice again. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
He nods once, the dip of his chin infinitesimal, before stepping around us. Charlotte and I turn in sync to watch him disappear into the men’s bathroom.
“What the heck was that?” Charlotte whispers beside me.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the closed door, knowing Rhett’s in there. “I have no idea.”
Charlotte turns to look at me. “I think he likes you.”
I almost choke on my own saliva. “I’m sorry,” I sputter, finally looking at her. “That’s . . . that’s impossible. We don’t even know each other.”
Her brow raises. “Why else is he so concerned about you?”
I scoff. “He’s not concerned about me . He’s . . . he’s probably just looking for a reason to punch someone.”
She tilts her head, considering. “Hm.”
“Also,” I rush out, attempting to change the subject as we move forward in line. “Don’t think I missed you calling Ivan your boyfriend.”
She rolls her eyes. “Please don’t tell him I said that. It just felt easier to explain.”
“Mhm.” My smile is saccharine. “Whatever you say.”