Chapter Six
The Seaglass Saloon was buzzing with Halloween chaos, packed shoulder to shoulder with costumed customers laughing, drinking, and weaving through fake cobwebs dangling from the ceiling.
Willa worked the bar, moving fast, pouring pints and sliding them across the polished wood while dodging foam-tipped devil horns and a man in a full astronaut suit who kept forgetting how wide his helmet was.
Her tail snagged on the barstool again, dragging behind her with every turn. The cranky cat costume had seemed like a harmless, funny choice earlier. Black hoodie with pinned-on ears, whiskers drawn across her cheeks, and a stuffed tail that now seemed determined to trip her at every step.
Gus sat at the bar, perched on his usual stool, telling anyone who would listen about the first time he met his soulmate fifty-eight years ago.
“She spilled a whole pitcher of beer on me,” Gus said, grinning like it had happened yesterday. “I looked like a drowned raccoon, but I tell you, the second I saw her, I knew. My pants were soaked, but my heart was all in.”
Willa gave him a half-smile as she topped off another pint. “That’s a beautiful story, Gus.”
He patted the bar. “My Olive hated beer, by the way. But she said she had a hankering for one that night and she drank a Mooncatcher without even knowing the legend.”
She nodded. Willa had heard this story too many times to count, but her attention drifted toward the corner booth where Cal sat with Fia and Mason.
Fia was in another over-the-top costume, this time as a witch with glittery green boots, and Mason was dressed like a clumsy pirate with an eyepatch that kept slipping.
Cal wasn’t in costume, but the jeans, boots, and Stetson passed well enough. More than well enough. The man and his jeans.
Willa’s stomach tightened when she looked at him.
They hadn’t talked since that night in her apartment. Since the toe rescue. Since the kiss that rattled her right to her bones.
She had thrown herself into work. Every shift. Every back-to-back booking. When she wasn’t working, she stayed holed up in her room, keeping busy with anything that didn’t involve thinking about him.
It wasn’t working.
Because he was still here, still impossible to ignore, sitting in her bar like he belonged. And she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep pretending that kiss didn’t still burn under her skin.
As Willa slid another pint across the bar, the door opened and a couple walked in, turning heads as they made their way through the crowd.
They were dressed in elaborate costumes.
The man wore a sharp black suit with a deep red cape, his mask gold and dramatic.
The woman’s dress was fitted, dark red with intricate beading, and her matching mask glittered under the saloon lights.
They didn’t take off their masks.
The pair moved easily through the bar, like they belonged here, but something about them snagged Willa’s attention. She wondered if they were the couple from the window. The ones Cal and she had watched. The ones who had left her skin buzzing with more questions than answers.
She tracked them as they found a table near the back, settling in like they had no plans to reveal their faces anytime soon.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Fia waving her over. Fia had her phone in hand and was clearly trying to get her attention.
Willa shook her head and waved her off. She had work to do. She wasn’t in the mood for whatever Fia had found now, especially since Cal was sitting right across from her sister.
Delia appeared beside her, taking the pint from her hand and placing it in front of a customer without missing a beat. “Go,” Delia said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Fia has something to show you, and you’ve been on your feet all night. Take a break. Sit with your sister.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re working yourself into the ground. Go.” And that time, it was an order.
Willa let out a quiet sigh and set her towel down. “Okay. Just for a minute.”
Delia’s smile softened, but her eyes still held that knowing look that made Willa suspicious. Her mom had throttled back on the soulmate push to get her to hook up with Cal, but with Delia, there could always be something up her sleeve.
Willa made her way toward Fia’s booth, careful not to trip over her tail, her heart already picking up speed. She wasn’t sure if it was because of Fia’s excitement or the fact that Cal’s eyes had just found her across the room.
Fia grinned as Willa reached the booth and tugged her down onto the seat right next to Cal. He smelled like leather and something warm, something that pulled at her senses in the worst way.
“Okay, so I went down a rabbit hole,” Fia said, holding up her phone like she had struck gold. “Look what I found.”
On the screen was a photo of Cal in his bull riding days.
He was wearing a blue plaid shirt, a protective vest, and a black cowboy hat, one hand raised in the air as he clung to the back of a bull mid-buck.
His grin was cocky, wild, like he knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t care how dangerous it was.
Fia swiped to another photo where Cal was strutting across the arena with his hat tipped back, jeans fitting him far too well, his gloves hanging from one belt loop like it was all just a normal Tuesday.
“Damn,” Fia said, waving the phone between them. “You’re a hot cowboy, but you were just as hot a bull rider.”
Willa’s mouth went dry. She told herself to look away, but her eyes kept pulling back to the photos. Cal’s arm brushed against hers, a small, steady heat she couldn’t shake.
He kept sliding glances at her. She kept sliding glances at him.
Fia swiped to another photo and laughed. “Okay, this one’s my favorite.”
Willa leaned in. It was a perfectly timed shot of Cal getting slammed onto the back of the bull, his legs awkward, his hat flying off, and his expression frozen somewhere between surprise and regret.
Fia tapped the screen. “How do you protect your junk in moments like this? I mean seriously. Does it just… get flattened?”
Cal chuckled, low and easy. “You wear tight-fitting underwear so everything gets held in place. And you learn how to shift your weight, brace right. Most of the time, that works but not always.”
Fia’s grin stretched wider. “So… is your junk busted?”
Cal’s eyes flicked to Willa’s, and his mouth curved into that slow grin that drove her crazy. “No,” he said, his voice dropping just a notch. “My junk works just fine.”
Willa’s stomach twisted, heat sliding through her like she had no defense against it.
“Good to know,” Fia said with a laugh, oblivious, or rather pretending to be, to the tension building between them.
Cal’s gaze lingered on Willa for a heartbeat longer before he turned back to Fia’s phone. Willa tried to focus on the conversation, but all she could think about was the weight of his arm brushing hers and the way his words kept looping in her head.
His junk works just fine.
Yeah. That officially stuck.
Fia kept swiping through the pictures, narrating like she was giving a guided tour of Cal’s greatest hits.
She showed one where he was tipping his hat to a roaring crowd, another where he was half airborne as the bull kicked beneath him, and one where he looked straight at the camera, dirt streaked across his jaw, the kind of picture that could stop a woman in her tracks.
She barely heard Fia’s commentary. Cal’s arm brushed against hers again, a small thing, but it lit up every inch of her skin like he had dragged fire across it.
“Oh my God, I think that’s them,” Fia blurted, and Willa clearly heard that.
Willa looked up to see what had caught her sister’s attention, and it was the masked couple who’d come in earlier. But they were no longer masked. They were sipping the cocktails they’d been served, their faces now fully visible.
“That’s them,” Fia whispered, eyes wide. “That’s Sawyer and Lark.”
Willa blinked. “Who?”
Fia pulled out her phone, flipping it around to show Willa the screen. “They’re famous vloggers. Chasing Fire. They travel the world teaching couples how to keep the romance alive. Role-playing, adventure dates, mystery weekends… they’ve got millions of followers. They’re huge.”
Willa’s gaze drifted back to the couple, watching them laugh and clink their glasses like they didn’t have a care in the world. Her stomach twisted, a little unsettled now.
Was it them?
Was this the couple Cal and she had seen in the window?
She couldn’t be sure. The masks, the distance, the storm that night—it would have been easy to misread what she saw.
But still.
Willa couldn’t shake the thought. Couldn’t help but wonder if she and Cal had been watching Chasing Fire in action. And more than that, she wondered why the idea of Cal seeing anyone else like that suddenly made her skin burn a little hotter than it should.
Before Willa could keep the sensations at bay, flashes of their kiss slammed into her. The heat, the weight of his hands, the feel of his mouth on hers. She could still taste it. She could still feel the rush of wanting more.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, slow and deliberate, like he was remembering it too.
He leaned in a little. “Can I have a word with you?”
Her pulse skipped. She knew what the smart answer was. She should tell him no, stay right where she was, right in the middle of all these people.
But her body was already moving, her heart already leaning toward him.
She nodded.
Cal stood and Willa followed, weaving through the crowd until they slipped into the snug, a small side room just off the bar that gave people a little privacy when they wanted it.
The door clicked shut behind them, but the hum of the bar still carried through.
Laughter, the clink of glasses, the jukebox spinning some old country song that wrapped around the edges of the moment.
Cal didn’t waste any time.
The second the door closed, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, deep and certain, like he’d been thinking about it as much as she had.
His hands found her waist, steady and strong, and she melted into him, her fingers curling into his shirt.
The kiss stole her breath, the heat of it wiping out every reason she had to keep her distance.
Noise from the saloon buzzed faintly in the background, but all Willa could hear was the wild pounding of her own heartbeat and the soft hitch of Cal’s breath as he dragged her closer.
The kiss deepened, pulling her under like a riptide she couldn’t fight. Cal’s hand slid between them, his palm pressing over her breast, his thumb grazing the edge of her bra.
Willa burned for him. Every inch of her was alive, leaning into him, chasing the rush that had been haunting her since the night of that first almost-kiss.
His touch sent shivers racing through her, and she arched toward him, her breath catching as the heat between them spiked higher.
Then the jukebox switched songs.
Patsy Cline.
Willa’s heartbeat stuttered.
She heard Gus in her head, his gravelly voice telling stories about that song. He always swore that when Patsy’s voice cut through the noise like that, it meant someone in the room was about to get their heart broken.
The music drifted out clear and slow. Then something else hit her. The bar had gone quiet. Not soft, not a lull. Silent.
Willa tore her mouth from Cal’s, her breath coming hard as she pulled back enough to feel the eerie stillness pressing in from the other side of the door.
Something was wrong.
She swallowed, trying to steady herself, smoothing her hoodie and brushing her hands over the sides of her joggers as she worked to pull herself back together.
Cal’s breathing was still rough, but his eyes sharpened, picking up the same shift in the air that she did.
Without a word, Willa opened the door and stepped into the saloon, her cat’s tail bopping into the wall and just about everything else it came in contact with. Including, she was pretty sure, Cal’s junk.
On a grunt, Cal followed right behind her.
The saloon stretched out in front of her, eerily quiet. Every head had turned toward the entrance, the crowd frozen like someone had hit pause.
And then Willa saw her.
The woman in the body-hugging costume.
A deep, dark green jumpsuit clung to her like it was painted on, glittering at the seams, the neckline plunging low and the fabric wrapping tight over her curves.
Her long, honey-blonde hair cascaded in perfect waves, framing her face like she had just walked off a magazine cover.
A green velvet choker hugged her neck, and a slim black mask sat perfectly over her eyes.
The woman turned.
Willa’s stomach dropped.
Eden.
Her pulse slammed into her throat as Eden’s gaze slid past the crowd and landed straight on Cal.
A slow, familiar smile bloomed across Eden’s face. “Cal.”
Without hesitation, Eden rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him as if he had always belonged to her.
Which in a way, he had.
Willa’s chest tightened, her breath locking in place, her heart tripping over itself as the jukebox played on. Patsy’s voice curled through the quiet, the words sinking sharp and deep.
She already knew whose heart was about to break.