Chapter One
CHRISTINE
There is nothing more pathetic than a woman getting drunk at a bar alone.
That’s what my husband always says—ex-husband.
A hysterical cackle bursts from my lips as I finish off my glass of Riesling. How fitting that I ended up here on the day we finalized our divorce.
And I do mean day. That’s definitely sunlight coming through the windows.
I’ve passed this bar a hundred times on my way to the yoga studio down the street, but I’ve never been inside. Julian wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this, and since he owns half the other bars around here, we usually just ended up at one of those.
Not that we had many nights out together.
I hadn’t planned on coming here. After leaving the lawyer’s office, I was driving back to the hotel I’ve been living out of these past few months. But then I remembered I’d be there alone.
My son, Casey, has been staying there with me, but Liam, his half brother—who is closer to my age than his by a landslide—offered to take him for the weekend while we finalized the divorce. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until now. I just don’t have it in me to put on the everything’s fine face today.
Julian has barely been involved in his life as it is. But now? And like most seven-year-olds, Casey doesn’t know any better and worships his father.
I don’t know how much longer that’ll last.
Driving through town after that meeting was its own kind of torture—my ex-husband’s last name plastered on every other building.
Until I came across this shabby little place. And there was just something about it that drew me in today.
Maybe because it reminds me of another life.
The neon lights, the pool tables, the shitty cracked leather bar stools—it’s the kind of place I would’ve gone before him. Before this current version of me.
If past me could see me now… I let out another laugh. She’d fucking choke.
The bartender sets down a cup he’d been drying when he notices my empty glass and heads over. He barely looks old enough to be in here.
“Can I get you anything else?” he asks.
I tap the top of my wineglass.
He nods and pulls a new bottle out. His eyes flick from the glass to me as he pours. They’re nice eyes. Unique. Somehow green and brown at the same time. Is that considered hazel?
“Rough day?” he asks as he slides the glass back to me.
I snort out a humorless laugh as I take a sip. There’s no way this poor kid wants to hear my middle-aged sob story. Is thirty-one considered middle-aged? Everyone spent the last seven years preening over how young I was next to Julian, but now without him in comparison…
But then again, there’s no one else in the bar, so maybe he’s just bored.
I swirl the wine around in my glass. “I just became a multimillionaire. I should be thrilled.”
A million for each year we were married, per our prenup. Plus the twenty grand monthly child support. I could have asked for more—assets, properties—probably would’ve gotten it too. Maybe a younger version of me would have.
His eyebrows lift, and his eyes flick around the room. Slowly, a smirk tugs on the corner of his mouth, and he leans closer to me. “And you’re drinking here ?”
I snort, and that smirk turns into a grin.
He has nice teeth too. Is that a weird thing to notice? Very white, very straight.
“So are we talking a lottery win or a bank robbery?”
I sigh and rest my chin in my hand. “Divorce.”
He winces. “Sorry.”
I shrug. I’m sure a lot of people are thinking I got what’s coming to me, marrying for money like that.
That’s a real easy thing to say if you’ve never had to go without it.
“How long were you together?”
I blink, surprised he’s still standing here. Most would run before having to hear any more.
“Seven years.” I roll my eyes. “Which I’m pretty sure is the average for marriages that end in divorce. Even statistically I’m a cliché.”
He shakes his head with a smile. “You seem about as far from a cliché as they come.”
I cock my head to the side, not sure if he’s just trying to be nice or he really doesn’t know who I am. He carded me when I first sat down—something that definitely fluffed my poor beaten-down ego—but maybe he hadn’t paid attention to the last name on there. Seems like everyone knows everyone around here—and everyone’s business.
But maybe that’s just the circle I run in.
Ran in.
“That’s a big assumption for a stranger I’ve exchanged half a dozen sentences with.”
“Fletcher.” He extends a hand over the bar for me to shake, and he clasps my hand firmly, not the wimpy way some men do when they shake hands with a woman. “Now we’re not strangers. Well…” He raises his eyebrows as he waits for me to fill the silence.
“Christine.”
His smile returns. “I’m also good at reading people. I’ve seen plenty of clichés walk through that door. Don’t think you’re one of them, Chris.”
Now it’s my turn for my eyebrows to shoot up. Is this twentysomething bartender flirting with me?
Before I can respond, he ducks beneath the bar again and returns with a tall cup. He meets my eyes as he grabs the soda gun and fills the cup with water.
“Passive aggressive,” I mutter, but pull it toward me anyway, then frown as the light catches my ring.
The ring, for some reason, I’m still wearing.
“How many drinks could I buy with this?” I ask, slipping it from my finger.
He lets out a low whistle. “Think you could buy the bar.”
I glance around the musty, dark space, and my upper lip curls.
Fletcher laughs, the sound deep and rich, an almost musical quality to it.
I press the ring to the bar, my finger in the middle, and spin it around and around.
It’s giant and expensive and hideous. I’ve always thought so.
It’s silver, for one, which I never wear. The emerald cut does not complement my fingers at all, and the band is thick and gaudy with all of the extra stones crammed into it.
A ring someone who didn’t know me at all would buy.
But I didn’t care. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time. Because I’d done it. I’d found a man who could take care of me for the rest of my life. I finally would never have to worry again, and I’d done it all before the deadline my mother and I set when I was five.
I can’t remember the first time she brought it up, me needing to marry for money. It must have been around there.
Your beauty is your best asset, Christine. Use it while you can, because it won’t last.
The only thing she talked about more was her regret not doing the same thing for herself.
I could have had everything , she’d say. Don’t you dare repeat my mistakes.
Her mistakes being…me, mainly. Having me at seventeen, marrying my dad. Him leaving less than a year later, never to be heard from again. And the two of us struggling day in and day out on food stamps, other people’s couches, and eventually another man’s paycheck until I finally packed my bags at sixteen and never looked back.
“I think there are way more fun things you could do with that money though,” Fletcher says lightly, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I sip my wine. “Oh, really? What would you do with it?”
He hums thoughtfully. “An African safari. Swim with dolphins. Super Bowl tickets. Ooo, rent out an entire cruise ship.”
“What would you possibly need an entire cruise ship for?”
He shrugs. “Bring people you like with you. All you can eat and drink. You’d never have to wait in line. Don’t have to worry about someone peeing in the pool.”
“Is that something you worry about often?”
He frowns and tilts his head back in forth in a more than you’d think gesture.
I chuckle and shake my head. “I will take those suggestions under advisement. Thank you.”
He salutes me with two fingers and heads back to where he was cleaning the glasses. “I’ll be here all night.”