Chapter 14 Ten Shots
Three days. Three different coffee shops. The same draft agreement.
On day one, we sat for two hours going over the asset transfer mechanism and I thought: thorough.
On day two, we covered the same ground with slightly different phrasing and I thought: meticulous.
On day three, he produced the document again at four-thirty in the afternoon with the focused expression of a man who had definitely not already memorized every clause.
That evening his car is idling outside my building when I come down. He pulls out the folder.
"Tomorrow afternoon, we should go through clause three again. The language on the northern holdings needs—"
"We've talked about clause three times." I look at him. He looks at the folder. "Tomorrow I can't. My friends are throwing me a welcome back party."
A pause. Something crosses his face, brief, but legible.
I watch it happen.
Fine.
"If you want to come, you can."
His eyes come up. He looks, for a moment, like a man who has gotten exactly what he wanted and is doing a poor job of not showing it.
The folder goes back into the bag.
"I'll be there."
***
The private room is already loud when I arrive. Eight people, two bottles open, someone's connected their phone to the speaker.
The warmth of it lands before I'm even through the door. These are faces I haven't seen in two years, people who knew me before the thing happened and have been waiting to have me back.
The door opens behind me twenty minutes later.
Isabella walks in with her hand on Callum's arm.
Most of the people in this room were there. At the ceremony, or close enough to it. The kind of silence that falls now isn't the absence of sound so much as the sudden presence of a shared memory.
Isabella looks at the silence and smiles through it.
"Why didn't you invite us?" She steers Callum toward the two seats on my left with the ease of someone who has never needed an invitation anywhere. "We all grew up together."
"How did you two actually get together?" someone asks. I recognize the conversational redirect for what it is, a genuine attempt to change the weather. It doesn't work.
Isabella lights up. "Second year of university," she says, leaning forward. "I kissed him after class one day. His face went completely red." She turns to Callum, performing certainty she doesn't need to manufacture. "You fell for me that day, didn't you?"
Every face in the room does the same careful, involuntary pivot toward me.
Second year. Callum and I were in our second year together by then. It was the year of the spring formal, the year we had dinner with both our families, the year I thought the hardest part was already behind us.
"Stop." Callum's voice comes out wrong — too loud, too fast, stripped of everything he usually keeps around it. "Stop talking."
The room goes absolutely still.
Earlier than I thought. Not a revelation that breaks me open. Just a piece clicking into a place I'd been leaving blank.
The door opens.
His eyes find me before anything else. He reads something in my face, and then he looks at the two people on my left with an expression that has no temperature.
"Excuse me." He stops beside the empty seat. "She seems uncomfortable with her current neighbors. Would you mind."
It isn't a question. Callum's jaw locks. He doesn't move.
Isabella pulls at his arm and they migrate, with what dignity is left, to the corner.
There are at least six other seats in the room. Lachlan sits down next to me with no space at all between his jacket sleeve and my arm.
"Are you two together?" someone asks, with the courage of the already-curious.
Lachlan's expression doesn't change. "I follow Rowan's lead. If she says yes, then yes. If she says no, it means I still have work to do."
The room erupts. Someone slaps the table. The temperature swings back toward warm and stays there.
In the corner, Callum stares at the wall.
Isabella waits until the party has momentum again before she suggests the game. Across the table, something passes between Isabella and one of her friends, a small thing, barely a blink. I catch it without looking for it.
The bottle spins. Lands on Isabella. Her friend leans forward with the precise energy of someone who knows their cue. "Kiss someone for a minute."
Isabella laughs like it's spontaneous and pulls Callum in.
He kisses her back. His hands find her with the easy familiarity of long practice. And his eyes, over her shoulder, find me.
I don't look at him. I turn, and Lachlan is looking at me. Not at my eyes. A little lower. His throat moves.
I keep my voice light. "If I end up getting a dare, can you help me out?"
"Now works." He starts to lean forward.
I put my hand over his mouth. He stops, extremely cooperative, eyes bright above my palm.
I remove my hand.
That's twice now. Same trap, different bait. I need to stop giving him material.
He looks mildly disappointed. The kind of disappointed that knows it will have other chances.
The bottle lands on me. The setup is so clean that it can only have been arranged.
Isabella's smile arrives before her voice does. "Choose one — your brother-in-law, or Lachlan. Thirty seconds. No shirt."
Noise from every direction. Someone shrieks. Someone starts to hedge.
"It's just a game." Isabella's friend leans back with the studied ease of someone watching something they started. "Rowan's not going to be a bad sport about it, is she?"
"Let it go." Callum's voice.
"You're very comfortable with this." Lachlan, eyes on the girl across the table, steady and without particular expression.
She stiffens. "You don't have to be so ugly about it."
"I keep the polite words for people worth the effort."
I reach across and take the shot glass before this gets any further. "I forfeit. I'll drink the penalty."
"One drink isn't a penalty. Ten shots. Or play."
Lachlan's hand moves toward mine. I turn mine over and press it flat against the back of his.
"I'm fine." Steady, no edge to it. "My tolerance is decent."
I pick up the first glass.
It burns. The second burns less. By the fifth, the room has acquired a slight halo effect. I keep my face neutral and my posture straight and I work through the rest of them with the same careful pace.
This game is not worth negotiating with. The simplest way to end something beneath you is to end it.
Ten. I set the last glass down.
Standing up is an exercise in concentration. The room has more dimensions than it needs.
"I think I'm done," I say, to no one in particular.
Lachlan is on his feet before I've finished the sentence. His hand finds my arm.
"Hangover pills?" Low, just for me.
"Sleep." I lean into him slightly without intending to. "Take me home."
We move toward the door. His arm stays.
We pass Callum's chair.
The hands on his knees close into fists, knuckles going pale, and he does not stand up.
The door closes behind us.