Chapter 8
Nico
I almost don't go back.
It's the first morning all week where I lie in the hotel bed and seriously consider not driving to the bar.
Not because anything changed — the assessment is the same, the booth is the same, the nachos will be the same.
But last night changed something I can't name and don't want to examine, and the idea of sitting in that window seat pretending to work while my brain runs calculations on Ezra's dating profile and Troy's lip curl feels like too many variables.
I go anyway. Because the alternative is sitting in this hotel room with the HVAC and the popcorn ceiling and whatever's left of my professional objectivity, and at least the bar has good Wi-Fi.
I arrive at noon. The parking lot has the usual bikes. The cat is on the motorcycle seat. I've started thinking of her as a fixed feature of the property, like the neon signs or the gravel lot.
Inside, the bar is the same. Ezra on his stool. Jason in the kitchen. The low sound of something being built or repaired in the garage — metal on metal, the occasional burst of a pneumatic tool.
The booth is empty. My booth. The one I've sat in every day this week like I signed a lease on it.
I take my usual seat. Charger left, notebook right, phone facedown. Jason brings an IPA and a menu I don't need.
"Nachos?" he asks.
"Please."
The routine reassembles. Laptop open, assessment file on screen, the appearance of work. Except today the appearance is thinner than usual because I've been staring at the same paragraph of my report for fifteen minutes and haven't typed a word.
The report is done. Has been done since day three.
The property doesn't make commercial sense for Coldwell.
I have the traffic data, the zoning analysis, the comparable sales — everything I need to submit the assessment and recommend against acquisition.
Daniel is waiting for it. Langford is waiting for it.
The professional, efficient thing to do is send it, close the file, check out of the Holiday Inn, and fly back to Portland.
I don't send it.
I tell myself it's because I want the data to be thorough. Because there are gaps in the property file that bother me — the thin owner profile, the missing infrastructure analysis, the fact that Langford flagged this parcel in the first place. Professional pride. Due diligence.
That's not why.
I look up from the laptop. Ezra is on his stool, tea in hand, working on something in a spreadsheet.
He hasn't looked at me today — not once, not the way he usually does, the sideways glances I've been cataloging and pretending I haven't.
Today his attention is on his screen with a focus that feels deliberate. Like he's choosing not to look.
Something happened between yesterday and today. The nachos arrive. I eat them in my usual order — edges first, working inward — and try to figure out what shifted.
Yesterday: Ezra brought me fresh nachos after Troy left.
There was a moment — brief, charged, the air between us doing something that I've been attributing to the bar's ventilation system because the alternative is admitting that I'm attracted to a lion shifter and that's a complication I don't have a spreadsheet for.
Today: Ezra is behind a wall. Polite, professional, the bartender version of himself instead of the person I've been talking to all week. The warmth is gone. The half-smile is gone. The thing where he notices what I'm doing and comments on it in a way that makes me feel seen — gone.
I should be relieved. This is simpler. Customer and bartender. Assessment agent and property occupant. Clean categories, clean boundaries, clean exit.
I'm not relieved.
At one-thirty, I close the laptop and walk to the bar.
I've done this before — approached, initiated conversation, bridged the gap between the booth and the stool.
But today it feels different because Ezra's posture changes when I get close.
Not a flinch — subtler. A straightening.
Someone who was relaxed and is now guarded.
"Can I get another IPA?" I ask.
"Sure." He pours it. Sets it on the bar. Goes back to his laptop.
That's it. No comment about my second IPA being unusual. No observation about my nachos or my work habits or the weather or the cat. Just the beer and the silence and the wall.
"Did I do something?" I ask.
Ezra looks up. His expression is careful — not blank, not cold, but curated. The expression of someone who's choosing what to show.
"No," he says. "Why?"
"You haven't looked at me once today."
Something flickers behind the careful expression. Surprise, maybe, that I noticed. Or discomfort that I said it out loud. In my experience, most people don't name the thing that's happening in the room. They let it sit between them like furniture and navigate around it.
I'm not most people. If there's a variable I don't understand, I ask about it. It's more efficient than guessing.
"I've been busy," Ezra says.
"You've been busy every day this week. You still managed to comment on my nachos-eating pattern and my tipping habits."
"You noticed all that."
"I notice everything. It's a professional skill that occasionally becomes a personal liability." I take a sip of the IPA. "You're different today. If it's because of the date — the guy last night — if that made things awkward—"
"It didn't make things awkward."
"Then what?"
Ezra closes his laptop. Not halfway — all the way. He looks at me directly, and for a second the careful expression slips and I see what's underneath. Not anger, not distrust. The look of a man who's having a fight with himself and losing.
"Nothing," he says. "You didn't do anything. I'm just — recalibrating."
"Recalibrating what?"
"My expectations." He opens his laptop again. The wall goes back up. "Enjoy the IPA."
He turns back to his spreadsheet. Conversation over. I stand at the bar for another few seconds, holding my beer, trying to parse recalibrating my expectations into something that makes sense.
I can't. I go back to my booth.
The afternoon passes in the strange new rhythm of two people who are aware of each other and pretending not to be.
It's different from the first few days, when the awareness was one-directional — me watching them, cataloging, assessing.
Now it's mutual. I can feel Ezra not-looking at me the way you can feel someone standing behind you in a line.
The negative space of avoided attention.
At three, one of the shifters comes in from the garage. Not Vaughn — one of the others. Silas, I think. The quiet one. He gets a glass of water, drinks it in four swallows, and sits in the corner with a book.
He doesn't acknowledge me. Doesn't look at me. Just reads.
But he's positioned himself between me and the door.
It could be coincidence. The corner has good light. The chair is probably comfortable. There are a dozen innocent explanations for why a lion shifter would sit between a human and the only exit that leads to safety.
My heart rate ticks up. Not a lot — five, ten beats per minute. The autonomic response of a body that recognizes a predator's positioning even when the conscious mind is making excuses for it.
I do my twelve-minute room sweep. Exits: front door (Silas between me and it), back hallway (leads to the kitchen, presumably another exit), the windows (too small, and I'd need to break glass), garage exit (not happening because more lions back there).
Occupants: Ezra at the bar, Jason in the kitchen, Silas in the corner.
Three shifters. One human. The math hasn't changed since day one but it feels different today because the warmth that's been buffering it all week — the nachos, the conversations, the half-smiles — is absent.
Without the warmth, the math is just math. And the math says I'm a human sitting in a room with three animals that could kill me before I reached the door.
I stay. I don't know why. Professional stubbornness, maybe. Or something less rational — the refusal to let fear make my decisions when it hasn't earned the right to.
At four-thirty, I pack up. Same time as always. Thirty percent on the bar. I nod at Ezra on the way out.
"See you tomorrow," I say.
He looks at me. The wall is still there, but behind it — far behind, barely visible — something that might be relief.
"See you tomorrow," he says.
I drive back to the hotel. Shower. Lie on the bed.
The ceiling is popcorn textured. The HVAC hums. The ice machine cycles.
I think about Ezra saying recalibrating my expectations. I think about Silas between me and the door. I think about the thin property file and the above-market offer and the fact that Langford flagged a commercially unviable bar in the middle of nowhere and sent his best agent to buy it.
I think about Troy's lip curl. The fast, reflexive contraction of disgust. The word them in his mouth like something spoiled.
I think about how I've been in that bar for days and I've never once felt what crossed Troy's face. Wary, yes. Alert, always. But not disgusted. Not superior. Just — cautious. The way you're cautious around anything powerful that you don't fully understand.
The thread is there. The one I can't stop pulling. Langford, the property file, the above-market offer. The rural locations that don't make sense. The question I've been avoiding since day one: why does Coldwell want this place?
I'm not ready to pull it yet. Not tonight.
But it's getting harder to leave it alone.