Chapter 4
So, this was Silver Springs.
Come to think of it, that might explain why her stupid stomach was full of knots and why, despite knowing she couldn’t stand on this godforsaken sidewalk forever, she was so reluctant to move.
Any man she met could be Finn, and she’d have no way of knowing until he told her his name, like some fucked-up reverse Rumpelstiltskin.
Effie stood there, regretting most of her choices, when a sign on the corner began to flicker.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was standing in front of a dark green brick building with smudgy windows covered with even grungier-looking band posters and take-one flyers advertising music lessons.
A neon green Open sign hung beside the door, and below it, another sign proclaimed Beer, the B flickering in and out, beckoning her inside.
Reaching for the door didn’t feel as much like a choice as it did a compulsion she had to obey.
Of all the songs in the world, “Friend of the Devil” by the Grateful Dead started playing on the jukebox as soon as her ass touched the wobbly wooden barstool she couldn’t remember choosing to sit on, the trip from the door to the counter a blur.
“Be with you in a sec,” the bartender told her, reaching for a bottle of vodka off the top shelf.
“No rush,” she murmured, watching, rapt, as he set the bottle down and bent to pick a pencil up off the floor, his Wranglers hugging his ass. “Take your time.”
Ley lines. That had to be it. It had to be the ley lines fucking with her, the electromagnetic field making her feel like north wasn’t quite north. Not anymore.
The bartender finished jotting something down in a small notebook and set the vodka back on the shelf, the muscles in his back flexing through his T-shirt. “Sorry about that.”
He turned and—her stomach dropped like she’d missed a stair.
Not ley lines, then.
The living, breathing, ensouled consequence of Effie’s poor life choices stared across the counter, his eyes, one loch-blue and the other dark green, fixed on her face, his strong, dark brows drawn low.
He said something, but her ears were ringing, the sound of his voice barely registering over the raucous din inside her head.
“Sorry,” she gasped, trying to slow the trip hammer of her heart. “What?”
“You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She laughed, dry and humorless, and snatched the glass of water he set down in front of her.
“You could say that.” He frowned and she suppressed a sigh, meeting his eyes even though there was a scream building behind her lips at how fucked this was.
“You just…you look like someone I used to know. That’s all. ”
She could’ve really used a heads-up that Finn of Silver fucking Springs, Georgia was going to have the same face as her Finn, the man she’d been so in love with that she’d promised him an eternity. Funny how the OIIA had conveniently left that part out.
He eyed her for a beat, then hummed under his breath. “Let me guess—ex-boyfriend?”
“Something like that.” She needed a stiff drink before she could even think about tackling that conversation. “You know the sign outside says you’re open, right?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“It’s dead as disco in here,” she said flatly.
His lips twitched. “You know it’s two in the afternoon, right?”
“What else is there to do in a town this small except get drunk?”
His smile grew, a hint of teeth appearing between his lips, framed by dark, thick stubble. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Do I look like I’m from around here?” she asked, raising a brow in challenge.
She’d seen the families in the park, moms all wearing sensible sneakers, girls in pretty floral nap dresses.
Effie couldn’t have looked more like a fish out of water in her leather pants and fuck-me boots, her shoulders bare, her hair a riot of dark curls falling down to her waist.
His eyes made a slow survey of her, top to bottom, lingering on the strip of skin left bare above her low-rise pants.
His tongue swept against his bottom lip, followed by his front teeth, and Effie flushed, warm all over, tripping and falling into a memory so vivid she could almost feel his mouth on hers, hot and desperate.
“You look to me like someone who could use a drink.”
“Whiskey,” Effie croaked. “Neat.”
Finn pushed off the counter. “Got a preference?” he asked, gesturing to the wall of liquor behind him.
Effie shrugged. She didn’t care. She’d drink battery acid if it would take the edge off right now. “Pour yourself one if you want. It’s on me.”
He nodded and she took a moment to catalog the differences between her Finn and the version that stood before her, setting two rocks glasses down on the counter, then reaching for a bottle of Scotch, an amusing choice, if not a good call.
He was older. Not old, but…they’d practically been babes when they’d wed, even if it hadn’t felt that way, because life had been so, so different back then, her a month shy of her twentieth birthday and Finn a scant year older.
Rugged and a little windswept, his dark hair falling messily over his strong brow, long enough now that it curled a little at his nape, Finn, this Finn, had to be thirty now, maybe older, an age she’d never seen on him before, his jawline more defined and the faint lines at the corners of his eyes new.
“Tell me—are we drinking to remember or to forget?”
Two Finns stared back at her, her vision double, the past overlaying the present until she blinked and the world set itself back to rights.
She wrapped a hand around her glass, her palm warming the whiskey. “Both, I think.”
Finn frowned, looking thoughtful. “How’s that work?”
“I’m still figuring it out, actually. I’m…
Well, it’s all sort of— It’s—” She blew out a frustrated breath, out of false starts, pretty sure she’d never been this tongue-tied in her life.
She snatched her drink up off the bar and downed half of it in one swallow, hissing through her teeth at the burn.
“My husband. I’m—I’m looking for my husband.
Ex-husband. Or—well, we’re still technically married. ” She winced. “It’s complicated.”
He chuckled over the rim of his glass. “Isn’t it usually?”
The way her stomach burned had fuck-all to do with the whiskey. “Are you, uh…” Her swallow hurt. “You married?”
“Me?” Finn shook his head and her shoulders dropped a smidge as she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “No. I’m not.”
“How come?”
“Aw, jeez.” He huffed lightly and rolled his eyes.
“Ain’t that the million-dollar question?
” At her look, he sighed. “Lately all anyone around here seems to want to know is when I’m gonna find me a nice girl and get married, and…
I don’t know, I guess…I don’t think that’s something anyone ought to rush into, you know?
” His eyes met hers, his gaze unguarded and terribly arresting.
Effie couldn’t help but lean a little over the counter.
“It’s not a decision I take lightly. And it’s not just me I’ve got to think about, it’s—” He clamped his lips together, and Effie sat up straight, watching his whole face go tight as he swallowed his words.
Now, wasn’t that curious? Finn was hiding something. And he wasn’t very good at it, either, his face one giant tell.
“Come on, you can tell me,” she pressed, perched on the literal edge of her seat, barstool creaking under her. “Oversharing to strangers in bars is a time-honored tradition. You wouldn’t want to spoil a tradition, would you?”
“It’s nothing.” He licked his lips. “When I—if I get married, that’s gonna be it for me. That’s all.”
“To be fair, I don’t think most people get married intending to get divorced.”
He palmed his face with one big—so big—hand and let out a muffled groan. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like…I know shit happens. I know it doesn’t always work out, but…” He trailed off with a self-effacing laugh. “What can I say, my mom was Catholic.”
“So was mine. I was raised it, too.” Her lips twitched. “Can’t say much of it stuck, though.”
“Not even the persistent, unspecified guilt that Catholics—lapsed or otherwise—are always talking about?”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t do guilt. It’s a pointless feeling.”
As far as she was concerned, so were the rest of the self-conscious emotions.
Shame, envy, embarrassment, and pride were all fine when felt by desperate humans driven to making deals with demons, but Effie could do without them and did.
But she didn’t say that, not wanting Finn to think her totally unhinged when right now he mostly just looked amused.
“What about when you do something wrong?”
“Easy,” she said, offering him her most winsome smile. “I’ve never done anything wrong a day in my life.”
He ducked his chin, chuckling softly at the counter before his gaze lifted, peering at her from beneath his soot-black lashes. “A real angel, hmm? Tell me—did it hurt when you fell?”
A surprised guffaw burst from her lips, and Finn grinned, pleased with himself.
“So your mom was Catholic,” she said. “What about you? Are you religious?”
“Not particularly.”
“What do you think happens after we die?”
Finn blinked twice, then whistled low under his breath. “Hell, honey, at least buy a guy a drink before you start spiritually undressing him. That’s just manners.”
She dropped her eyes pointedly to his glass of whiskey, sitting mostly untouched on the bar. He followed her gaze and snorted indelicately, his lips pressed together like he was trying not to laugh. “Well, shit. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Mm, you sure did.”
Finn crossed his arms over his chest, and the move did delicious things to his muscles, delicious things that made her warm inside, his biceps straining against his shirtsleeves.
“I just want to put it out there that, while I support your right to thump your Bible, that doesn’t mean I’m keen on you coming into my bar and thumping me over the head with it. No offense.”