Chapter 3 #2
The brothers who were in the bar watched him with the stillness of men deciding how much patience they had. Razor muttered something about where the clipboard could go. Bree handled the man with the bright, professional calm of someone who’d dealt with worse.
He left without finding anything. Said there’d be a follow-up report, clicked his pen one final time, and walked out.
“The hell was that about?” Razor said.
Bree shrugged. “Random inspection. It happens.”
It didn’t feel random. Something about the timing, the specificity, the way he’d looked at the bar like he’d been told what to find before he walked in.
But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have the pieces yet, just a feeling in my gut that sat wrong, and feelings in your gut weren’t evidence.
I finished my shift. Closed up with Bree, who talked me through the till reconciliation for the third time with the patience of a saint. Then I went through the staff door, down the corridor, into the lodge.
Doc was in the kitchen.
He was leaning against the counter with a beer, still in the clothes he’d been working in, and grease on his forearms. The kitchen was dim, just the light over the stove, and he looked up when I walked in and his expression shifted. Warmed. Like the room had just become the room he wanted to be in.
“How was the shift?”
“Only broke one glass.” I held up a finger. “One. Personal best.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Good girl.”
Two words. Casual, warm, easy. A reflex, a throwaway, words that cost him nothing. He probably didn’t even register that he’d said it.
I registered it though.
My whole body registered it, a flush that started in my chest and climbed into my face and turned the kitchen into a room I didn’t know how to stand in anymore.
Good girl. I’d heard those words a thousand times.
From my mother, when I wore the right dress.
From my father, when I made the right impression.
From teachers, tutors, stylists, every authority figure who’d ever measured me against a standard I hadn’t chosen and found me acceptable.
This was different.
The words landed somewhere deep, somewhere private, and I didn’t know what to do with the way they made me feel. Warm, seen, unsteady.
“You’re staring,” he said. Quiet. His eyes hadn’t left my face.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
The kitchen was too small. It was the same kitchen it always had been and it had been fine, plenty of room, two people could stand in here without their worlds colliding. But something had changed in the last thirty seconds and now the three feet between us felt like nothing at all.
“Evie.” His voice was low, careful, the voice of a man choosing his words because the wrong ones would change something he couldn’t undo. “You should go to bed.”
“I know.”
I didn’t move. He didn’t move. The light over the stove hummed.
“I’m too old for you,” he said.
“I know that too.”
“And you’ve been through enough without me adding to it.”
“You’re not adding to anything.” My voice came out steadier than I expected.
Clearer. Like this was the one thing I was sure of in a life where I wasn’t sure of much.
“You’re the only person who’s ever looked at me and seen me.
Not what I’m worth, not what I can do for someone, just me.
So don’t tell me you’re too old or too complicated or too whatever the thing is you’re about to say, because I don’t care about any of it. ”
His expression changed. The control he kept so tight I sometimes forgot it was there buckled, just for a second, and what came through was heat and want and the effort of holding both back. His hands tightened on the edge of the counter behind him.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said. Like the words had to fight their way out.
“Then show me.”
He moved. Fast, deliberate, his hand coming up to the side of my face, his palm against my jaw, his fingers sliding into my hair. He held me there for one second, his eyes on mine, giving me the chance to step back, to change my mind, to be the sensible one because he clearly couldn’t be.
I didn’t step back.
He kissed me.
He kissed me like he’d been thinking about it for every day I’d been here and the thinking had used up all his patience.
His mouth on mine, hard, certain, the taste of beer and something underneath that was just him, his hand in my hair tipping my head back, his other hand finding my hip, pulling me closer until my body was flush against his and I could feel the counter behind him and the heat of him through his shirt and the way his breath came ragged when I opened my mouth against his.
I grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands. Held on. Because my legs weren’t working anymore, and the sound he made when I kissed him back, low, rough, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest, went through me like a current and turned every coherent thought I had to static.
He pulled back. Barely. His face an inch from mine, breathing hard, his hand still in my hair, his grip shaking.
“Fuck,” he said. Quiet. Almost to himself.
My hands were still fisted in his shirt. My mouth felt swollen. My entire body was humming at a frequency I’d never experienced before, a full-system overload that made the two fumbling college encounters I’d had feel like they’d happened to someone else in a different lifetime.
“Bed,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “Your bed. Alone. Now.”
I let go of his shirt. Stepped back. My legs held, barely.
“Goodnight, Doc.”
“Goodnight, Evie.”
I walked down the hallway to my room on legs that felt like they belonged to somebody else. Closed the door. Leaned against it. Pressed my fingers to my mouth, where I could still feel him, and stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe.
The world had cracked open and I didn’t know how to put it back together. But I didn’t even want to.