Chapter 12
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— Austen —
Mondays were the night I liked best. Fridays and Saturdays were the money and the noise, the chaos I’d trained for and thrived in. But Mondays at Velvet were quiet enough to hear the ice settle.
I hadn’t spent Sunday waiting for him. I wasn’t ready for the conversation — wasn’t ready to sit across from him while he apologized and turned on the charm expecting me to fall for it, just like Derek had warned me he would.
So I’d booked myself a full day at a spa on the outskirts of Millfield instead — the kind of place that handed you a robe and a schedule, and expected you to surrender the next eight hours without apology.
A woman had put her elbow into every knot in my back.
Another had done my nails. I’d eaten lunch alone by a window overlooking a garden and read forty pages of a novel I’d been meaning to finish for three months.
What I was actually doing, in between all of that, was trying to work out what I was angry about.
Whether I was angry at Handful for being exactly who he’d always been — or angry at myself for spending months thinking he could be different.
I hadn’t landed on an answer by the time I drove home. But I was calmer.
I’d half expected to find a biker outside my apartment when I got home. Instead I switched my cell back on after a day of deliberate quiet and a string of texts came in at once.
Woke up to a message from Dutch. Club business. Out until Monday evening.
Not going to make you talk through a phone.
When I’m home we’ll do it right.
I hadn’t replied.
I went to the bar early Monday and did the work that settled me — going through Saturday’s numbers to see what needed replacing in the order, wiping down bottles, cutting a clean run of orange peels and laying them out like I had all the time in the world.
Jamie ran glasses through the washer. Derek stood at the host stand with the reservation book and a pen he wasn’t using.
They both knew something was wrong. Not what, exactly, but they probably guessed, and they knew me well enough to leave me alone.
At least my friends weren’t going to say I told you so. Even if they were right.
The door opened a little after six.
I knew it was him before I looked up, because Derek went still. Derek had a radar for trouble in a room — it was why he was good at his job — and I watched his head come up and his eyes track across the floor and settle, and I knew.
He was wearing his cut, sleeves pushed up so the pin-up girls on his forearms were visible, ink I’d traced in the dark with my fingers and my tongue more times than I wanted to think about right now.
He looked tired. Road tired. Like he’d come straight here off the bike without stopping at the clubhouse to clean up.
He stopped just inside the door. Saw Derek clock him, saw Jamie set down a glass and stare at him. Then he crossed the room and stopped in front of me.
“Hey.” He put his hands on the bar. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Austen.” Just my name. He had a whole register for it, low and careful, and I hated that it still did something to me. “What happened Saturday? Why did you leave?”
I picked up a cloth and wiped down the bar in front of him. “What can I get you? Old Fashioned?”
He blinked. “Austen. We need to talk.”
“We do? I’m working. Order or leave.”
“Something happened Saturday. You walked out without telling me and I need to know—”
“Derek.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t have to.
Derek was already three steps closer than he’d been, one hand resting on the back of a chair, easy, like he was passing through.
Jamie had drifted closer too, drying a glass that was already dry.
My people, arranging themselves without being asked.
Handful looked at them, and then back at me.
I knew Derek was no real obstacle if Handful decided to push.
“When’s your break?” he said quietly.
“An hour.”
“I’ll wait.” He moved to the far end of the bar, out of the way, and sat down.
I watched him settle onto the stool. Picked up a glass. Put it back. An hour was too long to have him sitting there in my sightline, and we both knew it.
I untied my apron and folded it over the rail. “Jamie’s got the bar.” Derek nodded. I looked at Handful. “Outside.”
The sidewalk out front was empty. Handful stood with his hands shoved in his jacket pockets and I stood with my arms crossed, not because I was cold.
For a second neither of us said anything.
“I don’t know exactly what you saw,” he started. “But it wasn’t what you think.”
“That’s a bad way to begin, Handful.”
He looked at me. Just for a second, his jaw tightened. For months I’d called him Tyler. Calling him Handful now was deliberate and we both knew it.
“You’re calling me Handful,” he said.
“That’s your name.”
He looked down at the pavement. Back up. “It’s not the one you—”
“Tanya put her hand on your arm,” I said, because I wasn’t going to do the thing where we talked about his name. “And you stood there with her hand on you for two seconds before you remembered to step back. I counted.”
“Tanya doesn’t mean—”
“I know she doesn’t mean anything. That’s not the point.
” I kept my voice level. I’d practiced this conversation in my head.
“Later, I went to get a water. I was gone five minutes. I came back and you were on the dance floor with a woman I’d never seen, your hands on her hips, and then she pressed herself against you and your hands went to her ass. No hesitation.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t look surprised — and that told me more than shock ever could have.
“Here’s the thing I can’t get past.” I made myself look at him while I said it.
“It’s not that you cheated, because you didn’t exactly.
It’s that I can’t be with a man I have to spend my whole life worrying about.
That’s what Saturday taught me. I’d have to watch you.
Every party, every room I’m not in, every time I step away to get a drink — I’d be standing at a bar somewhere wondering who you’re with and where your hands are. ”
“That’s not—”
“Next time there’s a party.” I held up a finger, not to be cruel, just to stop him filling the gap with something charming. “Next time there’s a party and I go to the bar — are your hands going to end up on some other woman’s ass?”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“And if I’m not there at all. If I’m working a Saturday, and you’re at the clubhouse, and there’s no one who you have to behave for — will you go further?”
“No.” It came fast and rough. He took a half step toward me, then stopped himself. “No. Austen, no.”
“You don’t know that.” I wasn’t angry now.
“You can’t know that, because the man who answered me just now is the one who asks before he kisses me.
He’s real, and I believe him. But the other one’s real too.
The one whose hands were on a stranger’s ass at Dutch’s party.
And I don’t get to pick which one shows up when I’ve stepped out for five minutes.
I’d just have to wait and find out. Over and over. For the rest of my life.”
The Velvet Hour sign buzzed over us. Through the window I could see Derek and Jamie both watching — Derek from the host stand, Jamie from behind the bar, neither of them pretending they weren’t.
“I can fix it,” he said. “I’m working on it. I am. Give me—”
“Maybe you will.” And I meant it, which surprised me.
“Maybe a year from now you’ll be a different man and some other woman gets the finished version with none of the work.
I hope she does. I’m not saying it to be cruel.
But I did the work. I watched you for weeks before I let you buy me a drink.
I walked into this with my eyes open, one careful day at a time, and it still wasn’t enough, because there’s no amount of careful that protects you from a man who treats women like you do. ”
He took his hands out of his pockets and held them up, chest height, palms out — not surrendering, just showing me he wasn’t fighting.
He let his hands drop. “I didn’t know why you’d gone, not at first. Then I lay in bed that night and it came back to me — Tanya, the dancing.
So none of what you just said was a surprise.
I’ve been sitting with it for two days, and I still walked out here and tried to manage you instead of just saying it. That’s on me too.”
“Sunday I was going to be at your door at eight — Colt knocked at six, said Dutch needed me out on club business. I need you to know I didn’t pick that over you.
” His voice dropped. “I’ve never wanted to keep anybody badly enough to do this, Austen.
Stand on a sidewalk and beg. I’m probably fucking it up right now but I’ll keep begging anyway, because you’re worth doing it for.
I’m not asking you to forgive it. I’m asking you not to walk away.
Give me a chance to show you I can be better than Saturday. That’s the whole ask.”
It almost worked. I almost said yes, I’ll give you another chance.
“Been there, done that.” It came out quieter than I’d planned.
“I grew up watching men promise they’d try.
You had your chance, Handful. You had five good months of it, and then a stranger rubbed up against you on a dance floor and you forgot I existed. ” I shook my head. “Go home.”
He stood there a moment longer. The red sign hummed. Then he nodded, once. He’d come in road-tired and pleading, and somewhere in the last minute that had burned off him.
“Okay. I’ll go.” He took a step back toward the curb.
“Not because you’re right. Because I’m not going to stand on your sidewalk and turn your Monday into a scene — you’ve got people watching through that window and a shift to finish, and you don’t deserve me making it worse than I already have.
” He stopped there and looked back at me.
No grin. No angle. “I’m going to say one thing, and then I’m gone. ”
I should have told him not to bother.
“You’re not wrong about Saturday.” His voice was level in a way I’d never heard out of him.
“But you’re wrong about the rest of it. You weren’t my first — you know that, the whole town knows that.
You sure as hell aren’t my only.” He held my eyes.
“But you are my last. That’s not a line, Austen.
I knew it the night you made me that Old Fashioned and looked at me like I was nothing.
So I’ll go home tonight, and I’ll give you space, and I’ll own what I did on Saturday.
But this. You and me.” He pointed a finger back and forth between us.
“We’re not done. I don’t care how long it takes me to prove it. ”
I couldn’t look away as he crossed to the bike at the curb, swung a leg over, settled, pulled on his helmet. The engine turned over. Caught. Idled.
Then he pulled away, and I watched until he was gone.