CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Liam
I got to the bar early, almost an hour before we opened up. Usually I would go straight to my office and take care of any paperwork that needed to be done before it got busy. Tonight I wasn’t really thinking about the paperwork.
Nora was coming back to work for the first time since everything had happened, and even though I’d said it was okay for her to come back, I still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I told myself I was just making sure everything was ready, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason.
The bar was quiet except for normal background noise. Someone in the kitchen was getting ready for the night. I could hear glasses being put on the counter. It was all pretty routine, and I wasn’t really paying attention to any of it.
Instead I looked around the room, thinking about how things were laid out.
I had two of my guys already inside, where I’d told them to be.
The more I looked around, the more I thought we needed to make some changes.
I called one of the guards over and told him to move to the other side of the room near the restrooms. I wanted him to be able to see the entrance and the back booths at the same time.
“I want you to keep an eye on that side of the room. You can still see the door from there, and you’ll also be able to see the back booths. That’s usually a quiet part of the bar until later, so we need to make sure nobody is sneaking around.”
He looked where I was pointing and then nodded. After he moved, I went over to the other guard.
“I don’t want you to just stand in one place all night. Walk around the room every few minutes and try to make it look like you’re just doing your job. If the customers notice you watching them, that will be a problem.”
He nodded too, and then he walked away. Neither of the guards asked me any questions.
They knew me well enough to know that I didn’t like to explain things twice.
My phone started vibrating in my pocket.
I pulled it out and saw a message from one of the guys who was watching the café during the day.
It was an update saying that nothing weird had happened, but I read it twice before I put my phone away.
I wasn’t really looking for information anymore.
I was just looking for something to make me feel better.
The office door opened and Paddy came out with the list of reservations for the night.
He saw the guards in their new positions and then looked at me with a little smile on his face.
“I see you’re changing the security around again.”
“I just moved them a bit.”
He looked around the room again. “You know, I used to run this place just fine without all these guards everywhere.”
I smiled slightly. “You’ll still run it the same way. The only difference is that I’ll feel a little better knowing that we have everything covered.”
Paddy looked at me for a moment. Then his face softened. “I heard Miss Walsh is coming back to work tonight. I bet she’s happy to be back.”
I looked at the door and didn’t say anything for a second. “I hope it makes her feel like things are normal again.”
Before Paddy could say anything else, the front door opened.
I looked up automatically. Nora stepped inside wearing the same nervous smile she’d had the first night she came to the bar.
It wasn’t exactly the same, though. That night she’d been worried about making a good impression.
Tonight she was worried about something much bigger.
Even so, she smiled at Ethan when he spotted her, laughed as Sofia hurried over to hug her, and thanked Paddy when he handed her apron back.
Watching Nora laugh with Ethan should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Instead, it reminded me of the argument we’d had the previous night. I’d spent half an hour standing in the kitchen with a mug of coffee that had gone cold long before Nora walked in.
I’d been trying to convince myself that I could tell Nora no if she asked the question I already knew was coming, but I couldn’t tell Nora no.
The moment she stepped into the kitchen, I saw it in her eyes.
Nora had made up her mind before she came looking for me, and nothing was going to change her.
I just stood there, hoping Nora would give me a reason I could argue with. Instead, she gave me every reason to let her go back to work.
“Liam, I know why you want me to stay here. I’m thankful to you.
After everything that happened, I understand why you’re worried, but staying inside this house isn’t helping me anymore.
I miss my jobs. I miss seeing Sofia at the café and complaining with her after work.
I even miss Ethan’s jokes, which is hard to admit.
I miss having things to think about, because every day I spend hiding here reminds me of what happened.
I don’t want fear to become my life. I want to go on living my life. ”
I listened to Nora without interrupting because there wasn’t anything she said that I could argue with. Nora wasn’t asking for freedom because she didn’t appreciate her own safety. She was asking because she wanted to feel like herself.
I tightened my grip on the mug before turning to face her.
“You think this is about keeping you inside this house. It’s not.
I’ve spent years dealing with men who wanted me dead.
I learned a long time ago that danger comes with the life I’ve chosen.
What I never learned was how to deal with losing someone I love.
” I stopped for a moment, feeling my chest tighten.
“You tell me you miss work, Nora, and I believe you. What you don’t see is that every time you walk out that door, I’ll be wondering if I’ll have to live through losing you. ”
Nora didn’t answer immediately. She walked over to me until there was no space between us. There was no fear in her face anymore.
“I know I can’t make that fear disappear.
I’m not asking you to pretend it isn’t there, Liam.
I’m asking you to trust me. You saved me.
You gave me another chance at life. I don’t want to waste that chance hiding from the world.
I want to go to work because it reminds me that I’m still the same woman I was before all of this happened.
If I let fear decide where I can go and how I can live, then the people who did this to me have already taken my life. ”
I looked down at the coffee in my hand and finally admitted something to myself that I’d been fighting ever since Nora had walked into the room.
She wasn’t asking me to choose between safety and danger.
She was asking me to choose between caging the woman I loved and allowing her to be herself.
I let out a breath before meeting Nora’s eyes again.
“Okay. You win, Nora. If I agree to this, you’ll follow my lead completely. There will be people watching the bar, the café, and you. If I tell you to leave, you leave immediately. You don’t argue with me. You don’t decide that you’re safe because things look quiet.”
Nora nodded without hesitation. “I can do that. I wasn’t asking you to stop protecting me. I only wanted the chance to start living.”
I remember watching the relief spread across her face.
I remember my shoulders finally relaxing for the first time in days.
What I also remembered, and what Nora never knew, was that after she’d gone upstairs that night I picked up my phone and doubled every security detail I’d already put in place for her.
If Nora was going back into the world, then the world was going to have to come through me.
I watched Nora from across the room without meaning to. She slipped back into her old routine so naturally that anyone walking into the bar would never have guessed she’d been away. Ethan had already found a way to make her laugh.
Within a few minutes, she’d settled into the same easy rhythm she always seemed to have at work. She wanted a normal evening with people who cared about her, and for a little while it looked as though she was finally getting it.
The problem was that I didn’t look at a room the way everyone else did. While Nora saw familiar faces and customers coming in to enjoy a drink after work, I found myself noticing everything she wasn’t paying attention to.
I noticed the man who paused at the entrance before deciding where to sit.
I noticed another customer choosing one of the booths near the back instead of the empty tables closer to the front.
I even caught myself watching a man wearing a baseball cap for no other reason than the fact that he’d taken an extra second to look around the room before walking to the bar.
None of them had done anything outright suspicious.
They were ordinary people going about their evening, yet my mind insisted on measuring every movement against the possibility that something could go wrong.
As more customers arrived, the bar slowly became as busy as it always was in the evenings.
Conversations began filling the room until they blended into a steady background hum.
Glasses clinked behind the counter as drinks were poured, and music drifted through the speakers without ever becoming loud enough to drown out the customers’ voices.
I eventually forced myself back into my office and opened the reports waiting on my desk, telling myself that I was being ridiculous.
Paddy appeared at the office door, carrying another folder beneath his arm. He didn’t say anything straight away. Instead, he stood beside me for a moment.
“You do realize those reports aren’t going to finish themselves,” he said. “I’ve walked past this office twice in the last ten minutes, and both times you’ve been looking at Miss Walsh instead of reading whatever’s in that folder.”
I looked down at the paperwork in front of me before smiling to myself. “I’m reading it.”
Paddy let out a quiet laugh. “No, you’re trying to read it. There’s a difference.”