Chapter 2
brIGGS
Three hours and four beers later, I was still sitting at the same damn table.
The roadhouse had mostly emptied out. Knox and Teddie had left an hour ago, wrapped around each other like they couldn’t stand to have an inch of space between them.
Mason and Gabby followed not long after.
Even Wolfe had called it a night, though not before shooting me a knowing look I pretended not to see.
Now it was just me, a couple of old-timers at the bar nursing whiskeys, and Elsa.
She’d been busy behind the bar all night, occasionally coming out to bring drinks to customers. Every now and then, her eyes would find mine across the room. Quick glances. Uncertain. Like she was checking to make sure I was still there.
I was still there.
I’d told her I would be, and I meant it. But the truth was, I had no idea what I was doing. The preppy ex-boyfriend was gone, the crisis averted. There was no reason for me to stick around except the obvious one—I couldn’t make myself leave.
Not after the way she’d felt in my lap. Not after the word that had come out of my mouth without permission.
Mine.
What the hell had I been thinking? I’d known the woman for all of five minutes, and I’d staked a claim on her like some kind of caveman. She probably thought I was insane. Or worse, just as bad as the guy she was trying to escape.
I took another swig of beer and tried to figure out my next move. I should go talk to her. That was the obvious thing. Walk up to the bar, say something charming, maybe apologize for coming on so strong earlier.
Except I wasn’t charming. I was grumpy and blunt and bad at small talk. The guys gave me shit about it constantly. Briggs—the cynical bastard who’d rather brood in a corner than make conversation.
The old-timers at the bar settled their tab and headed for the door, leaving the place nearly empty. Just me and Elsa, and the country song playing low on the jukebox.
She wiped down the bar, her movements slower now that the rush was over. Then she looked up and caught me watching her.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The air between us felt charged—heavy with everything that had happened earlier and everything that hadn’t been said. Then she set down her rag, picked up two glasses, and walked toward my table. My heart did something stupid in my chest.
“You’re still here,” she said, sliding into the chair across from me.
She set one of the glasses down in front of me—bourbon, from the smell of it—and kept the other for herself.
“Said I would.”
“I know.” She took a sip of her drink, and I watched the way her throat moved when she swallowed. “I just didn’t expect you to actually mean it.”
“I meant it.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or the beginning of trust.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For earlier. For going along with…whatever that was.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I really do.” She traced the rim of her glass with one finger. “I’m not usually the kind of person who climbs onto strangers’ laps, in case you were wondering.”
“Didn’t think you were.”
“Good.” A small smile tugged at her lips. “Because I’m mortified. Truly. I’ve been replaying it in my head all night, and I still can’t believe I did that.”
“I’m not complaining.”
The smile grew, just a little. “No?”
“No.” I held her gaze, letting her see that I meant it. “Only complaint I have is that it took a crisis to get you to talk to me.”
She blinked. “We’ve talked before.”
“You’ve taken my drink order. That’s not the same thing.”
A flush crept up her cheeks, and damn if it wasn’t the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. “I didn’t think you wanted to talk. You always look so…” She searched for the word.
“Grumpy?”
“I was going to say intimidating.”
“Same thing.”
She laughed, and the sound hit me right in the chest—light and genuine, completely at odds with the fear I’d seen in her eyes earlier.
“So,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “You’ve been watching me for the past couple of weeks. What exactly have you learned?”
Shit. Had I been that obvious?
“I’ve learned you’re good at your job,” I said. “You remember everyone’s orders. You know when to make conversation and when to leave people alone. You’ve got this way of looking at people like you can see right through them.”
“That’s very observant.”
“I’m a firefighter. Observation keeps people alive.”
“Is that why you stayed tonight?” She tilted her head, studying me. “Some kind of protective instinct?”
I could have said yes. It would’ve been the easy answer—the one that let us both off the hook. Just a good Samaritan looking out for a woman in trouble. Nothing more.
But I’d never been good at easy.
“Partly,” I admitted. “But mostly I stayed because I wanted to.”
“Wanted to what?”
“Know you.” The words came out rougher than I intended. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you. Figured tonight was as good a time as any.”
She stared at me for a long moment, something unreadable in her expression. Then she shook her head slowly, a soft laugh escaping her lips.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Someone who grunts more than talks, maybe.” She grinned. “You’ve got this whole brooding mountain-man thing going on. I figured you were the strong, silent type.”
“I am the strong, silent type. Usually.”
“So what’s different about tonight?”
I looked at her—really looked at her. The warm light from the overhead bulbs caught the gold in her hair, making her skin glow. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what made it hard to breathe. It was the way she was looking back at me, like she genuinely wanted to know the answer.
“You,” I said simply. “You’re what’s different.”
Her breath caught. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The jukebox switched to a slower song—lazy guitar, a voice full of longing.
“I should tell you something,” she said finally. “About why I reacted the way I did when Preston walked in.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” She wrapped both hands around her glass, like she needed something to hold onto.
“I told you we dated in Charlotte, and that’s true.
What I didn’t tell you is that my parents basically pushed us together.
His family runs in the same circles as mine.
Old money. Country clubs. The whole thing. ”
I nodded, waiting.
“On paper, Preston was everything I was supposed to want. Stable. Successful. Safe.” She said the last word like it tasted bitter. “And he was nice enough, I guess. But I never felt…anything. Not the way you’re supposed to feel about someone you’re dating.”
“So you ended it.”
“I tried.” She let out a humorless laugh. “But Preston doesn’t really do endings. He kept showing up at my work. Night after night, he’d just sit at the bar and watch me. Not threatening—just there. Waiting for me to change my mind.”
My hands curled into fists under the table. “That’s not okay.”
“No. It’s not.” She met my eyes. “Between him and my mother constantly asking when I was going to settle down, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So I found a job listing for a bartender in a mountain town I’d never heard of, packed my car, and left.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” A real smile crossed her face this time. “Best decision I ever made. The air up here is different. The people are different. I feel like I can finally figure out who I am without everyone else telling me who I should be.”
I understood that more than she knew. I’d come to Wildwood Valley for similar reasons—a fresh start, a chance to be something other than what the military had made me.
“I get it,” I said. “The needing to start over.”
She tilted her head, studying me with new curiosity. “You?”
“Army. Twelve years.” I took a sip of bourbon, letting the burn settle before I continued. “When I got out, everyone back home expected me to be the same guy who’d left. But I wasn’t. Couldn’t pretend to be, either.”
“So you came here.”
“So I came here.” I met her eyes. “Found the crew. Found a place where nobody knew the old me, so nobody expected me to be him.”
Something softened in her expression. “And who are you now?”
The question caught me off guard. Most people didn’t ask. Most people didn’t care. They saw the beard, the scowl, the shoulders, and made their assumptions.
“Still figuring that out,” I admitted. “But I know I’m not good at standing by when someone’s in trouble. And I know I don’t like the way that guy looked at you—like you were something he’d misplaced and just needed to collect.”
Her breath caught. “You noticed that?”
“Hard not to.” I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. Her fingers were cold, and I felt her startle at the contact. “You’re not a thing to be collected, Elsa. And if he can’t see that, then he doesn’t deserve another conversation with you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, fingers still wrapped around her glass. Then, slowly, she turned her hand over beneath mine, letting our fingers intertwine.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said softly. “The grumpy guy in the corner.”
“I’m still grumpy.”
“Maybe.” Her thumb traced across my knuckles. “But you’re also kind. That’s harder to find.”
Something cracked open in my chest. Something I’d kept locked down for a long time.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“When he comes back, you can be there.” She squeezed my hand once, then pulled away. “But right now, I need to close up. And you need to go home and get some sleep.”
I didn’t want to go. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to stay—to make sure she got home safe, to find out where she lived, to camp outside her door like some kind of lovesick guard dog.
“Let me help you close up,” I said.
She blinked. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to.” I stood, picking up both our empty glasses. “But Preston knows where you work now. He could be sitting out in that parking lot right now, waiting for you to walk out alone.”
The color drained from her face. She hadn’t thought of that.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” I added, softer. “I just want to make sure you get to your car without another…incident.”
For a long moment, she just looked at me. I could see the internal debate playing out—the part of her that wanted to insist she was fine warring with the part that knew I was right.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But you’re not doing dishes. That’s where I draw the line.”
“Fair enough.”
I followed her around the roadhouse as she closed out the register, wiped down the last of the tables, and flipped chairs onto tabletops. I made myself useful where I could—taking out the trash, checking that the back door was locked—and stayed out of her way when I couldn’t.
It was strangely domestic. Comfortable in a way I hadn’t expected. Like we’d done this a hundred times before instead of never.
“That’s it,” she said finally, grabbing her jacket from behind the bar. “Ready?”
I held out my hand. “Keys?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll go out first. Make sure the lot’s clear.”
“Briggs, I really don’t think—”
“Humor me.”
She hesitated, then dropped her keys into my palm. Our fingers brushed, and I felt that same jolt of electricity I’d felt earlier when she was in my lap. From the way her breath caught, I knew she felt it too.
I walked to the front door and stepped out into the cold night air, scanning the parking lot. A handful of cars sat in the dim glow of the streetlights. None of them looked like they belonged to a preppy stalker from Charlotte.
“All clear,” I called back.
She emerged a moment later, pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders. The temperature had dropped while we were inside, and her breath came out in small white puffs.
“Which one’s yours?” I asked.
She pointed to a beat-up sedan at the far end of the lot. We walked toward it in silence, our footsteps crunching on the gravel. The roadhouse sign flickered off behind us, plunging the lot into deeper shadow.
“Thank you,” she said quietly when we reached her car. “For everything tonight. You didn’t have to do any of this.”
“Told you already. I wanted to.”
She turned to face me, her back against the driver’s side door. In the dim light, her eyes looked huge. Vulnerable. But there was something else there too—something that made my pulse kick up a notch.
“Why?” she asked. “You’ve barely said two words to me in a month, and now suddenly you’re my personal bodyguard?”
“I explained that. I was working up the nerve.”
“To what?”
I stepped closer. Close enough to smell that vanilla-citrus scent again, to see the way her chest rose and fell with each breath.
“To do this,” I said.
And then I kissed her.