Chapter 5
Alex
T ucked in the corner of The Brew was what Alex had renamed ‘The Cosy Corner’ after he’d added a leather sectional sofa and several wingback chairs.
He’d felt it took the bar from small-town-dive to country-core and gave customers an area to feel more relaxed and laid-back when they spent their evenings there.
But, right now, as he sat in that very spot, Alex felt the opposite of relaxed.
He filled salt and pepper shakers, gripping them like they were solely responsible for his bad mood.
The door rattled with the sound of another customer entering the crowded bar.
Alex’s head whipped back and forth with every patron who entered, his eyes flying across them like a man possessed.
You’d think he’d be thrilled seeing more happy customers flock in for open mic night.
It was one of his busiest nights of the week, not a spare seat in the house, and just nine months after he’d taken over this place.
He should be proud. But all he’d felt the entire night was on edge.
His closest friend—well, more like family if he was honest—Ryan, had called him last night. He’d rambled on and on for an hour about how his sister was moving home after almost eight years away chasing her dreams. Eight years since she’d left this town and never looked back… since she’d left him.
Alex didn’t hear much after that. His ears had rung, and his mind had wandered back to the night of her twentieth birthday, like it always did whenever he heard her name.
Usually, it was regarding some achievement she’d made in London or about a flying visit that he would somehow manage to avoid.
His best friend never did question him about his random and weirdly-timed doctors’ appointments, but this time she, apparently, planned to stay.
He’d done an impressive job so far, but he couldn’t avoid her forever it seemed.
Their paths would soon cross again, and he wasn’t sure what that would do to him considering how he’d reacted to the mere mention of her name, how his heart sped up and his hairs stood on end.
He could only surmise it would not be good.
What spell had she cast on him that, after all this time, he couldn’t shake the ache in his chest when he thought of her?
That he couldn’t look around rooms, including this bar that he’d given a complete revamp of over the past year, and feel like he was surrounded by the ghosts of their younger selves.
The corner booth, where a naive version of himself had sat, staring into the eyes of a girl he thought might just give him a chance. The small patch of floor space in front of the band-stand where they’d swung around, happy and dancing with friends. But all he'd seen was her.
Alex snapped his head away, forcing his eyes to stop their travels before they sent him any further down memory lane. Because it was a slippery slope, and he knew it.
Last night, when Ryan said he was bringing Noa to the bar to ‘get her mind off things’, Alex quickly developed a plan.
If all his efforts to avoid her failed, he would simply act…
detached. Unfazed. Like this was no different to any other day.
He’d be the perfect portrait of the town fuckboy. Yes. He could do that, couldn’t he?
She’d no doubt heard of his reputation around town. Ryan wasn’t one to keep his mouth shut, after all, and the two of them kept no secrets.
Well, except one.
It’s not like it was that far from the truth anyway.
Alex wasn’t ashamed that he enjoyed the company of a woman in his bed, but that’s all it ever was.
He just couldn’t find it in him to commit to one for longer than a few nights.
He had never wanted to, not since Noa. Now, he was a no-strings-attached kind of guy.
It was easier that way. That way people couldn’t leave him like they’d always had a habit of doing.
He’d learnt that at a young age thanks to his dear old dad.
Or, technically, just his sperm donor, for all he’d been involved in Alex’s life.
Noa knew this about him, too, and he would charm the pants off as many women as it took to make both her and him believe that he simply didn’t care .
You never know, maybe he would have some fun trying.
He loved to fuck, so this didn’t sound like the worst plan in the world.
And, luckily for him, owning a bar in a town that attracted tourists meant beautiful women were never in short supply.
So, there was nothing in his plan that could go wrong.
And, in the end, maybe that one night eight years ago, and the decade of memories before that, really would mean nothing.
The dartboard currently hanging across the room taunted Alex with the memory of Noa and him huddled under it before he asked her to come home with him. Damn his wishful thinking.
A short blonde walked past him then, drawing his eyes in her direction with the clicking of heels on the varnished wood floors.
The slick mahogany that now covered The Brew triggered memories of his fingers tangled in glossy brunette waves—a dangerous train of thought he cut short before he got lost in the memories again.
He refocussed himself on the woman clearly vying for his attention.
She was pretty in a way he would usually be attracted to when he wasn’t so distracted.
He hadn’t seen her before and presumed she was another tourist. She strutted toward the bar, waggling her fingers in a seductive wave as she went past the booth.
But, at the batting of her fake eyelashes, all he could do was compare them to a natural beauty who, once again, took over his thoughts.
Alex ignored the blonde, slamming his hands down harder than strictly necessary as he moved to standing, his frustration simmering and threatening to boil. He needed to get himself together.
Maybe he’d see Noa, the spell would be lifted at last, and he could finally move on with his life.
Maybe her time away had changed her. Maybe she wasn’t the stunning and completely magnetising girl he remembered, the girl who he’d feel safe to bare his soul, to spill every secret about his messed-up life as a kid knowing she’d never judge him.
No, that was then, and this was now. All he needed was to see her and he would realise that.
He kept that thought at the forefront of his mind as he busied himself wiping tables, whistling along to ‘Piano Man’ currently being sung by his regular, Albert.
He smiled at a group of older women who owned businesses around town.
Sarah Kingsley, the owner of the local bookshop, gave him a warm smile back as the other women enjoyed the music.
Watching them holler enthusiastically at Albert as he swung his hips back and forth on stage made Alex laugh, and his chest suddenly felt lighter again.
This town had always been here for him through the good and the bad.
But as the sway of rich mahogany hair caught his eye in his periphery—the same shade of mahogany as his newly refurbished bar—that thought caught in his throat.
He cleared it with a cough, and she turned to look at him, her beautiful bright blue eyes locking with his.
Her glossy and perfectly plump lips dropped open, and it was then that he knew he was well and truly fucked.
With nothing but a curt nod in her direction, he turned quickly on his heel, making a beeline for the safety of his office—somewhere Noa Drake was not.
S ince that awkward face-to-face, Alex had been working or maybe just hiding in the back office for the last hour.
But he knew he couldn’t hide in there forever.
So, he ventured back out into the main bar area with hopes of finding the blonde he’d ignored earlier to sweet-talk her into forgiving his rudeness.
He needed to find a way to put some space between him and Noa without making things so obviously awkward, a way to stifle his thoughts and keep a purely platonic relationship with her for fear of being a shitty friend.
Guilt gnawed at him. He knew he was already a shittier friend than Ryan deserved for the less-than-savoury thoughts he was having about his best friend’s sister since she’d stepped foot in his bar an hour earlier like she belonged there.
Not only that, but for the secret he’d kept from him for all these years.
He’d always wanted to come clean to Ryan about what happened that night but, despite Noa’s insistence to keep it a secret hurting him, he respected and cared for her too much to break that promise.
He also knew Ryan would read him immediately and know that he’d wanted it to be so much more than one night. He couldn’t have risked that.
Ryan had warned Alex off his sister when they were teens, early on in their friendship, and he wasn’t naive enough to think Ryan would jump up and down with joy at the prospect of him and his sister.
They’d also both entertained their fair share of women over the years, with Alex earning his reputation as a non-monogamist. Ryan had made comments in jest about ‘pitying the girl who tried to get him to settle down’, and despite the joke in which they were intended, they’d made it perfectly obvious how Ryan would feel if he thought he was ever pursuing his little sister.
Ryan was more like a brother to Alex, his parents like second parents, and that alone made her off-limits. He just wished his dick, and more importantly his heart, would get that very important message .
The Drakes lived across the street from Alex growing up.
His family life was never like the other kids in school.
His dad knocked his mum up when she was seventeen, after only a few months of them dating.
His mum said he tried to stick around but, in the end, he just wasn’t cut out to be a dad.
When Alex was five, he just left, like it was a fucking opt-out programme.