Chapter 2
Kevin
Earlier that same night
The second I shoved the bar door open, the slap of hot grease and cheap beer punched me straight in the face. My stomach growled loud enough to file a complaint. I hadn’t eaten since that sad turkey sandwich at lunch.
“Doc,” Jackson called without looking up, already pouring. “Nice of you to finally grace us with your presence.”
I slid onto the last open stool. Around here, that counted as hello.
“The usual?” he asked.
“And the heart-attack burger you keep pretending isn’t a crime against nutrition.”
His grin flashed quick and crooked. “It’s got lettuce. That’s basically a vegetable. I’m basically a hero.”
Even with the place three-deep and yelling for drinks, he set my beer down first. The guy two stools over looked personally offended. Nobody else got the Jackson Special Treatment.
“Jackson!” some asshole bellowed from the far end.
“Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on,” he shot back, pointing the bar rag at me as he moved past. “Food’s coming, Kev. Don’t pass out.”
He moved off fast, easy as ever, working the room like this was the only place he’d ever wanted to be. Half the town watched him because he owned the place. I watched because I knew the difference between busy and running on fumes.
By the time he made it back, the place went fully loud. He was still smiling for people, but he wiped the same strip of counter twice, and there was a pull at the side of his face I didn’t like.
I took a drink. “Looks like you finally got your crowd.”
He gave a short snort. “That supposed to sound supportive, or are you threatening me?”
I glanced around. “It’s a good problem.”
His mouth eased, smaller this time but real. “Six months of barely breaking even, and now I can’t hear myself think. Beautiful.”
“It is.” I set my glass down. “You look like shit, though.”
“Busy,” he said.
“That’s not better.”
A breath of a laugh slipped out of him. “You here to eat or evaluate me?”
“Both.”
“Christ.” He shook his head once. “Why are we friends again?”
“Because I’m patient.”
That made him look at me. “Nobody’s ever used that word for you.”
That got a smile out of me anyway. “Did Bill at least see the crowd before he started in?”
Jackson’s expression flattened.
“He saw it.” His voice dropped. He picked up a clean glass and dried the same spot twice.
“Still says it’s temporary. Says I’ll end up exactly where I was always headed.
Another townie with big ideas and nothing to show for them.
” His grip tightened around the glass. “Said Melissa figured that out before I did. That if she left, maybe I should’ve taken the hint and stuck to bartending for somebody else. ”
My hand closed harder around the beer. “He’s wrong.”
Jackson set the glass down with a sharp clink that cut through the noise for half a second. “He still thinks I’m the same fuck-up who let Melissa walk.”
“Look at me when you say that,” I told him.
For a second he said nothing. The room kept moving around us. Somebody laughing too loud, a ticket slapping up in the kitchen, the low hum of people wanting something from him.
Then he reached for the next glass, body gone completely still.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rough and quiet. “We’ll fucking see.”
***
Haley set my plate in front of me, steam still rising off the burger.
“For you, handsome.”
She said it like a joke. It wasn’t.
“Thanks.”
She stayed leaned against the bar. “I get off at midnight, in case you’re still here.”
Any other night, maybe I would’ve softened it. I was tired, hungry, and too wrung out to fake interest I didn’t feel.
“I probably won’t be.”
Her expression shifted — mouth tightening, then smoothing out before I could read it. “Your loss, doctor.”
She headed back toward the kitchen.
Jackson dropped onto the stool beside me like he’d been waiting for that exact answer.
“You ever gonna stop doing that?”
“Doing what?”
He tipped his chin toward the kitchen. “Shutting down women who make your life easy.”
“I like my life quiet.”
He laughed. “No, you like work. There’s a difference.”
I took a bite of my burger and let him keep talking.
He stole a fry off my plate. “Smith’s back this week. There goes your clinic excuse.”
“I don’t need an excuse.”
“Sure.” He took a pull from his beer. “You work, you sleep, you sit at my bar, and somehow that counts as living.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Body, yes.”
I gave him a look.
That only made him grin. “I’m just saying, six months ago I would’ve called this a phase. Now I’m starting to think Stacy did a number on you.”
“Stacy’s gone,” I said. “That’s the good news.”
“Still sounds personal.”
“It isn’t.”
He watched me for a second, then slid off the stool when somebody at the other end of the bar called his name.
I finally got to eat in peace.
The burger was good enough that I was already thinking about ordering another one to take home when Jackson, a few stools down, said, “Well. That’s a problem.”
I looked up.
A woman came through the door with her phone still in one hand, dark hair loose over her shoulders. The lace of her top registered a second later. What hit first was everything wrong around it.
She looked tired in the way people did when they were running on nerve and spite. Mouth set tight. Shoulders locked. She paused just inside the door and scanned the room once, quick and flat, like she was measuring exits.
Someone had held the door for her. I didn’t catch more than a work jacket and boots before they were gone.
A low sound came from the pool table.
“Don’t,” Jackson said.
He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t have to.
The room settled.
She crossed to the back corner and took the small table by the wall. No smile, no hesitation, nothing to make herself easy to have around. She sat like she was holding herself together by hand.
I kept looking.
Not because everyone else had. Because she looked like she’d come in wearing the last clean layer of control she had left.
Haley went over to take her order. The woman said something short without opening the menu. Haley nodded and walked off. On her way back, she caught me looking toward the table.
Her expression didn’t change. That was what made me notice it.
Jackson came back to my side long enough to follow my line of sight.
“You don’t even know her name,” he said.
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“She’s not from here.”
“No chance.”
Haley dropped a beer and a basket of fries at the woman’s table. She got through half the beer in three pulls and barely touched the food.
She was beautiful. That part was obvious.
But beauty wasn’t why I kept watching. It was the way she drank like she was trying to get somewhere fast. The way her hand stayed around the bottle even after she set it down.
The way she stared at nothing for a beat too long before she stood and came to the bar.
The closer she got, the clearer the strain became. Good makeup couldn’t hide that kind of day. It only made the effort show more.
She slid onto the stool beside mine.
I should’ve looked away.
I didn’t.
She turned and caught me.
“Didn’t anybody teach you staring is rude?”
Flat. Dry. Not embarrassed in the slightest.
I liked that immediately.
“They did,” I said. “I seem to be having a lapse.”
One corner of her mouth shifted.
I lifted my beer slightly. “Let me make up for it. What are you drinking?”
Her gaze moved over me, unhurried and sharp enough to feel.
“I can buy my own drink, pretty boy.”
That should have annoyed me. It didn’t.
“I figured,” I said. “Offer still stands.”
She looked past me toward the back bar.
“Hey,” she called to Jackson. “Give me a bottle of your best whiskey.”
Jackson glanced over. His eyes flicked to me for a second before he reached for the top shelf.
“A bottle?” he asked.
“That’s what I said.”
He brought it over and set it on the bar in front of her. “Rough night?”
She laughed once, with no humor in it.
“Rough year.”
Jackson rested a hand on the bar. “That bad?”
She looked at the bottle, then at him.
“My ex was screwing some woman from his gym while I was working doubles at Denny’s to help with rent,” she said. “So, yeah. Let’s call it a rough year.”
Nothing in her voice asked for sympathy. If anything, it warned against it.
Jackson winced. “Yeah. That’ll do it.”
My hand tightened around my beer.
The attraction was still there, hot and immediate, but it had shifted under something heavier. She put her palm over the whiskey bottle like she meant to drink straight from it and punish herself for having the nerve to care about any of it.
I heard myself say, “You might want a glass.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
There it was again. Interest. Challenge. The faint suggestion that she might bite if I got too close.
“Are you always this helpful,” she asked, “or am I just having a very special night?”
“Too soon to tell.”
She held my gaze another beat, then let out a breath through her nose that was almost a laugh.
Haley set a rocks glass on the bar between us.
Smooth face, controlled hands and silent.
She poured herself a glass and set the bottle down. “I’m Lauren, by the way. Since you’ve been staring at me for an hour, you might as well know my name.”
“Kevin.” I lifted my beer.
She gave me a look that said she already knew I was trouble.
I took the bottle before she could tip it up, poured two fingers into the glass, and slid it toward her.
For a second, nobody said anything.
Lauren looked at the glass, then at me.
Across the bar, Jackson went still enough that I felt it.
Haley turned and walked away.
I’d meant it as a small thing but it didn’t feel small once I’d done it.
***
By the time the clock over the bar dragged toward midnight, the place had finally thinned.
The after-work crowd was gone. The loud ones had burned down to a few guys at the pool table and Tommy, who’d been hovering just shy of unbearable for the last hour.
Jackson wiped the far end of the bar with the kind of focus that meant he was exhausted and refusing to admit it.
I should’ve left twenty minutes ago.