Chapter Three
The bar was running hot by the time Amara slid a few pints across the top for some boys at the other side, hips brushing the counter as she moved. Lainey grinned at her, the other bartender—tall, blonde, curves poured into denim, all drawl and hair-flip—and spun around.
Folks in Calhoun thought Lainey Claiborne was just another barroom beauty, but Amara knew better.
Lainey’s mind was sharp as a whip under all that glitter.
And boy did Lainey keep the nights interesting.
Amara nodded along, half listening. She was focused, worked fast. Neon buzzed, ice clinked, sweat-stained bills slapped wood.
She fell into rhythm easy—pouring drafts, mixing whiskey with Coke, keeping one eye on the drunks getting loud at the pool table.
Amara didn’t see him at first. Not head-on. Just a shadow in the far corner, half-buried in the dark, hat brim low. Something in her chest stuttered, but she wrote it off as residual fight-or-flight anxiety.
Don’t be him. Please don’t be him.
But of course it was.
Another round, another double-take. And good lord—the man who’d shattered her young heart was sitting there, as if a decade hadn’t just happened.
Ethan Kane.
Older now. Harder. His face carved leaner, skin weathered from sun and war.
The boy-soldier who once sat at her daddy’s table had been replaced by a man built of sharp edges and silence.
Beard rough, hair longer than she remembered, curling under his hat.
And that scar, slashing across his jaw like a line drawn permanent between who he’d been and who he’d become.
Amara kept working, relentless, even scrubbing down glasses that were already clean.
Anything to keep herself locked in, busy as hell, and unable to look at Ethan.
But her eyes caught glimpses when she turned this way and that, an unfortunate disobedience and clear disconnect of her brain with her heart.
He hadn’t changed in the ways that mattered—jaw set like stone, shoulders broad enough to block out the light, a kind of stillness that wasn’t peace so much as coiled wire. The mirror behind the bar caught his reflection, his eyes heavy with things she’d never seen but somehow always felt.
Now, slicing a lime, she forced her hands steady, even as her pulse went rabbit-fast. If he was gonna play ghost, then so was she.
Until, finally, Lainey had a break, and Amara was left manning the bar. Alone. And someone had an empty glass.
Amara took a deep breath, and she pasted on the same smile she gave every stranger who wandered through Calhoun County looking like trouble.
“Need a top-up?” She leaned his way, voice steady, sweet as sassafras. “Something else?”
His gaze lifted, slow. Gravel in his throat when he spoke. “Nah, I’m good.”
She arched a brow. “You come to a bar for coffee?”
“Comes in a whiskey glass,” he said, low and rough. “Makes it easier to swallow.”
The corner of her mouth tugged—not a smile, not quite. “Guess we can do that. Long as you pay cash.”
He said nothing, but grinned, flashing those perfect whites that hadn’t changed at all. He lifted his glass, eyes on her over the rim. Something in the way he looked at her made her skin prickle, like standing too close to a storm.
For a heartbeat too long, their eyes locked. Dangerous, charged. Neither of them giving up the game.
Amara thanked the good lord silently when Lainey called at her from the other side of the bar. Back from break—and some of the fellas were getting rowdy. Amara was quick to respond.
“Hey, darlin’.” A shadow slouched into Amara’s space, elbow thunking down hard enough to rattle the bottles behind her.
The man was broad through the chest, belly pushing against his pearl-snap shirt, the kind of local who mistook volume for charm. She knew his type—had grown up sidestepping them like potholes.
“Pour me somethin’ sweet,” he drawled, leaning too close. “And maybe one of those smiles you’re wastin’ on strangers.”
Amara didn’t flinch. She’d learned long ago the trick of turning her mouth into a blade. “Boy,” she said, already reaching for the cheapest whiskey, “this smile comes with a tab you can’t afford.”
A laugh rippled from the pool table, the man’s buddies egging him on. He grinned wider, undeterred.
That’s when a shadow at the other side of the bar moved.
Ethan.
It wasn’t much—just set his glass down slow, straightened in his seat. But the air shifted sharp, like thunder rolling in ahead of a storm. His reflection in the mirror caught Amara’s eye—shoulders squaring, jaw tightening, gaze locked not on the drunk but on her, as if asking without words.
Her pulse tripped, but she held his stare. No.
The drunk didn’t notice the silent duel. “Come on now, sweetheart,” he pressed, voice edging rough. “Don’t play hard to get.” He reached over the bar, fingers twitching toward hers.
Ethan’s voice cut in, low and clean as a rifle shot. “She said no.”
Every head near the bar turned. The drunk froze, eyes flicking to the dark corner where Ethan sat. The hat brim lifted just enough to show the line of his scar, the weight in his eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” the man barked, trying for bravado but coming up short.
Ethan didn’t blink. Didn’t raise his voice. “Just somebody who don’t like reachin’ hands where they don’t belong.”
The silence stretched taut. Amara’s breath caught, heart skidding somewhere between fury and something hotter. She wanted to roll her eyes, tell them both to knock it off. She wanted to lean in and whisper thanks.
Instead, she slid the drunk’s drink across the bar with a smile sharp as broken glass. “Here’s your pour. Now take it and move along before you embarrass yourself further.”
The man hesitated, muttered something ugly under his breath, then slunk back toward the pool table, buddies jeering half-heartedly.
Amara turned, rag snapping against the counter as she wiped. “You always make friends this easy?”
Ethan picked up his glass again, eyes never leaving hers. A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth—dangerous, unreadable. This time, the game was up.
For one heartbeat, the whole bar faded—the speaker, the laughter, the stink of beer and sweat. Just him, her, and a charge that refused to break.
She chewed her lip, not really registering someone calling her name and then the sound of a beer glass shattering.
Not really seeing anything either that the way his eyes wrinkled as he gave her that half-grin, broken and saved, cowboy kind of look.
A second glass shattering finally pulled her away, had her realizing that mayhem was close to breaking out at the pool table. And then at the bar top. And then with some guys arguing with Lainey over the bill.
She turned back and saw Ethan standing up, tall and square, throwing cash down before he turned away. He was leaving.
Tears welled, though she didn’t know why.
She clenched her jaw.
Anything, anywhere, she focused on, anywhere but the dark corner of the bar where some ghost of her past had been.
* * * *
Four hours and half a shift later, Amara’s smile stayed painted on, but inside she was shaking. Not from fear. From fury.
Daddy was dead. Folded flag, closed casket, Marines in their pressed blues firing shots over the grave. The Corps had carved him up and left her mama hollowed, left her holding land she never asked for, debts stacked higher than the silo.
She remembered the way Daddy had beamed—finally a reason for his service, finally proof the sacrifice meant something. A farm of their own.
But where was that meaning now?
Calhoun County was preparing for another funeral. Another Marine. Another man who’d gotten caught up in something that cost him his life.
She needed distance. She needed this damn day to be over and to wake up and get back to normal.
“Lainey!” she called over the thrum of music. “Cover me for a few?”
Lainey’s eyes flicked around, then back to her, a sly smile curving. “Sure thing, sugar. Go breathe.”
Amara muttered her thanks, grabbed the sweating glass she’d poured for herself—Tennessee whiskey over ice, amber as the sky at dusk—and slipped through the back door.
The night air hit her, heavy and humid, hotter than the bar itself. The old gravel lot stretched dark and empty, only the glow of neon bleeding through the warped wood slats.
She leaned against the wall, pressed the glass to her lips, and let the whiskey hit her throat hot, chasing down the knot in her chest.
“Figured I’d find you hidin’ back here.”
Her eyes snapped open. A figure stepped out from the glow of the lot’s lone floodlight. Broad, ballcap pulled low, plaid shirt rolled at the sleeves, revealing his full tattoos. Riley Wilson Brock.
Brock, as everyone called him.
He’d been the core of her pack once—rodeo nights, creek swims, bonfires that burned till sunrise. The kind of friend who knew where she stashed her first cigarettes and who held her steady when she got too high and couldn’t come down.
Now he was the one keeping her daddy’s soybeans alive.
Cash-cropping the fields since spring, running the tractors she didn’t have the hours or the will for.
Brock’s family had been farming this land alongside the Jameses for three generations, and when her daddy passed that September, Brock was the one who’d stepped in without being asked.
“How’s the pump holdin’?” he asked, voice easy but laced with concern.
Amara took another sip, eyes on the dark horizon. “Still chokin’ on silt. I patched it, but it won’t last. Might need a new line before frost.”
Brock whistled low. “That’s a job and a half. Ain’t right you havin’ to carry all that yourself.”
She shrugged, though the weight of it pressed on her shoulders all the same. “Mama can’t. She barely leaves the house these days. And since, well…” Her throat tightened. She tipped the glass, let the whiskey finish the sentence.
Brock stepped closer, boots crunching gravel. “It’s been what? Two months now?”
“Almost three.”
He nodded, jaw working. “Ain’t no timeline for grief, I know that. But you don’t have to white-knuckle all this alone, Amara. Just say the word.”
She glanced up at him then, saw the earnest in his eyes, the kind of loyalty that didn’t ask for anything back. Brock wasn’t a storm. Brock was roots.
And yet all she could see was the shadow still sitting in the corner of the bar, watching her like a ghost with a pulse.
She exhaled sharp, pushed off the wall, and gave Brock a half-smile. “I know. And I’m grateful. Really. Just wish he hadn’t left me with a war I never signed up for.”
Brock tipped his hat, eyes soft. “That’s the thing about wars. They don’t much care who gets enlisted.”
Amara’s chest tightened again. She tipped the glass back, drained the last of the whiskey, and wished the burn was enough to numb it all. She glanced up.
Brock met her eyes. “I heard he’s back.”
She froze, tightening her grip on the glass. Her chest hammered.
Brock didn’t push. He stepped closer, arms open wide as he wrapped her in one of those big bear hugs she used to tumble into when nightmares chased her as a child. His shoulder pressed to hers.
She wanted to stiffen, to pull away, but the memory of every comfort he’d ever offered held her too tight. She inhaled the scent of earth and sweat, of someone anchored in soil.
“You okay?” Brock asked, voice rough at the edges.
She swallowed. “I will be.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her. “Want me to bury a body for you?”
Amara laughed, letting out that kind of ugly snort you only can do with your closest friends.
They shared a beat of silence, and then she exhaled, finally.
“My father didn’t just die, Brock,” she whispered, voice raw, “he was fucking murdered. I know it. You know it. And no one’s done a damned thing about it.”
The words tore out of her like barbed wire. Her chest heaved, emotions burning all the way down, burning worse when she started crying.
“Baby, I know.” Brock nodded slow—that soft, steady nod of his, like he thought he could understand the whole damn wreckage with a tilt of his chin. “You know, I know. But we’ll figure this out.”
She spun, facing him. “No. We aren’t kids anymore, sneakin’ out to creek banks, drunk on stolen beers and the thought that life will just be okay.
I’m not just that wild Scorpio everyone thought would fly someday.
I’m twenty-eight, broke twice over, stuck between a grieving mama who’ll barely climb out of bed and a house half-framed on a ridge that was supposed to save me but now looks like my own damn gallows. ”
Brock let her slip out of his arms, watching her, steady as fence posts, contractor’s hands that could fix most anything. Anything but her.
“I know what you’re carrying,” Brock said, voice lowered. “Six months of hammerin’, me right beside you. Watched you bleed every paycheck onto that frame, watched you keep that dream alive when no one else would. I know it ain’t easy.”
“Stop,” she snapped, throat hot, eyes sharper than she meant. “I can’t.”
He flinched but didn’t back down. “Fuck that. When I say we’ll figure it out—I goddamn mean it. Someone will answer for your father’s death.”
Her eyes burned toward the ridge. The skeleton of the house cut against the sky, windows hollow, boards yawning wide like missing teeth. Her salvation, her debt, her daddy’s ghost hammered into every nail.
The words slipped out before she could stop them, brittle and ugly.
“I can’t even pay you for this past month, Brock.
” Her voice cracked. “I’m out of money. Out of time.
Mama keeps tellin’ me I should just quit, move back in, take the damn farm like it’s my birthright.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should just…accept it.
” Her face twisted, tears hot and furious.
Brock stepped in before she could crumble further, arms wide, pulling her against his chest in a bear hug that smelled like sweat, earth and safety.
She stiffened, fists pounding once against him before her strength broke. The whiskey glass shook in her hand, ice clattering. Then she sagged against him, shoulders shaking, grief ripping through her in shuddered breaths.
“I’m drowning,” she whispered into his shirt, voice ragged. “I don’t know how to get out.”
Brock pressed his chin to her hair, voice low, certain.
“You don’t quit, Mara. You don’t give in.
That house ain’t just wood and nails. It’s you.
And I’ll keep showin’ up ‘til the last shingle’s on, money or not.
Don’t tell me different. We finish the house.
We avenge your daddy. We get you back on your own two feet. Consider it fucking done.”
But she couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at the house. Couldn’t look at anything but the dark horizon where ghosts waited, one damn mistake away from burning her whole goddamn world down.