Chapter 57
Fifty-Seven
NOW | JAX
Matt glances over. “You good?”
“Fine.”
I am not fine. Everything around me is normal: the sounds, the smells, the low-grade misery. Everything is the same, but I feel different.
I’m hyper-aware of every fucking shift of my denim. Every time my jeans drag across me, my whole body lights up. My cock hasn’t relaxed since I left the shop. It’s a constant, throbbing reminder of the choice I made.
I reach for a glass on the top shelf and immediately regret it, not with pain but with a sensitivity so acute it knocks half a breath out of me. The fabric pulls when I stretch and my whole body locks up. I set the glass down hard.
Matt watches me. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
Good question. Should I tell him I let my father sterilize me this morning so I don’t accidentally knock up the woman I love and hand a kid over to the evil hole under this city? Or that I can’t move two inches without getting hard like a goddamn teenager? Yeah. That’ll go over great.
I grab the whiskey bottle instead and take a long pull.
“Just tired,” I mutter.
Matt snorts. “Yeah. You look real tired.”
I ignore him and flex my hand behind the bar. The seam in my palm warms.
Out of nowhere, the lights fucking die, one second the room’s lit and the next it’s black. Not cozy-dark, underground dark.
Someone swears. “What the hell was that?”
“Well that’s fuckin’ ominous,” another voice says.
A chair scrapes.
“I’m on it,” Matt says from my left.
I don’t answer because my palm is burning, and I know this isn’t the wiring, or the generator or even the grid. It’s me.
From the back, someone laughs—a nervous, trying-too-hard sound. “Yo… this that haunted-bar shit you warned me about?”
“Man,” another guy says, “I told you this place is cursed.”
“Shut the fuck up,” someone rasps.
A glass shatters as someone slams into the bar. “Guess drinks are free now!”
I hear movement near the entrance and the handle rattles. “Hey—fuck. It’s locked,” says the guy who’s been bragging all night about knowing how this city works.
A second later, more footsteps crowd the door. “No, seriously—it’s not opening.” The metal rattles harder.
A barstool screeches across the floor. “What the fuck, Jax?”
I can’t pay attention to them because as I flex my hand, the seam splits open and warm wetness slides across my palm.
Fuck.
“Relax,” I bark into the dark. “It’s old wiring. Lights’ll be back in a second. Now quit panicking and push the damn door.”
I curl my fist fast, hiding it below the counter, but the tar pushes outward anyway—thick, slow, alive—threading between my fingers like it wants air.
“Enough,” I hiss, and usually that works, usually it listens in here, but instead the pressure builds and my heartbeat syncs with it.
Someone kicks the door. Another drunk genius grabs a chair. “Move—I got it!”
I hear the wood slamming against the steel. The impact echoes and every sound drills into my skull.
I shift, and my denim zipper drags, sending a sharp, unwelcome pulse through me. Bad timing. Real bad fucking timing. My cock hardens. My palm leaks, and the tar surges.
I see it clearly in the dark. Thin black veins stretch from my hand across the floorboards, sliding under tables, under shoes, reaching unnoticed.
A man near the window jerks suddenly, his hand flying to his throat. He lets out a choking cough.
“What—hey—you good?” the guy who joked about the curse says, and he’s not laughing anymore.
I can see the tar wrapping slow around his neck, tightening like a patient rope. Someone near him squints toward me. “Look—”
Another voice whispers, too low but I hear it. “His eyes…”
I blink hard, the tar tightens and the choking gets worse. A glass explodes somewhere, and then, from upstairs, I hear a bark. My entire body blinks in awareness. Scotch.
All I hear is Sisk’s voice in my head from a hundred nights ago. I slam my palm flat against the bar. “Stop.” The word tears out of me like a command. The tar recoils instantly. It snaps back through bone and nerve like something yanked on a chain.
The man sinks to his knees, sucking air like he ran a mile.
My fist clenches hard and the tar tries to push outward anyway daring me. I feel the urge to let it go. To let it crawl up their legs. To remind everyone exactly why voices drop when I walk in.
I repeat to myself: Scotch. Scotch. Scotch. Stop. Control. I drag it every inch back until pain detonates up my arm like something ripping through tendon.
The door unlocks as the lights slam back on. Everyone freezes, blinking and disoriented, then people start talking all at once, arguments rising immediately.
“City grid’s fucked—”
“Told you this block’s cursed—”
Every sound drills straight into my skull.
I want them gone. All of them.
I check the clock behind the bar. 1:19.
She should’ve been here by now; it’s way too late to still be practicing or teaching.
I tell myself not to start, because Sisk hates when I hover, says I look at her like she’s glass.
She hates being checked on, hates feeling watched, says freedom matters, that she needs space to breathe.
I understand that. I don’t trust this city to let her have it.
She’s always been like that—brave in ways that border reckless, walking home alone, taking late trains, smiling at danger like she’s untouchable.
I love her for it, and I hate her for it.
If it were up to me, she’d never step foot outside my apartment after dark, not because I don’t trust her, but because I know exactly what lives here.
I glance toward the door again. Still nothing.
Maybe she needs a car; the train’s unreliable anyway, with too many stops, too many people, and too many chances for something to go wrong before I even know where to start looking.
I could save for one, eventually, but the thought turns sour fast. Bar ownership sounds impressive until you count the actual numbers—repairs, licenses, staff, inventory, taxes bleeding you dry before profit ever shows up.
Growing up, money was never something I thought about. Now every broken faucet and late delivery reminds me exactly what I can’t give her.
I wipe the same spot again.
1:42.
Matt starts stacking stools. “You closing soon?”
“Yeah.”
My eyes drift back to the fucking door, and I tell myself I need to learn not to worry about her every second, that she’s capable, that she chose this city too, but it doesn’t help. I blame the surgery, the piercings, the adrenaline—anything but the truth.
It’s almost two, and she’s still not here.
I exhale through my nose and start kicking people out. “Closing,” I bark. “Finish up.”
A couple groans, someone laughs, and the room empties slower than I’d like, every minute dragging.
People are enjoying themselves, and for some reason that pisses me off more than anything.
They’re relaxed, drinking, flirting, existing like Tar City isn’t chewing people up daily and spitting them back out different, like nothing waits under the ground, like nothing is waiting to take what’s mine.
I look at the clock again. 2:03.
And right before I decide to tear the city apart to find her, the door opens, letting in a slice of cold air before she walks in like nothing happened. Her spine is straight, her shoulders loose, every step controlled without looking controlled, like she’s still on stage even when there isn’t one.
The neon outside catches her as she steps in, bleeding red and blue across her skin as the door shuts behind her.
Her hair is twisted up messily, and my hoodie hangs fully unzipped, revealing the bruises I left behind.
My cock goes hard immediately, and suddenly I’m aware of every man still in the room looking up, staring at her legs, at the way the hoodie barely hides anything, at the skin I marked, at something that belongs to me. They either forgot whose bar this is or they’re volunteering to die in it.
A guy near the dartboard whistles. I move, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him off his stool. “Time to go.”
“Whoa—man, I’m finishing my—”
“No,” I say evenly, steering him toward the door. “You’re not.”
The room goes quiet fast. Nobody argues when I sound like that. Chairs scrape, people suddenly remember coats, and tabs get thrown down unfinished. Someone complains, “Damn, alright,” like they just realized the vibe changed without knowing why.
I shove the door open and start funneling bodies through it, one after another. The last guy hesitates, looks past me toward her again. My grip tightens on the doorframe. “Out.”
The door slams shut and the lock clicks. This time on purpose.
I glance toward the hallway. Empty. Matt’s jacket’s gone. Good. We’re alone.
I turn back to her. “Where the hell have you been?” I snap.