Chapter 19
Samantha
Bella drove the way she argued in court: precise, fast, and with total disregard for anyone who was not ready.
She pulled up at eight on the dot in her black Audi, music already loud enough that I could hear it through the closed windows, and tapped the horn once. A sharp prosecutorial summons disguised as a car horn.
I came out in the jeans and black top she had specifically forbidden me from wearing. She looked at me through the passenger window, sunglasses low, assessment complete in under two seconds.
“I said don’t wear emotional body armor.”
“This is my going-out top.”
“This is your hiding top. There’s a difference.” She unlocked the door. “Get in. We’re going somewhere with music, questionable lighting, and men who don’t play hockey.”
I got in. The music wrapped around me, something from the late 2000s, unapologetic and loud, the soundtrack of a woman who had decided tonight was going to happen whether I cooperated or not.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere you haven’t been sad yet.”
“I’m not sad.”
She shot me a look over her sunglasses, the kind of look cross-examined witnesses probably saw right before they changed their testimony.
“Samantha.”
“What?”
“You texted me asking if my offer to send a detective still stood. That’s not not sad. That’s pre-criminal.”
I rested my head against the window, watching the city pass by: storefronts, a bakery shutting for the night, and a busy taqueria illuminated by a neon beer sign. Pedestrians went about their lives, unaffected by the need for a quick kiss or the weight of public shame.
“Tell me what happened,” Bella said, softer now. The prosecutor’s voice was gone. Just her.
So I told her.
The snap. The silence. His voice was cold and wrong, unlike anything I had seen from him before.
The room doing that hockey thing, where twenty men pretended not to stare while feeling every shift in pressure anyway.
Me keeping my camera up because that was the only thing I knew how to do when the ground moved.
Bella listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she was quiet for a full block. Then she exhaled, the controlled breath of a woman organizing her thoughts.
“You’re not wrong to be hurt,” she said. “And you’re not wrong to pull back. Both of those things are true.”
“But.”
“No but. That’s the whole sentence.” She turned down the music. “You are allowed to be hurt, Sam. Full stop. You don’t need a reason, and you don’t need to justify it by comparing it to what happened with Case Whitfield. This thing hurt on its own terms. You’re allowed to feel that.”
The hurt had landed in a shape my body already knew, but I was not the person Case had left three years ago.
The bar she had chosen sat on the far end of the St. Mary’s Strip, far enough off the Stampede player circuit that no one in the room looked like they spent their winters under arena lights. That alone told me this had been strategic.
It was loud and warm, smelling like hops and poor decisions.
A live band in the corner played something country-adjacent, and between sets the jukebox offered the kind of mix only San Antonio would put together: Tejano, George Strait, then something in Spanish with accordion that made two women at the bar sing along without looking at each other.
A girl worked the room with hand-stamped flyers for a show the next weekend tucked into her bra strap, which was both practical and deeply unsanitary.
The crowd skewed young enough to make me feel experienced and old enough to make me feel relevant.
The lighting made everyone look fifteen percent more attractive than they deserved.
Bella installed us in a booth, ordered two drinks without consulting me, and arranged herself like she was settling in for a deposition that happened to have a drink menu.
“Okay,” she said. “New rule. For the next two hours, we do not say the name Evan McKinney. We do not say, Mr. Sunshine. We do not discuss hockey, photography, or any man whose primary form of communication is controlled silence.”
“That’s a lot of rules.”
“I’m a lawyer. Rules are my love language.”
The drinks arrived. I took a sip. The warmth spread through my chest, not healing anything, just taking the edge off the cold that had been sitting there since yesterday.
We talked. Not about Evan.
About Bella’s new case, something involving embezzlement and a man who had hidden money inside a taxidermized moose.
About the restaurant she had discovered at the Pearl that served the best tamales she had eaten outside her grandmother’s kitchen.
About the condo she was furnishing with estate-sale pieces because, according to Bella, new furniture had no character and she refused to live somewhere that looked like a hotel lobby.
I laughed. Actually laughed. The sound surprised me. It came out rougher than usual, like it had to push past something to get free, but it was real.
A man materialized at the edge of our booth. Good smile. Easy confidence. The kind that came from either genuine self-assurance or a careful avoidance of introspection.
“Hey,” he said, directing his attention at me with a warmth that felt unearned but not unwelcome. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say you look incredible tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m Noah.”
“Samantha.”
Bella kicked me under the table with the subtlety of a freight train.
“He’s cute,” she whispered when Noah went to get us drinks we had not asked for. “And breathing. You owe the other one nothing.”
Noah came back. He was easy to talk to, the kind of man who asked questions and actually listened to the answers. Marketing. New to San Antonio. Liked live music and thought the breakfast-taco debate between San Antonio and Austin was the most important constitutional crisis of our time.
I flirted.
Just enough to remember I still could.
Bella watched the exchange with the satisfied expression of a woman whose plan was working exactly as designed. Then she stood abruptly.
“Jukebox,” she announced. “We’re dancing.”
“No one else is dancing.”
“Exactly. We’re starting something.”
She crossed the bar, punched in a song from approximately 2008, and turned back with a grin that could have powered a small city.
The music kicked in. I rolled my eyes. Got up anyway. Saying no to Bella Rey was a skill I had never developed and probably never would.
We danced. Not gracefully. But with the kind of joyful recklessness that made other people smile and eventually join in.
For three minutes and forty-two seconds, I was just a woman in a bar with a friend who refused to let her disappear inside her own hurt.
When the song ended, I was breathing hard and smiling, and Bella pointed at me from across the dance floor.
“There she is,” she said. “Still Sam.”
I went back to the booth. Noah was still there, looking hopeful in a way that was sweet and completely wrong for where I was.
“I think I’m going to head out,” I told him. “But it was really nice meeting you.”
He took it well. Smiled. Said maybe he would see me around. I said maybe.
We both knew what maybe meant.
Outside, the air was cool enough to feel like permission. Bella looped her arm through mine as we walked to the car, and we were quiet for half a block before she spoke.
“You did good tonight,” she said.
“I left early.”
“You showed up. That’s more than most people do when they’re hurting.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
“I hate that he got to me,” I said quietly.
Bella squeezed my arm. Not hard. Just enough.
“You’re human, Sam. You cared about someone. That’s not a flaw. That’s the whole point.”
“And listen,” Bella added, her voice dropping into the register she used when she was about to say something that sounded like a joke and was not, “if you want, I can still send a detective. I’ve got a guy, Franco.
Robbery-homicide. He’ll show up at the man’s door with a badge and ruin his entire week. Hypothetically.”
I laughed. A real one. The kind that shook loose from somewhere deep and came out surprised at its own existence.
“Bella.”
“What? Abuse of power is wrong. Imagining it is therapeutic.”
I leaned my head against the window and let San Antonio take me home.