12. Shelby #2
“Because I tried to call you. Make sure you were okay. Disconnected immediately. I know what that means. Which is why I didn’t want anything to do with you tonight. You clearly wanted nothing to do with me.”
My mouth drops a little. “You’ve known I’ve blocked you in the past?”
He nods and throws back the shot of whiskey. “I’ve known every time, Belle. Every. Damn. Time.”
The silence and tension are so thick, I don’t even know if a machete could cut through it. I don’t know what to say. Which is why I’m glad Beau speaks up first.
“Aren’t you tired of this?”
“Tired of what?” I have a feeling I know what he’s saying, but I don’t want to assume.
When he turns to me, I’m not looking into the annoyed eyes from a few seconds ago. These eyes are sad.
“Fighting. Aren’t you tired of the fighting?”
Now I know he’s stalking me, because how does he know what I was thinking about just seconds before he walked in here?
Sure, fighting with Beau is exhausting. I’d like to be tired from normal things. Like too much caffeine. Or staying up too late because you remembered a fight you got into in third grade and you suddenly have the best comeback.
But, on the other hand, fighting with Beau is my normal. My constant. My way of keeping him at the arm’s length I need for my sanity.
Before I can say something lame that would answer his question, but also not really answer it, I look down at his hand again.
There. Distraction. Perfect.
“What did you do?”
He catches on to where I’m looking, flexes it once, then tries to hide it. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. It looks like you were actually fighting.”
He flags Frank down for a refill of his beer and shot before hanging his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Aren’t we a pair,” I say sarcastically. “You don’t want to talk about why your fist looks like it had a run-in with a wall, and I don’t want to talk about…anything. Guess that means I can leave.”
I start to stand up, but Beau grabs my arm again. “Please, Shelby. Don’t go.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why do you want me to stay?”
“I…I don’t know,” he says. And though it’s a non-answer, I think he’s being honest. “But I don’t want to keep fighting.”
I should say I don’t want to either, but my stubborn ass can’t mutter the words. I can, however, give him this. “How about a truce?”
The word almost feels dirty on my tongue.
“A truce? That you’re offering up?”
“I can be civil,” I defend. “Plus, this is going to be temporary. For the weekend. A trial run, if you will.”
That makes him laugh slightly. “What would that even look like?”
“I don’t know, I just came up with it,” I say, and that’s when I notice he’s a little more drunk than I realized.
His eyes are glassier than normal, and he’s a bit wobbly on the chair.
Combine that with the redness on his hand, and I really want to know what happened to him tonight.
“But it’s a good idea. We have a lot riding on this weekend. ”
“That we do,” he says, a little slurred. “Plus, we don’t need to add in a twenty-year feud we barely remember the origin of.”
My eyebrow shoots up so high it nearly hits the ceiling.
“Fine. You remember. But I never knew all of it. I just…I’m tired Shelby. Aren’t you?”
I am. I really am. And a little drunk. Which is the perfect combination for me to think this one-weekend truce might not be the worst idea.
“You won’t cheat?”
“I’ve never cheated,” he says firmly. “You won’t call me an asshat?”
I let out a sigh. “Fine. But you need to promise not to step in and save the day when you feel like I can’t handle myself. Today was uncalled for.”
“I promise. But I won’t apologize for doing what I did today. You were going to kill him, Shelby.”
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” I say with a shrug. “Just maybe slash three of his tires.”
“Only three?” Beau asks. “Why not all four?”
I smile as I sit back on the bar stool, waving Frank over. “I’ll tell you about it during our truce.”
Beau looks genuinely shocked. I don’t blame him. I never thought this day would happen either. Yes, we’ve had moments over the last few weeks that have been better than normal. But at the end of the day, this is still Beau. He still drives me crazy. He’s a pompous showboat who ruined my life.
But he’s right. I’m tired of fighting.
I hold up the two shots Frank just slid in front of us. “To a truce.”
A slow smile grows on Beau’s face, and I’m going to ignore how it slightly—emphasis on slightly—warms my black heart.
“To a ceasefire,” he says, holding up his shot glass.
“A temporary one,” I emphasize.
“To getting through four days of play.”
I bring up my glass. “To not killing each other.”
We tap our shot glasses together before throwing them back, letting the harsh burn of the generic whiskey cement our deal.
“So how do we do this?” I ask. “Are we just supposed to sit around and talk to each other?”
Beau thinks about it for a second, and then, without asking Frank, gets up and walks behind the bar, grabbing a bottle of whiskey.
“You can’t do that,” I say with wide eyes.
“I’ll pay for it,” Beau says, grabbing two clean shot glasses before he sits back down. “But this is how we’re doing it.”
“Beau, our goal was to not argue. Is getting drunk the best idea? The last time I got drunk at this bar, I tried to fight the pinball machine.”
“We’re not just getting drunk,” Beau says, pouring us each a new shot. “We’re getting to know each other.”