CHAPTER 3 #3
"Of course you don't." Marcus drained his glass and slammed it down on the bartop.
The sound echoed through the empty room.
"You know what your problem is? You think you're better than everyone.
The hero firefighter, the noble bar owner, the guy who takes in strays and fixes their lives.
But you're just as broken as the rest of us. You're just better at hiding it."
"Marcus—"
"No, I'm done. I'm done being the fuckup you get to feel superior to." He grabbed his duffel bag from the back booth and headed for the alley door. "I'll find somewhere else to crash."
"Marcus, wait." Cole's voice had an edge I hadn't heard before—not anger, exactly, but something rawer. "Don't walk out."
"Why not? It's what I do, right? Walk out, fuck up, come crawling back?" Marcus's hand was on the door. "Maybe this time I won't crawl back. Maybe this time I'll actually figure my shit out without your help."
The door slammed behind him.
The silence that followed was absolute. Cole stood motionless behind the bar, his hands braced on the walnut, his head bowed. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his knuckles had gone white.
"Cole."
"He's right." His voice was barely audible. "He's right about all of it."
"He's drunk and angry. He doesn't—"
"I pulled you out of that car five years ago.
I recognized your name on the buzzer when you moved in next door.
I waited three months to even introduce myself because I didn't want to be the guy who brought up your trauma.
" He lifted his head, and his eyes were wet—not crying, but close, the way men look when they're holding something back by sheer force of will.
"What if he's right? What if I'm just...
collecting people? Saving them because I don't know how to do anything else? "
"Cole, look at me."
He did. I crossed to the bar and took his face in my hands—this scarred, handsome face that I'd come to know so well in the last three months.
The face of the man who'd pulled me from the wreckage of my car and then waited years to speak to me again.
The man who'd built a speakeasy with a panic room because he understood that some people needed a place to feel safe.
"You're not collecting me," I said. "I'm not a stray."
"I know. I know you're not."
"Then what's this really about?"
He closed his eyes. "He's my brother. He's the only family I have left, and he's out there with fifteen thousand dollars of debt and a bruise on his face, and I just let him walk out."
"You gave him a choice. That's different from letting him go."
"Is it?" He opened his eyes, and the vulnerability in them made my heart clench. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to let people make their own mistakes. I've spent my whole life trying to save everyone from everything, and it's never enough. It's never—"
I kissed him.
He made a sound against my mouth—surprise, relief, something that was almost a sob—and then he was kissing me back, his hands gripping my waist like I was the only solid thing in a world that was shifting under his feet.
"Don't leave," he said against my lips.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise me."
"I promise." I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "I'm here. Right here. On the most expensive bartop in the city."
That dragged a laugh out of him—wet, unsteady, but real. "It's reclaimed walnut."
"I know. Eighteen hundreds. You told me."
"I tell you a lot of things."
"You do. And I listen." I traced the scar through his eyebrow with my thumb. "I'm not your brother, Cole. I'm not going to walk out and disappear. Whatever this is between us, it's not a rescue mission."
"Then what is it?"
"I don't know yet. But I want to find out."
He kissed me again, slower this time, savoring it.
His hands slid under my sweater, palms warm against the bare skin of my back, and I felt the tension in his body start to unspool.
The bourbon Marcus had left on the bar gleamed amber in the pendant light, and the bar hummed its quiet nighttime song—refrigeration, ice machine, the faint buzz of electricity in the walls.
"I want to taste you again," Cole murmured.
"On the bartop?"
"Everywhere." His mouth moved to my neck, finding the spot below my ear that made me shiver. "I want to make you forget your shift. I want to make you forget everything except my mouth on you."
"Then do it."
He lifted me onto the bartop—the same motion as last night, the same polished wood cool against my thighs—and his hands found the button of my jeans. This time, there was no urgency. Just the careful deliberation of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was determined to take his time.
My jeans came off. My sweater followed, then my bra, and I was naked on the bartop of a speakeasy with the lights on and the alley door unlocked because Marcus hadn't engaged the magnetic catch when he'd stormed out.
"Cole," I said. "The door."
"I'll lock it in a minute."
"Someone could walk in."
"Then they'll get a show." He kissed the hollow of my throat. "I don't care. Let them see."
"That's the bourbon talking."
"I haven't had a drop." His tongue traced my collarbone. "This is all you."
He laid me back on the bartop. The wood was smooth and cool against my spine, and the pendant lights above me blurred into gold circles.
Cole's mouth moved down my body—breasts, stomach, hips—with that same focused attention he brought to everything.
He didn't rush. He didn't tease. He just worshipped, slow and thorough, like I was the final step in a recipe he'd been perfecting for years.
By the time his mouth found my center, I was already trembling.
"Beautiful," he said, his breath hot against my inner thigh. "You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?"
"Cole—"
"Don't argue with me. Just feel."
His tongue parted my folds, and I stopped being able to form words.
The sensation was exquisite—the flat of his tongue dragging slowly upward, the tip circling my clit with precision, the way he hummed against my skin like he was savoring a particularly good bourbon.
My hips bucked, and he pressed one forearm across my stomach to hold me still.