“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” I slam my laptop shut and lean back.
She doesn’t seem to be turning him away. This time, she’s smiling.
Fuck that.
I get up from my desk and storm out of my office.
I walk up to the VIP section. The guy is trying to unlatch the rope when I get to him and grip his shoulder, pulling him backward.
“I don’t think so,” I say, causing him to lower his hand from the latch.
“What’s your problem, man?” the guy snarls.
With my hand on the back of his neck, I turn him around, so he’s looking me in the eye and seeing I’m more than serious when I say, “She’s mine.”
4
Jolene
My jaw drops at Zack’s gruff declaration. Mine.
“I’m not his,” I declare. “Zack, put him down. We were having a nice talk.”
“About where to go after this?” Zack spits, making my eyes widen at his insinuation.
“There’s a motel on the corner of Polk and Ellis. Apparently, they have an hourly rate,” I state with a hand on my hip.
Zack turns to me with a glare, clenching his shoulder harder.
The poor guy holds his hands palms up and explains, “We were talking about Avengers: Endgame and that shitty ending. I swear, I wasn’t hitting on your wife!”
“So, you did see the ring on her finger and kept flirting with her?” Zack challenges the guy.
“I wasn’t flirting … well, yeah, I guess I was, but, seriously, let me go. Please.”
While the guy is nice, he is such a pushover. I never in my life would want to be with someone who could cower so easily.
Then again, this tough-guy thing Zack has going on isn’t exactly turning me on either.
Zack lets go of the guy and then nods to Stella. “Whatever this guy’s having is on me—as long as he stays all the way on the other side of the bar.”
Stella raises a brow at Zack as she nods for the guy to follow her to the opposite side of the room.
I, on the other hand, am giving him a mental middle finger as he lowers the rope.
“When did you become such a dick?” I ask.
My question has him stopping in his tracks and looking at me with those blues.
“I was doing you a favor.”
“I don’t need you to ward off attention.”
He cocks his head. “Did you want to go home with that guy?”
I raise my eyebrows. “So what if I did?”
“Then, your taste in men has drastically decreased.”
He takes a seat on the stool beside me and crosses his arms. His coat from earlier is off, and in its place is a black T-shirt. The first thing my eyes go to are the tattoos on his right arm, careening down his bicep and stopping at his elbow.
A bartender other than Stella puts two drinks in front of us. A Captain and Coke for me and a beer in a glass bottle for Zack.
Zack raises his and takes a drink. No cheers or even a tilt of the bottleneck in my direction.
The company might suck, but the drinks are free, so I shrug and take a sip as well.
“Nice ink,” I say in way of small talk.
His eyes are focused straight ahead as a tiny smile tugs at the side of his mouth. “Thought you hated guys with tats.”
“I only hate when they don’t have meaning. And I know you, and everything has a purpose. Is that a hummingbird?”
He moves his arm, so I can no longer see on the inside of it and turns to me.
“Stop acting like you know me.”
I have to blink at him a few times to see if his rudeness mellows into some sort of sarcasm or witty remark. It doesn’t. It’s just flat-out rude.
I gently place my glass on the table and rise from my seat. “Okay, that’s enough for me.” I grab my coat and walk over to where my suitcase is sitting on the floor.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a curved brow.
My shoulders drop as I try to assess if he’s lost every bit of intelligence over the years. “I’m leaving, Zack. I don’t know why the hell you asked me to come in here, and honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking, following you in. So far, you left me for an ungodly amount of time, you shunned off the only kind conversation I had all day, and now, you’re just being blatantly mean.”
I grip the handle of my suitcase and start to storm off when his voice calls to me.
“Why did you then?” he calls out.
I turn to see he’s now standing by the stool he was sitting on.
His chin is raised, but his eyes are lowered in a plea of desperation. “Why did you follow me in here?”
I shouldn’t answer him. He’s been nothing but callous, and yet I find I want to answer him as honestly as I can.
“You said this might be the only time we ever see each other again, and I suppose I wasn’t ready to walk away.”
“Why?”
“I have questions too,” I say way too quietly for him to hear over the Panic! at the Disco song playing.
From the way his hands move to the stool I was sitting on and how he pulls it out in invitation for me to sit, I know he heard me loud and clear.
Dropping my fingers from the handle, I abandon my luggage and push it back against the wall, draping my coat over the top and heading back to the seat.
We sit in silence. He continues to tip back the bottle of his IPA while I drink my cocktail way too fast.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and I do a double take to see if I heard him right. “I wasn’t prepared to see you, and I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“You mean, you don’t run into ex-girlfriends all the time?” I try to joke to lighten the mood.
He gives a grimace. “You’re the only one who counts.”
I have to swallow as I take in that statement. I’m sure it took a lot out of his ego. I sit and let it resonate in my heart for a minute.
“What is this place?” I ask him in an attempt to divert the conversation. “Do you work here when you’re not at your dad’s shop?”
“What makes you think I’m not here every day?”
I shake my head with a smile. “You’d never leave Dixon.”
“People change.”
“You’re the last person who I thought would.”
“I’m not the same man I was ten years ago.”
“Oh, I can see that!” My eyes linger over his biceps and muscular chest molding against his thin shirt.
When I look up, his eyes are simmering into mine with a knowing lift of his mouth that reveals a dimple I’ve tried to forget for years. I’m suddenly parched.
He turns and lays an elbow on the bar as he declares, “Let’s play a game.”
“A game?” I nearly choke on my last sip of Captain.
“Two Truths and a Lie. Rules are simple. You say three statements about yourself. Two are truths, and one is a lie. The other has to guess which one is the lie. Guess wrong, take a shot. Guess what’s the lie, and the first person takes the shot.”
“That’s a dangerous game for ex-lovers.”
“Chicken?” He leans forward as if it’s a dare.
I squint my eyes at him, desperate to turn away from his silly request of a game. Problem is, I’m a sucker for a challenge.