She didn’t flinch when a group of guys stumbled past her booth, loud and obnoxious, shoulder-checking one another like a bunch of fucking middle schoolers. One bumped her table hard enough to slosh her water glass, but she didn’t even glance their way. Like she hadn’t noticed.
Okay. That was it.
I handed the bar off to Tasha—my right-hand woman—grabbed a cold bottle of water, and made my way toward the booth like I wasn’t strolling up to a ticking bomb I had no idea how to disarm.
“Evening, hellcat,” I said, keeping my voice light and easy, waiting for the inevitable bite-my-head-off greeting I’d come to expect from her.
It took Willa a second to glance my way. Her eyes were glassy, her cheeks flushed, and her braid had started to unravel. She wore one of her dad’s old, threadbare flannels—the same one she always threw on at the end of a really long day. That in itself was telling enough, but the smile she shot my way was entirely unexpected and nearly knocked me on my ass.
It was wide, vibrant. Unguarded in a way that Willa never was around me. Not anymore.
It was a smile she hadn’t sent in my direction in years.
“Linc,” she breathed.Linc. Not Lincoln. Not jackass. Yeah, this was definitely not the girl who’d hated me for years.Thiswas the girl I’d been best friends with most of my childhood. The one I’d shared secrets, scraped knees, and inside jokes with. Theone I hadn’t seen in almost two decades. “Why are there two of you?”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, bracing one hand on the back of her booth and the other on her table. Leaning toward her, I darted my gaze over her face. “How’d you get here?”
She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. “Arthur.”
Starlight Cove’s one and only non-Uber driver who was older than dirt. But better him than herself—I was surprised she’d been able to walk across the room let alone drive.
“How much have you had to drink tonight, hellcat?”
She pursed her lips and squinted one eye. “Mmm…maybe one or two?”
I snorted. “The only thing you’ve had one or two of is entire damn bottles, and I wouldn’t put it past you. That means it’s about time to get you out of here.”
“But I was reading.” She pouted—actuallypouted. The girl who’d once broken a guy’s nose for calling her sweetheart and told her brother to get over himself when he’d fallen out of a tree and broken his arm when we were twelve. “And the farm’ssofar away. Can’t I just sleep here? The booth is cozy.”
“You’re not going to the farm. And you’re sure as hell not sleeping in the bar. You’re going upstairs to my place. You can keep reading when you get there.”
She squinted up at me, trying to figure out if I was telling the truth, before finally nodding. “Okay, but you have topromiseme, Linc.I just got tothe good stuff,” she stage-whispered, not at all discreetly.
I glanced at the well-worn cover featuring a half-naked man with lots of lube—er, oil—covering his chest and grinned. “Deal. Now, let’s make sure you don’t fall on your ass.”
Willa stood from the booth, a bit off-kilter but cooperative as she leaned into me. I grabbed her bag off the seat and tucked her well-loved paperback inside, all without her putting up a fight.Oh yeah. She wasdefinitelyshit-faced. I hadn’t yet encountered anything at all in her presence where shehadn’tput up a fight with me.
“All right, hellcat.” I steered her toward the back stairs that led to my apartment, ignoring how soft she was and how good she smelled and how perfectly she fit right under my arm. “Time to go.”
Tasha caught my eye, one dark brow raised, her afro bobbing as she tilted her head to study us. “Need any help?”
“Nah. I’ve got her.”
“Yeah, he does. He’ssostrong.” Willa sent Tasha a dopey smile and leaned into me, running her hand all over my chest and down to my stomach. “He’sdefinitelygot me.”
I huffed out a laugh as Tasha’s brows flew up her forehead, nearly disappearing into her dark, fluffy curls. She glanced at me with wide eyes, her expression very clearly broadcasting,Oh shit, has she been body snatched? I could understand the confusion since the only thing my little hellcat usually hurled my way were insults, death glares, and threats of murder.
Willa was going to absolutely lose her shit if she ever found out her streak of public hate against me had been broken.
By the time we made it upstairs and into my apartment, she was barely standing. She tried to sink down onto the couch, but I guided her toward my bed instead. No way was she sleeping on the sofa and fucking up her back even more than it already was. She’d been wrecked ever since that hayloft fall years ago—and the Great Tractor Incident last summer sure as hell hadn’t helped—so I had no intention of letting her suffer more than she already did.
“Not that I think I’ll get much out of you now, but you wanna tell me what tonight is all about?” I crouched in front of her while she sat on my bed, glancing up as I unlaced her boots before tugging them off.
She blew out a heavy sigh, her shoulder slumping, and shook her head. “Grant…”
My gaze snapped to hers, my entire body flushing with a burst of anger, thanks to the mention of someone I was apparently going to have to kill.
“Who the fuck is Grant, and what the fuck did he do to you?” I asked, voice low and deceptively calm. Because I sure as hell felt anything but.
