Logan clears his throat.
Dominic rolls his eyes. “The days before I met you, OK? When I was a struggling student surviving on ramen and dreams, before some twenty-year-old genius started paying me to invest his questionable earnings.” He shoots Logan a look. “Happy?”
“Accurate,” Logan mutters.
Questionable earnings?
I don’t have the bandwidth to process it right now. Not when Logan is standing ten feet away and my body is practically begging me to go over there and touch him—I’m a sucker for rolled-up sleeves.
“We should go,” I say, and I hate how much it sounds like running. Again. “Find somewhere else.”
This is what I do now, apparently. Flee from Logan Whitman. First Sweden, now a dive bar in Chicago. At this rate, I’ll run out of places to go.
“No. We were here first,” Serena says, but there’s no conviction behind it.
“Seriously?” Dominic says. “You damn well know we were. Got here about forty minutes ago.” He glances back at Logan, then at me, something calculating behind his eyes. “But we can leave. If that’s what you want.”
The offer hangs in the air.
Logan still hasn’t said a word to me. Not hi, not sorry we keep running into each other, not anything. He’s just standing there, frozen, his knuckles white around the pool cue.
And I hate—hate—that a few gulps of whiskey has turned my own eyes into traitors. I can’t stop staring at those damn forearms. The way his hands grip that pool cue. What would those hands feel like if they ever grippedmewith that kind of intensity?
Stop it.He rejected you. He literally blocked your kiss with his palm. You do not get to want him.
But apparently my body didn’t get the memo.
I want him to say something. But I’m not even sure anymore if I want him to say something so I can stay angry or say something so I have an excuse to keep looking at him.
I honestly can’t tell which one I want more.
“Nobody has to leave,” Layla says finally, her voice strained with the effort of being reasonable. “We’re all adults. We can exist in the same bar for an hour without it being weird.”
“Can we?” Serena mutters into her whiskey.
CHAPTER 7
Logan
“You’re right, ladies,” Dominic says, setting his pool cue against the wall. “We can definitely all hang in the same bar.” He slides into the booth next to Serena, taking Layla’s reluctant truce as an invitation. “Scoot over, Rena. Logan, sit down. You’re hovering like a malfunctioning drone.”
I don’t move. Audrey is right there, three feet away, and every synapse in my brain is firing contradictory instructions.Sit down. Run away. Apologize again. Don’t say anything.
“Logan.” Dominic’s voice is patient, the way it gets when he’s managing me through a social situation I’m failing at. “Sit. Down.”
I sit. At the end of the booth, as far from Audrey as I can get while still technically being at the same table. She’s studying the wood grain like it contains the secrets of the universe.
“Right.” Dominic flags down the bartender. “We’re going to need another round. Actually, make it two. And—” He squints at a chalkboard menu. “Are the cheese curds really the best west of Milwaukee?”
“That’s what the sign says,” the bartender replies, unimpressed.
“I know what the sign says. I’m just saying that I’ve eaten the cheese curds here many times. And I’m not certain of the legitimacy of your claim.”
The bartender rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me a hard time, Dom. I just work here. You gonna order some or not?”
“We’ll take two baskets.” Dominic’s already pulling out his phone. “And if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
My stomach drops. “What are you doing?”
