"Did I?" I reached past the usual spot, grabbed the next bottle from the row behind it, and set it in the front. "I do things a little different every few days. Keeps the routine fresh."
He put his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and looked at me and his mouth was making a slow negotiation with a smile it hadn't committed to yet.
"You changed it to see if I'd notice," he said.
"I changed it because I wanted to." I moved down the rail. "You noticing is just a bonus."
"You could've just asked me if I memorize your closing routine."
"I didn't need to ask." I set the next bottle. "I already knew the answer."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're a lot of work."
"Thank you," I said.
He looked at me across the quiet room, ceiling fans still turning, the place smelling of bourbon and the last of the crowd. The tension that had been building all week pulled tighter. I held his gaze and let it.
Then he went to walk the front.
I watched him go. Then I pulled a glass from under the counter, poured myself two fingers of Blanton's, and stood at the end of the rail and drank and looked at the room, which was mine, which I'd built with my own money and my own stubbornness and my own hands, and which contained, at this particular moment, one person who was walking the front and would be back in three minutes.
I thought about the look in the mirror. The drunk's hand on my wrist. The photo in my car.It's yours, said flat, like it was obvious.
I thought about what it meant that he'd said Beth Kessler's name the same way I said this bar's name when someone asked me why I didn't just close for the week.
I poured another finger of bourbon.
I knew what was building. I'd known it since the first morning he'd shown up in my doorway and grinned at my lipstick and I'd had to blame the coffee for my stomach. I'd been watching it build all week — every accidental shoulder, every loaded look, every moment where the air between us got heavy with what neither of us was saying.
The only question was when.
Footsteps in the hall. The side door.
I didn't turn around yet. I looked at the glass in my hands and the room that was mine and listened to him come back, and I thought: soon.
Chapter Four
Dane
I LOST HIM ON BOURBON.
Fuck.
Six minutes through a parade crowd, keeping the gray hoodie in my sightline, dodging tourists and bachelorette parties and a brass band that cut across the intersection at exactly the wrong moment. Then the crowd surged and he was gone. I stood in the street with my hand on my weapon and my lungs burning and nothing to show for it.
Medium build. Gray hoodie. Ball cap. He'd been watching Proof from across the street for forty minutes, and he moved fast and deliberate when I came for him. Not panicked—professional about it.
I walked back with my jaw locked and my pulse still jacked. Checked the alley, the stockroom door, the camera feed. All clear. I pulled up the footage on my phone and scrubbed through the last hour, looking for the gray hoodie on any of the angles. Nothing. He'd stayed out of the camera's range, which meant heknew where it was. Which meant he'd done recon before tonight. Probably more than once.
The adrenaline had nowhere to go so it sat in my fists and my shoulders, a low current with nowhere to break.
Inside, the bar was closed. Stools up, floor swept, neon off. The only light was the amber glow behind the bottles, and Jenna was standing behind the rail with a glass of Blanton's and a look on her face that said she already knew I hadn't caught whoever I'd been chasing.
She read people the way I read rooms. Inconvenient as hell.
"Courtyard's clear," I said.
"You're out of breath."
