I roll the waistband once like Tex told me to. Not because it makes them fit better. Because it shows the strip of tan skin above the hip. Tonight, every detail is a weapon.
The hot pink tank top is tight. The thin cotton stretches across my chest and shoulders.PROPERTY OF BIG TEX'Ssits right across my chest in letters you could read from fifty feet away.
I look ridiculous, like a spring break tourist who lost a bet. Sheila is going to raise both eyebrows and say "baby, what in the world are you wearing?"
But I also look like someone Ron Jackson has never seen before. Someone new. Someone who is wearing another man's name on his chest because he loves him. Because he wants to. Because the name on this shirt belongs to the man who loves him back.
Only one more thing to add. Well, a couple of things really. The switchblade. Tex gave it to me the second week I was here. He'd opened a drawer behind the bar—the confiscation drawer, he called it, the place where every blade that got pulled during a bar fight ended up. Twenty years of knives in that drawer. Pocket knives, switchblades, a Bowie knife that had no business being inside a bar. He'd pulled the drawer open and looked at me and said "pick one."
I picked this one. Five-inch blade. Spring-loaded. Black handle, worn smooth by someone else's palm. The click of it opening is sharp and fast and I've practiced with it. Not to fight. To be ready. The way you practice anything that might save your life—over and over, alone, until the motion is muscle memory. Open, close, open, close. The click and the weightand the way the blade locks into place with a sound that says I'm here now.
I've slept with it under my pillow more nights than I haven't. Even now. Even here. Even with Tex beside me. Some nights the knife is there and some nights it isn't. Tex has never once asked me to stop because he understands that some survival tools take longer to put down than others.
Tonight, it's going in my pocket. The weight of it settles against my thigh, familiar, grounding. The dull pocketknife I showed up with, the one I've been carrying since I was a kid, goes into the right pocket. I pat it like I always do, once then again to confirm it's there.
I'm ready.
When I go downstairs, Tex is behind the bar, checking stock. He hears me on the stairs and turns around. Whatever he was about to say dies somewhere between his brain and his mouth. He stares at me, his eyes moving from the shirt to the sweatpants to my hair to my face and back to the shirt. His mouth opens and closes and opens again. For the first time, I've caused a man who never stops talking to go dead silent.
"Well? Is this the effect you were going for?"
"Jesus Christ," he says softly.
"Is that good or bad?"
"That is—" He puts both hands flat on the bar. He's staring at me like I walked out of a dream he's been having for two months. His eyes travel down and back up. "Wow, that is going to work. That is going to absolutely work. Ron Jackson is going to drive past this bar and see you. Once he catches a glimpse of you, he'll lose his fucking mind."
"That's the plan."
"You bet it is."
He doesn't move on to the next thing or go back to checking stock. He comes around the bar, slow, and his eyes aren't strategic anymore. They're darker, hungrier. Shining with heat that's been unlocked by the sight of me standing in his bar in hot pink with my hair done and the wordsPROPERTY OF BIG TEXacross my chest.
"I need to tell you a dirty secret." He stops in front of me. Close. The size of him filling my vision the way it always does, the wall of chest and shoulders. "About those sweatpants."
"What about them?"
"You wore those sweatpants every day for almost a week when you first got here. And every single day, I went upstairs and jacked off in the shower because of those sweatpants."
I let out a laugh. "You did not. You're making that up."
"Every day." His hand finds my hip. His thumb traces the strip of bare skin above the rolled waistband, the tan skin, the place where the fabric rides low. "You were scared. You were running. You barely talked at all. You flinched every time I moved too fast. And I felt guilty as hell because I knew you were in survival mode and the last thing you needed was some big idiot lusting after you. But Stormy—" He leans down, his mouth near my ear. His breath is warm and his voice drops to that low register, the one that vibrates in my chest. "You walked around my bar in those sweatpants with 'follow this ass' across your backside, and your hair falling in your eyes, and I have never in my life wanted someone the way I wanted you. I went to bed every night hard and woke up every morning hard. I stood in the shower thinking about what was underneath these sweatpants until all the hot water ran out. I felt like the worst person alive. So, I want to give you my most solemn apology now. I'm sorry. Can I make it up to you the best way I see fit?"
His hand slides from my hip around to the back. His palm flattens against the letters on my ass. FOLLOW THIS ASS. He grips and my breath catches and heat floods through me so fast it makes my head swim.
"Tex—"
"I'm not done." His other hand finds my waist. He pulls me closer. I can feel him against my hip, hard. The knowledge of that—that seeing me in this outfit has done this to him, that the sweatpants and the shirt and two months of wanting have collided into this moment—sends a current through me that starts in my stomach and ends everywhere.
"You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," he continues. "You still are. And tonight, you're going to wear these sweatpants and walk into the parking lot. I need you to understand that when I see you in them, what I feel isn't just strategy. It's not just about Ron. It's about the fact that I have wanted you since the first morning you came downstairs in these pants. I almost dropped a coffee mug because your ass in these pants broke my brain."
"You're telling me you've been staring at my ass since day one."
"I'm guilty as hell of that very thing. And I'm telling you that right now, in this shirt, in these pants, with your hair all soft and your tan and that sexy look on your face—" He swallows hard. "I can't think straight. Fuck, I can't think at all. I can't imagine ever wanting anyone else the way I always want you."
He takes my hand and pulls me behind the bar. The bar that's been the anchor of this building through a hurricane and a rebuild and a love story that neither of us saw coming.
He drops to his knees. Big Tex. On his knees. In his bar. Six-foot-five and the biggest personality in any room he's ever entered, on his knees on the floor, looking up at me.
