The bartender grabs the rag and starts wiping down the counter like nothing happened.
“They shouldn’t come in here acting like they own the place.”
I finish my beer and set the bottle down on the table. Decision made. Because men like that don’t leave places alone after being embarrassed in front of a crowd.
And because the bartender with the messy buns and the big mouth is probably about to walk out into a parking lot with three pissed off men waiting for her.
I stand up and head toward the door. Time to see what those boys do when someone reminds them the world doesn’t belong to them.
TWO
RAVEN “RAE” WILDER
The door swingsshut behind the three idiots and for a second the whole bar goes quiet like someone hit pause on the room. Conversations hang half-finished, a pool cue hovers over the table near the back, and Wayne exhales the kind of breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for ten minutes straight. I keep wiping the same section of the counter even though it’s already clean, because sometimes pretending everything’s normal is the fastest way to make a room believe it.
Wayne rubs a hand down his face and mutters, “You shouldn’t talk to them like that.”
I glance over at him, lifting one shoulder in a shrug while I keep the rag moving over the wood. “They shouldn’t come in here acting like they own the place.”
“That’s not the point.”
“That is exactly the point,” I tell him, finally dropping the rag into the sink before grabbing another glass from the rack behind me. The towel in my hand moves in slow circles while I dry it, partly because it needs drying and partly because it givesmy hands something to do. “You start giving men like that an inch and next thing you know they’re measuring the place for curtains and arguing about where the furniture should go.”
Wayne shakes his head like he’s already tired of this argument, which is fair because we’ve had it twice this week already and neither one of us has changed our mind about it. His mouth pulls down at the corners and he looks older than he did ten minutes ago, the lines around his eyes deeper under the harsh bar lights.
“Rae, you don’t know what those guys are capable of.”
I snort quietly and keep polishing the glass like the conversation isn’t anything serious. “I know exactly what they’re capable of. They’re capable of walking into a bar and hoping everyone inside is too polite to tell them to get lost.”
A couple of the regulars down the counter chuckle into their beers, shoulders shaking as they try not to laugh too loud. They’ve been drinking here long enough to know how these conversations usually go, and they also know better than to get in the middle of them.
Wayne doesn’t laugh.
“That’s not funny,” he says, his voice flat. “Those guys are trouble.”
I lean both hands on the bar and meet his eyes across the counter, the joking tone slipping out of my voice. “Yeah. I noticed.”
For a moment he just looks at me like he’s trying to decide whether to keep arguing or let it go. Eventually he sighs and shakes his head again, the fight draining out of his shoulders inthe slow way it does when he knows he’s not going to change my mind.
“You’re going to get yourself hurt one day.”
“Not tonight,” I say.
The music picks back up and the room slowly settles into its normal rhythm again. Someone restarts the pool game near the back wall, the sharp crack of the cue ball echoing across the room before the low murmur of conversation fills in around it. One of the truckers sitting at the bar waves his empty bottle at me, and I grab another beer from the cooler before sliding it across the counter toward him without even looking down. The regular noise of the bar spreads back into the space where the tension had been sitting a minute ago, like water filling in a hole.
But I’m still watching the door.
Because those guys didn’t leave angry enough for it to be over.
And because I’ve been working in bars long enough to know the difference between a bluff and a promise.
I grab another glass from the rack and start drying it when movement near the back wall catches my eye. The quiet guy who came in earlier is standing up from his table, dropping a few folded bills onto the wood before pushing his chair back. He moves like he knows exactly where he’s going and doesn’t feel the need to rush about it.
He hasn’t said a word since he walked in.
Hasn’t looked like he needed to.
Most people don’t notice him at all, which is funny because he’s hard to miss once you actually look at him. He’s tall enough that the top of his head nearly lines up with the hanging light fixtures, with broad shoulders under a dark jacket that looks worn but solid. There’s a stillness about him that makes people step around him without realizing why they’re doing it, the same way water moves around a rock sitting in the middle of a stream.
