The only other patron is an older man at the far-end of the bar, who doesn’t so much as look up from his beer as I take a seat a few stools down from him.
“Kitchen’s not open yet,” Dom says without turning around. “Come back in an hour if you want food.”
“I think I’m good on that.”
The sound of my voice gets his attention. He glances over his shoulder, dark eyes assessing me with an unreadable expression. He slowly sets down the bottle he’s holding and turns fully to face me.
“Sloan.” A slight lift of his chin. “Wasn’t expecting to see you without your entourage.”
I lean forward to rest my elbows on the bar. “Figured I’d get out of the house. See the town.”
Dom studies me for a beat longer than necessary. Then he reaches for a glass.
“Little early for drinking.”
“Coffee would be fine.”
His eyebrows rise, but he doesn’t comment. Just turns toward the ancient coffee maker tucked into a corner behind the bar and starts the ritual of producing something drinkable. The machine gurgles and hisses like a dying animal, but a few minutes later he sets a chipped ceramic mug in front of me. The coffee is dark as tar and smells strong enough to strip paint.
I take a sip. It’s surprisingly decent.
Dom leans against the back counter, arms crossed over his chest, watching me with an expression that’s half curiosity and half suspicion.
“So.” He drums his fingers against his bicep. “If you didn’t come to drink and you didn’t come to eat, what exactly brings you to my fine establishment at—“ he checks the clock on the wall “—one-thirty in the afternoon?”
I set down the mug, running my thumb along the chip in the rim.
The truth is, I’ve been doing mental math for the past day. And I really don’t like the only logical answer to this equation.
In four days, we leave. Phoenix has a contractual obligation to fulfill and Mason would follow her off the edge of a flat earth if that’s where she needed him to go.
But what are we leaving behind?
I take a careful sip of coffee. “What do you think will happen to Judah when Mason leaves?”
Dom goes very still. Then he reaches for a rag and starts wiping down a section of bartop that’s already clean. “What makes you so convinced that Mason’s leaving?”
I recognize that level of denial, I’ve existed in a similar state for a while now. “Because Phoenix can’t stay here.”
The rag pauses mid-swipe. Dom’s jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the stubbled skin. “It’s really like that, huh?”
“You were there.” I don’t look away from him. “You saw how it was between them.”
The rag drops to the counter. Dom braces both hands against the wood, head bowing forward, shoulders rising and falling with a single unsteady breath. When he speaks again, his voice is rough at the edges. “Not a whole lot more I can do than pick up the pieces. Again?”
“What do you mean?”
Dom laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Just a bitter edge that makes my chest tighten.
“You know what’s funny? All I ever wanted growing up was to get the hell out of this town.” He pushes off the bar, pacing the narrow space behind it with restless energy. “I had so many ridiculous plans. Dreams. Whatever you want to call them. Figured I’d see the world, make something of myself somewhere bigger than a fishing village where everyone didn’t already know me.”
He stops, one hand gripping the edge of a shelf hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
“But then Mason left. And Judah fell apart.” The words come out quieter now, stripped of their defensive edge. “And I didn’t feel like I could go, too. I couldn’t leave Judah on his own because God knows what he would have done to himself if I hadn’t been there to stop him. And even though I get seasick, I spent three years on that damn boat because the family needed crew and Judah couldn’t be there.”
“You stayed for them.”
“I stayed because they’re my family.” Dom’s voice cracks on the word. He clears his throat, but the damage is done. “Enough time passed that leaving felt more like a daydream than anything actually possible. Now here I am. Thirty years old, tending bar in the same town I’ve lived in my whole life.”
