His gaze dropped to my left hand.
No ring.
“You traveling alone?”
I lifted that same hand. “Meeting my husband.”
His eyes narrowed. “No ring?”
“Field work,” I said easily. “Didn’t want to lose it.”
The bartender returned with my water, my card, and my receipt. His gaze lingered on the man beside me. Not friendly. Not alarmed either. Just aware. I signed quickly, added a tip I could barely afford because witnesses deserved compensation, and grabbed my bag.
“Safe trip,” the bartender muttered.
I headed for the bathroom first. I needed a minute, needed to breathe, needed to not think about strange men in strange bars and the mathematical probability of things going wrong when you were a woman alone with a dying truck and a phone battery hovering near useless.
In the bathroom, I checked my reflection again. Still dusty. Still tired. Still alive. Good enough. I rinsed my hands, adjusted my ponytail, and told myself I was being paranoid, which was a very common thing women told themselves right before discovering they had been exactly the correct amount of paranoid.
When I opened the bathroom door, he was there.
Waiting.
Leaning against the hallway wall like this was casual, like men casually positioned themselves outside bathrooms to continue conversations women had already ended. The corridor felt narrower than it had five minutes ago. Quieter too, though the music still pushed through the walls in muffled waves.
My grip tightened on the food bag. “What’s your deal?”
He pushed off the wall. Smile still there. Still wrong. “I thought maybe you wanted company.”
“No.”
I moved left. He moved left.
A cold line slid down my spine.
“I’m was just here to eat and leave,” I said.
His eyes moved over me slowly, not admiring. Assessing. Possessive in a way that made my skin want to detach from my bones. I hated that look. Hated how familiar it was in different packaging. The professor’s polished entitlement. Carhartt’s drunk offense. This man’s quiet calculation. Different wrappers, same rotten center.
A group of women rounded the corner laughing, bright and loud and perfectly timed.
I slipped around them and headed straight back to the bar, fast but not running. Calm on the outside. Every nerve in my body lit up on the inside.
The bartender looked up when I dropped onto the stool. “That fast?”
“Diet Coke.”
He studied my face, then poured without comment.
My phone buzzed. Three percent battery.
Perfect. Impeccable comedic timing from the universe.
I looked at the bartender. “Can I charge this here for a few minutes?”
He hesitated. “We don’t usually.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Clean Hands was gone. Or hiding. Hard to tell. “I’d appreciate it.”
