"You don't get to skip my bar for a week and a half and walk in here like you've got something to say." I drop the rag in the sanitizer bucket. "You want a drink, sit down. If you don't, there's the door."
Rex's nostrils flare. I hate that I notice, hate that the amber glow against his green skin still registers in the part of my brain that sees composition in everything. He's a photograph I can't stop taking and can't bring myself to develop.
Carl glances between us and picks up his beer and heads for the booth. Smart man. Old Gene sleeps through it. Sal drifts to the far end of the bar. The garnish trays get very interesting all of a sudden.
"I saw what they did to the window." Rex's voice sits low in his chest. "Orc scouts have been watching this building for two weeks. Now Humans First is targeting it. That's two threats on the same location, and you work here every night."
"I know where I work."
"This isn't about us."
"Everything with you is about us, Rex. You just won't say it out loud." I grip the bar edge. "You came in here because of the window? Fine. You checked the cameras and took your photos. Gold star. Now get out of my bar."
Rex flattens both palms on the bar top. The veins in his forearms stand out under the ink, and his fingers spread wide. I recognize the gesture because I've seen it a hundred times.
"Tyler." His voice drops. "Is he still—"
"Don't."
"I need to know."
"You don't need to know anything about Tyler. You don't need to know anything about anyone I see or don't see, because you gave up the right to know when you walked out of my apartment at three in the morning for the last time." My voice doesn't shake. I won't let it. "You don't get to show up when someone else wants me and call it caring. That's not love, Rex."
"You decide everything. What time you show up, what time you disappear, how much you give and how much you keep. You've done it so long you think that's what this is." I step closer to the bar. Close enough that his scent hits me—leather and motor oil and that sharp green edge underneath, the orc pheromones that settle low in my gut and pull. "I'm not a pit stop, Rex. I'm not the last bar before the highway."
Rex closes his eyes, fingers curling on the wood. The bar between us is three feet wide and it might as well be a canyon.
Frank's watching his pilsner like it holds the meaning of life. Carl and Micky have gone suspiciously quiet in their booth. I untie my apron and toss it on the hook. "Stockroom. Now."
He opens his eyes.
I grab my keys off the hook, walk out from behind the bar, and push through the stockroom door without checking to see if he follows.
The stockroom is twelve feet by ten, lined with shelving on three walls, cases of liquor stacked to head height, the air cool and close and saturated with the smell of cardboard and bourbon. One bare bulb on a pull chain. I yank it on and turn around. Rex fills the doorway with his shoulders brushing both sides of the frame.
I shove the door shut behind him. The latch clicks. The room shrinks.
"Say it." I step into his space. "Whatever you came here to say, say it now, because I'm done having this conversation across a bar where Sal has to pretend she isn't listening."
"You think I planned this?"
"I think you've been circling this for a month. I think you sat on your bike in the rain and watched my windows. I think you came back to your stool the night I went out with Tyler and sat there drinking until I came home so you could smell his cologne on my jacket and make yourself miserable, and I think you're standing in my stockroom right now because you heard someone threw a rock through Sal's window and the first thing you thought of wasn't the glass." I put my hand flat on his chest. His heart hammers against my palm through the leather and the cotton underneath. "Tell me I'm wrong."
He doesn't. His breathing turns ragged under my palm and his pupils blow wide in the dim light, gold-green swallowed to a thin ring around black.
"I'm not good at this." His voice scrapes the walls. "I don't know how to do what you're asking."
"I'm not asking you to do anything. I've stopped asking." I shove him with the heel of my palm, and he gives one step, his back hitting the shelving. A bottle rattles behind his shoulder. "I told Tyler I'd see him again. I told him yes because he asked. That's it. That's the whole bar for entry, Rex—asking."
His hand closes around my wrist. His thumb settles into the groove of my pulse and I know he can feel it racing because orc senses don't miss that kind of thing, and the unfairness of loving someone who can read your heartbeat makes me want to hit him.
"Tell me to leave." The words come out so low I feel them more than hear them. "Tell me you don't want this."
I should. Every rational cell in my body lines up and screams it—push him out the door, lock it, go upstairs, call Tyler back, choose the man who asks instead of the one who takes. Every smart decision I've ever made points toward that door.
But I've never had a rational thought about Rex Flynn. Not the first night he sat on that stool and watched me pour drinks with those eyes. Not the first time his mouth found the base of my throat and I forgot my own name. Not now, standing in a stockroom with my palm flat against his heartbeat and his scent soaking into my clothes, my hair, everything I'll take upstairs with me tonight.
"I want everything," I say. "And you can't give me that."
