Page 113

“Hanging on,” she admits. “I’m just trying to work out when my life became this.”

He glances at the bar. “Pizza and investigative meetings?”

“No. Whatever…” I wave vaguely between him and myself. “This is.”

His mouth pulls slightly at one corner. “You planning on trying to define it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good, because that’s the healthy approach.”

I can’t help but smile at him, comforted by his steadying presence. "Glad someone appreciates my coping mechanisms."

I can hardly believe what happened with me and Briggs less than an hour ago, on the kitchen counter of my childhood home no less, and not long after doing the same thing with two other men, one of whom we’re about to meet in a bar. If I ever told my therapist, she’d probably develop a stress rash on the spot.

Briggs climbs out first, giving me exactly enough space to collect myself without making it obvious he’s doing it. I appreciate that about him. He doesn’t crowd. He waits it out like bad weather.

The second we step inside the bar, warmth hits me along with the smell of beer, fried food, wet denim, and cedar smoke.

The Mile Marker is a shade darker than The Timberline and rougher around the edges. Pool cues crack somewhere near the back wall while an old rock song growls through overhead speakers that have probably survived at numberless bar fights.

A woman whose name tag says she’s Tess Navarro looks up from behind the bar immediately.

She’s beautiful in a dangerous sort of way, all tattooed forearms and dark eyeliner, with the expression of a woman who could dispose of a body efficiently if scheduling allowed.

“Well,” she says, eyeing Briggs. “You look emotionally compromised.”

Briggs snorts softly beside me. “Tough day.”

Tess’s gaze shifts to me, observant enough that I suddenly understand how this woman probably hears everything before people realize they’re speaking out loud. “You must be Laurel Sterling.”

I blink. “Do I have a tracking device on me somewhere?”

“Small town.” She shrugs. “Plus, you look a lot like Ben.”

Before I can unpack that, Tess hooks a thumb toward the back hallway. “Your boys are upstairs already.”

Briggs rests a hand briefly against my lower back as we head toward the stairs, and the contact sends heat skating all the way up my spine because, apparently, my body has abandoned any idea of control entirely.

The upper level of The Mile Marker surprises me. I expected something more utilitarian. Offices, storage rooms, maybe something vaguely illegal looking. Instead, the second floor feels lived in.

Warm lighting spills across old wood floors, a huge sectional facing the muted baseball game playing on television.

Boots lined neatly along the wall below a rack for motorcycle helmets and hooks for jackets. There’s a heavy wooden dining table covered in notebooks, takeout menus, tools, and what appears to be half a carburetor sitting beside a bowl of oranges.

A black shepherd mix lifts its head from a dog bed near the couch, studies me briefly, then decides I’m acceptable and goes back to sleep.

I stop walking. “You live here?”

Ashby looks up first from where he’s sitting at the table with a laptop open beside him. His green eyes meet mine, and a flush of embarrassment crawls up my cheeks.

“Laurel,” he says simply.

Honestly, that voice should honestly come with government warning, the heat it sends spiraling through me.

Another man is leaning against the kitchen counter nearby, sleeves shoved to his forearms, ink on display, long fingers hooked around a coffee mug. The second I really look at him, recognition slams into me so hard I nearly fall over backwards, just managing to stifle a gasp.

I remember the turbulence, his hand wrapped around mine, the taste of him, and the completely unhinged decision to fuck a handsome stranger in a plane toilet, thirty thousand feet above rational thought.