"Exactly. And I handled it."
"You got hit in the face with a pool cue, Ace."
"And I handled it."
I laugh into his chest. He presses his lips to the top of my head, and I feel him smile against my hair.
This. This is what I missed. Not just the heat, not just the way he touches me. This. The easy part. The part where we're just two people who find each other funnier than anyone else in the room. The part where the world shrinks down to his voice and my laugh and a dance floor full of strangers who don't matter.
We used to be like this all the time. Before I left. Before the years of silence turned us into something heavier. Tonight feels like digging through rubble and finding the original thing underneath. And it’s still in one piece. It never shattered.
"You remember prom?" he asks.
"You mean when you showed up on a horse?"
"It was a grand gesture."
"It shit on the principal's lawn, Ace."
"Still a grand gesture."
I tip my head back and look up at him. His eyes are soft and crinkled at the edges from smiling. He's got a bruise forming along his jaw from the ride and dirt still under his fingernails, his shirt's unbuttoned one too many from the heat. He looks liketrouble. He looks like my home, and finally, I’m starting to be excited about what my future holds again.
"I'm really glad I came back," I say.
His hand tightens on my waist. "I'm really glad you did too."
The song ends. The band kicks into something fast and rowdy, and the floor fills up with boots and hollers. Ace steps back, points at me, and mouthsdon't moveas he turns toward the bar.
I watch him go. Can't help it. The way he moves through a crowd, his shoulders loose, hat tipped. Women track him as he passes. He doesn't notice. Or if he does, he doesn't care.
He reaches the bar. Leans against it with one boot on the rail. And then he looks at me.
Across the entire bar. Through the crowd, through the noise, through the smoke and the colored lights and the bodies moving between us. He holds my gaze.
I can’t help but smile as I put on a little show for him, and only him. Never once does he break eye contact.
The laughter fades out of his face. Something that starts in his eyes and moves down through his jaw, his shoulders, the way his grip shifts on the beer bottles. A stillness that has nothing to do with calm.
My stomach tightens.
The room doesn't change. The music doesn't stop. People are still dancing. But something between us has shifted, and every nerve ending in my body knows it.
He sets both beers down on the bar.
Doesn't break eye contact.
He pushes off the rail and starts walking toward me.
My heart is slamming against my ribs.
He's ten feet away. Close enough now that I can see the shift in his breathing. The way his chest rises slower. The way his jaw is set. The way he's looking at me like I'm the only thing in thisroom that's real, and he's deciding exactly what he's going to do about it.
He stops in front of me.
The music pounds around us. Someone bumps my shoulder passing by, and I don't even flinch. I can't move. I can't look away. I'm pinned to the floor by the way this man is looking at me, and every inch of my skin is on fire.
He doesn't say a word.
