Page 61 of Cruel Lies

"He's already paid for it," the bartender says with a shrug. "I can pour it out if you want, but I'm guessing he'll want to... Yeah. I'll let you handle it."

The bartender scurries away like a coward as Quarter-Zip ambles over. He's swaggering and supremely confident, three-quarters buzzed. Vaguely handsome, though far too Todd-ish for me to ever even give him the time of day.

I brace myself. I have exactly enough energy left after the day I've had to be polite for maybe four seconds before I say something rather rude.

"You're a pretty young thing," he blurts out.

I do a stunned double-take. I was raised to believe thatHello, My Name Is ____is a better standard greeting, but maybe things have changed since I was last on the dating market.

"Love a woman with curves," he adds, as if he hadn't already dug his own grave deep enough.

I open my mouth to tell him that he really shouldn't be getting his hopes up.

But I don't get the chance.

The door opens. Ronan comes back in with his phone in his hand and takes in the whole tableau in one sweep—the martini, theempty stool where Quarter-Zip's drink used to be, and the man himself, three steps into his approach.

His face doesn't change at all.

But the air in the room goes molten.

Quarter-Zip is still blabbering, though I'm no longer listening. I watch Ronan walk not to me but to the bartender. He bends forward and says something low that I can't hear.

Then he takes out his wallet.

I don't know what he says. I don't know what number he names or what he puts on the bar, but whatever it is, the bartender's eyebrows climb toward his hairline and then he nods, once, crisp, and reaches under the counter, and the music cuts, and the lights come up two notches. He clears his throat and announces to the twelve or fifteen people scattered around the Woozy Tiger that the bar is closing early tonight, drinks are on the house on the way out, thank you, goodnight, mind the step.

There's grumbling. The scrape of stools. Quarter-Zip stands in the middle of it with his martini plan in ruins, looking from Ronan to me and back.

Then Quarter-Zip makes a very catastrophic choice.

He tries to put a hand on me.

I don't even see Ronan cross the room. I'm mostly focused on the man's hand as it comes closer and closer, and then, out of nowhere, a familiar blur inserts himself between us just before it lands.

I look up in shock. Ronan's back is to me, his shoulders wide enough to blot out the room, and his cologne is rich in my nose. He leans in close to the man's ear. His mouth barely moves.

Quarter-Zip's face does something I've never actually witnessed on a grown man before. It goes gray. Then white. Then a strange, waxy sort of nothing, like a candle left too close to a radiator.

And then—I swear on my grandmother's grave—a dark stain blooms down the front of his very expensive quarter-zip athleisure pants.

Whatever Ronan just said to this man… it made him pee himself in fear.

Quarter-Zip's response is just as remarkable.

He doesn't say a word. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't grab his martini or his phone or his dignity, none of which are salvageable at this point anyway.

He simply turns and walks—fast, then faster, then jogging, then sprinting—out the door and into the night, and I never see him again.

Ronan watches him go until he's sure he's gone. Then he turns around and sits down across from me. "Now," he says, folding his hands on the sticky table. "Where were we?"

I stare at him.

The bar is empty. The music is off. The lights are up, harsh and yellow, and the last of the grumbling patrons is being ushered out by a bartender who very pointedly is not looking at either of us.

It's just the two of us in a room built for forty, and a puddle by the bar that somebody is going to have to explain to somebody else later.

"What," I say slowly, "did you just do?"