Page 27 of Fate, Interrupted

The man beside him is younger, even broader through the shoulders, with an easy grin that suggests he finds the world fundamentally amusing.

Jewell takes two steps before she realizes I’ve stopped walking.

“Oh,” she says softly, following my line of sight. Then, after a beat: “Well. That explains last week.”

“It explains nothing. I don’t know why he’s here.”

“I know why he’s here,” she says.

“You’ve never met him.”

“I don’t need to,” she says, with the serene confidence of someone who has written enough songs about human behavior to consider herself an authority on it. “Look at where he’s standing.”

I look.

He’s positioned with his back to the wall and a clear sightline to the door. I noticed it the second I saw him. He’s been watching the entrance.

“Table,” I say. “We need a table.”

“You need a moment,” Jewell says.

“We need a table,” I repeat, and move toward the first high top open seats by the wall.

She follows, slipping onto the stool next to me with the expression of someone who is going to be very patient about this and wants me to know it.

I risk a glance back at the bar.

He’s looking at me.

Direct and steady and entirely without apology, and it catches in my chest with the same inconvenience of the last ten days.

“He’s definitely looking,” Jewell says.

“I know.”

“Are you going to do something about it?”

“I’m formulating a strategy,” I say.

“The strategy is to go over there.”

“That’s a very amateur strategy.”

“The best ones always are,” she says, and reaches for the answer form. Wing woman. She’s decided and she’s fine with it.

I look at the answer form. I look at the bar. I look even harder at the answer form.

The thing is, Hannigan’s is four blocks from The Last Chapter. Silas Coulter has been on my street twice, in my hardware store once, and now he is in my trivia bar on a Sunday night with a clear sightline of the door.

I’m a pretty aware person. I notice things. What I’m noticing is that none of this is accidental.

I push my chair back.

Jewell lights up instantly.

“We need more people for trivia,” I say.

“That’s the reason you’re going with?”