Page 24

Every single second of it was terrifying.

Also, and this was the part that confused me, it felt exhilarating. My whole body was trembling, fine vibrations running from my shoulders to my fingertips.

The streets of Temptation blurred past my windows, familiar landmarks made strange by darkness and the giddy, terrified energy crackling through my nervous system.

Main Street was mostly closed up at this hour, shop windows dark. Drift’s café was still.

I rode past it anyway, letting my eyes linger on the darkened storefront, thinking about flour-dusted countertops and greenish-amber eyes and the way Drift’s voice had sounded on the phone. I’m glad you called.

Right now, I was glad too. Glad I’d called. Glad I’d gone back. Glad I’d met someone who reminded me that kindness still existed in the world, even if I wasn’t sure I deserved it.

I drove until the residential streets gave way to the outskirts of town, where the streetlights grew sparser and the buildings got rougher around the edges.

Jawbones appeared on my left, a squat brick building with a neon sign that buzzed faintly in the darkness.

Gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. Three other cars. A pickup truck with mud caked on its wheel wells. A motorcycle near the door.

Not my usual scene. Not that I had a usual scene. My usual scene was the living room couch, praying I wasn’t slowly being erased.

This was… research. A field trip. An anthropological study of how normal people spent their Thursday evenings.

I parked near the back because I wasn’t rebellious enough to park at the front.

Pushing through the heavy wooden door, I stepped inside.

Jawbones was exactly what it sounded like—a local joint that didn’t bother with pretension. Low ceiling with exposed beams, scarred wooden floors that had seen decades of spilled beer and shuffled boots, a long bar along the back wall with stools that looked older than I was.

The lighting was dim and golden, coming from fixtures shaped like antlers mounted on the walls, and a jukebox in the corner was playing something twangy and melancholy about a woman leaving a man and taking his dog.

I hoped the dog was happy.

A few tables were occupied. Two older men playing cards near the window. A woman in a denim jacket nursing a beer at the bar. A couple in the corner booth, heads bent together, sharing a basket of fries.

People looked over when I entered.

I braced.

Nobody cared for more than two seconds.

I slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar, leaving empty seats between me and the denim-jacketed woman. The bartender, a stocky man with a dark beard and forearms like tree trunks, ambled over and planted both hands on the counter.

“What can I get you?”

Whiskey. The answer rose automatically, conditioned by months of hiding bottles under car seats and taking furtive swallows before walking through my own front door. But that was old Phineas. Tonight Phineas was someone else. Someone who didn’t need to dull the edges just to survive the evening.

“Whatever’s on tap,” I said, surprising myself. “Something local?”

The bartender nodded approvingly and pulled a pint of amber ale, setting it in front of me with a coaster that had a cartoon moose on it. “First one’s on the house if you can tell me what a moose says.”

I stared at the coaster. Then at the bartender. “Is this a trick question?”

“House policy.”

“I don’t think moose actually… make sounds? Do they?” I was suddenly deeply invested in this question. “They’re just large and judgmental. Like silent, antlered disapproval.”

The bartender’s beard twitched. “Close enough.” And he walked away.

I took a sip of the beer. It was cold and slightly bitter and tasted nothing like the whiskey I’d been using as a crutch. Good. Different. A drink a free person might order, sitting in a bar on a warm evening with nothing to fear except maybe the moose trivia.