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And, just to make extra sure it wasn’t a dream, I woke Matt up with my lips wrapped around him. We pushed the covers off the bed and went at it for the fourth time in less than twenty-four hours.
We likely could have gone for the fifth if it weren’t for premade obligations. Matt had a meeting with the sheriff after she said they’d found some interesting security footage, and I had a lunch date planned with Ryan and his fiancé, Elijah. Getting out of bed was hard—for a variety of reasons—but we somehow managed to do it, hopping in the shower together and eating a late breakfast together and kissing each other goodbye.
Very much like how a couple would act.
I tried not thinking too much about it. My feelings for Matt were already cemented inside me, like one of those unchangeable things in your life: birthday, eye color, hair type. No matter how wrong I thought it was or how guilty I felt for possibly hurting my brother, my scarlet-red emotions for Matthew Hale weren’t going anywhere. I just had to accept it.
“You’ve got a pep in your step,” Ryan commented as I greeted him and Elijah outside of the Library’s big double doors. Ryan wore a festive green-and-red holiday sweater that matched the green and red of Elijah’s nails.
“Seriously,” Elijah said. “For a wild second, I thought you were wearing those weird shoes with the wheels in the heels.”
The image of me wheeling up to my friends at a bar on some Heelys cracked me up. “It’s been a good morning, that’s all.” I hugged them both and complimented Elijah on the rainbow-colored sneakers he had on. As we were entering the bar, a man came out with his head low and a cap tucked even lower, a faded barbed wire tattoo wrapping around his considerably sized bicep. He almost knocked me over before entering into a beat-up red Honda and driving off, the car letting go of a cloud of toxic black smoke.
“That guy needs to have whatever you’re having,” Elijah quipped as we entered into the spacious bar, the sunlight streaming in through the windows giving the space a different feel from the evenings I’d spent here. I waved at Roger and Terry, my two favorite bartenders, and we headed over to a table underneath a sign that read “Sci-Fi.” The table had pages of different sci-fi books placed under the glass surface, the opening lines of Dune popping out to me. There were a handful of people scattered around, filling circular booths and taking up the stools at the bar, but nowhere near as crowded as it usually got.
We settled in and started talking shit about the latest internet drama, something about an “influencer” marrying a scam artist and them both conning their millions of fans. It was one of the first few times I’d hung out with Ryan and Elijah, and I was having a blast. Spending time with them was easy. They were both funny and smart and the complete opposites of each other, yet still somehow fit perfectly together. They were couple goals for sure and were quickly becoming my really good friends. I didn’t ever have a solid friend group I could count on; it was mostly just Matt and Harry my entire life. I had friends but a lot of them were in the FBI, and once I’d left, those friends sort of drifted, too. Phone calls became texts every other month which became emails every year or so, after numbers changed and were never updated.
So this time with Ryan and Elijah was really nice.
Too bad it wasn’t going to last for very long.
My attention lurched toward the bar, where a familiar face turned toward me for a brief moment before turning back to face an incredibly uncomfortable-looking woman. She leaned away from the man with her arms crossed and her lips pursed tight.
It was Colton Majors, and he was clearly harassing that woman.
This was one of the first times I’d even seen the guy out in the open. I knew I could either stay quiet and follow him out of the bar in hopes of catching him doing something incriminating, or I could stand up right now and confront him without any backup or solid line of questioning prepared—but it would likely help that poor girl find an exit.
“Sorry, guys, I’ll be right back.”
I stood and cut across the sparsely packed bar, sitting on the stool next to Colton before tapping his shoulder.
“Huh?” He swiveled on his seat and looked to me, a waft of onions and garlic hitting me directly in the face, not getting any better when he closed his mouth.
“Colton Majors,” I held out a hand. Behind him, the girl didn’t waste a second. She grabbed her purse, threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar, and instead of running out like I thought she would, she moved her stool back a couple of feet and started to sip her drink with a satisfied smile on her face, watching.
