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“Son of a bitch,” I mutter as I bolt that way, intent on intercepting her before she gets hurt.
I’m too late, though. She steps right into the fray, elbowing one of the guys hard in the ribs and bending him over with a grunt of pain. She holds the bat with her hands at both ends and shoves it into the other guy’s chest, driving him backward.
“What the fuck, Louis?” she yells at the bald man, who immediately holds up his hands in surrender. “I told you if you pulled this shit, I was going to crack your head open.”
The man looks somewhat chastened, which is weird considering he looks like he’s done some seriously hard time in prison for hurting people, but I’m not taking any chances. I gently grasp Stevie’s arm and maneuver her behind me, stepping back so I can put distance between us and the guys who were fighting. Bain and Camden appear and make a united wall with me.
“You the protection brigade?” the bald man named Louis asks as he eyeballs the three of us with a hard set to his jaw.
“Yeah… that’s us,” I reply, knowing Bain, Camden, and I could easily take this dude.
“Then I owe you a beer,” Louis says with a grin. “Because I was about ten seconds away from Stevie using that bat on me.”
“I would’ve kneed you in the nuts,” Stevie says as she pushes between me and Camden to come toe to toe with Louis again. “Get out of here. You’re cut off for the night.”
I watch in part confusion, part fascination as the man heads toward the door without further argument. She then rounds on the guy with the braid. “I should throw you out, too, Jimmy.”
“He started it,” the man growls, and I step in closer to Stevie.
“So he did,” Stevie says with a sigh. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Fair enough,” Jimmy says and heads back to his stool at the bar as if nothing happened.
“Dude,” Bain says, leaning in close and speaking in a low voice, “your girl is a badass, and I’m slightly terrified of her.”
“I’m turned on,” Camden says with obvious awe.
I’d laugh if I wasn’t still trying to process what I just saw. Stevie jumped into the middle of a brawl without a single care in the world.
She moves toward the bar, but I reach out and snag her arm. “What the hell was that?” I ask.
She doesn’t seem to take offense but tips her head at me in curiosity.
“You could have been seriously hurt,” I point out.
Her smile is brilliant, followed by a light pat on my cheek with her palm. “It’s cute that you think I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“But—”
“No buts,” she says, moving her hand to my chest where she presses over my heart, which I realize is galloping. “Now, go get a pool table set up. I’m going to buy Jimmy a beer, grab myself one, and we’ll play a few games, okay?”
I can only nod mutely because I’m starting to understand Stevie is far more intriguing than I’d originally thought, and I’d already thought she was fucking cool as shit. Granted, I’m not sure I like her needing to break up bar fights and I know I’ll have a million questions later, but for now, I’ll just have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.
?
Stevie sinks the eight ball, and Bain tosses his cue onto the table. “That’s it. I’m drunk and tired of getting my ass kicked. I’m out of here.”
“Me too,” Camden agrees, picking up Bain’s cue and returning it to the wall rack along with his.
I glance at my watch and note it’s almost two a.m. The bar is completely cleared out, except for us and one old man sitting by himself, nursing the last dregs of a draft beer. The other bartender is at the register, counting money and making notations on a notepad before putting everything in a bank bag.
Stevie unscrews her cue stick, and I start to panic. I’m not ready for the evening to be over, and I haven’t had any time to really talk to her alone. For the past few hours, all four of us have been drinking beers and playing pool. Every once in a while, Stevie would dash around and help pick up empty mugs and beer bottles for the other bartender, but she didn’t serve any more drinks.
“It’s against the law to drink and serve alcohol,” she explained. “But it’s slowing down, and Giada can handle things.”
I loved it because that meant she could hang out with me—and my buddies—the rest of the night.
But now they’re shrugging on coats, and I’m not ready to leave. That might be the beer talking, but it’s talking too loudly to ignore.
“Let’s play another game,” I say, directly to Stevie.
