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“Char, you have some customers,” the raven-haired waitress shouts.
“Coming,” I hear a voice calling from the back. The bartender comes through the swinging doors with a case of beer and hauls it onto the counter next to the cooler, blowing an errant hair off her face with a huff.
“What can I get for you?” she asks before looking up.
When she does, my gaze collides with bright blue eyes I haven’t seen in over six years.Holy shit.
“Charlie?”
Chapter four
Charlie
Noway.No fucking way.Linc is sitting in my bar in bumfuck nowhere Texas. And he recognized me.
The last time we saw each other, I was six years younger, too skinny for my 5‘6“ frame, blonde, and beaten to hell. Since that night all those years ago, I’ve gained about twenty pounds and started dying my hair dark brown. I thought I looked different enough that no one would recognize me.
Apparently not.
God, he looks just like he did six years ago. His brown hair is a little longer, and he didn’t have the almost beard back then, but those eyes. They’re the same hazel ones that promised me everything would be okay all those years ago. The ones that, had we met at a different time and under different circumstances, I could have lost myself in. You know, the typical way a teenage girl fantasizes about her dream man. Only difference is I got my dream man sent to prison. I thought about Linc throughout the years, and every time I did, a wave of guilt would nearly drown me. He did so much for me that night and ultimately paid with his freedom.
The fact he’s suddenly sitting at my bar is too much of a coincidence not to be suspicious, though. Does he know what I took from Jace the night he was arrested? The only people who could know how valuable the notebook I stole was Jace, me, the people he seriously screwed over by keeping that information, and the people who would probably like to get their hands on it. There was no doubt in my mind the last two groups had no idea he had it. At least, they didn’t six years ago.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, too stunned to think of anything more clever. “Why are you here?”
“Why aren’t you in New Orleans?” he asks, looking just as surprised as I feel.
The guy sitting next to him watches as we stare at each other, tossing questions back and forth, without either of us answering the other’s.
“Shit, Charlie.” Linc shakes his head and lets out a low whistle. “I thought you were in a completely different city living a happy life. How the hell did you end up in this shithole?”
My neck bristles with irritation for the town my best friend Lucy and I decided to call home for the foreseeable future. I don’t know why, we’ve only been here for a few months, but the people here welcomed us without asking a million questions neither of us had answers for. If he thought this was a shithole, he obviously wasn’t paying attention to where he found me that night over six years ago.
“This is Charlie?” the guy sitting next to Linc chimes in. “Guess you were wasting your time fucking all those blondes.” He chuckles, and Linc shoots him an irritated scowl.
“Shut up, Wyatt,” he says through gritted teeth.
“New Orleans didn’t work out. I needed a fresh start, and this place seemed as good as any.”
Everything was going fine for the first couple years I lived there. I’d finally made some friends and had an apartment with a roommate, Lucy, who became more like a sister to me than a roommate. I had a job I liked working in a bar, where I first met Lucy. I was happy. Free. New Orleans was supposed to be far enough away and busy enough that no one would be able to find me there. A needle in a haystack, as they say. It all came crashing down the day I spotted Jace’s cousin walking across the street from the bar where I was waitressing. I don’t know how he found me in New Orleans, but considering what I had on his organization, I wasn’t about to walk up to him and ask.
I rushed back to the little apartment Lucy and I shared and started packing. She was scheduled to work later that night, but when she saw the look of terror in my eyes, she didn’t ask any questions and began throwing her things in a bag next to me. When I tried to argue with her about running with me, she told me there was no way she was letting me leave without her. Lucy made it clear that family stuck together, and she was mine.
“Hey, Linc, stop flirting with the bartender and grab us some beers, would ya?” a deep voice laced in a familiar British accent calls from one of the tables. When Linc turns toward the side, Jude catches sight of me. “Fuck,” he mutters looking toward the ceiling.
The man sitting next to him has no idea why Jude’s annoyed as his gaze swings between the two of us.
“She one of the broken hearts you left throughout the continental U.S.?” His laughter dies when he realizes no one else is laughing with him. “What’s going on?” he asks, clearly confused with the situation.
Join the club, pal.
“That’s Charlie,” Jude replies.
A low whistle sounds through the man’s teeth. “Well, shit, I don’t think beer is going to be enough for this reunion.”
The expressions on the faces of the two men at the table are anything but warm. Jude looks at me like I’ve kicked a puppy or was responsible for his friend losing six years of his life, and the other looks at me with suspicious interest.
Lucy comes behind the bar, putting a comforting hand on my back.
