Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
My eyes got a little misty, and I put my hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for saying that, Nathanial. It means a lot.”
He nodded, stayed until I took my hand back, and then turned to help the others. I watched him for a moment, saw his long wings dusting his ankles, before I took myself over the berm and to the sidewalk. When in doubt, head to the dive bar.
The bar halfway down the street still somehow smelled like incense. It wasn’t until I entered that I realized I didn’t have a handbag, money, or someone with me to hold either. Luckily—or unluckily, as the case might be—it wouldn’t be long before someone from the crew came to find me. Hopefully, they’d have money. I just flew on a private jet, but I can’t buy a beer.
I barely noticed the dingy interior or blinking lights from an old-style jukebox in the corner. The high-back seats were mostly vacant, and a bored bartender flicked the channels on a box TV strapped into the upper corner over the bar.
He lowered the remote and glanced at me when I sat. My chair leaned dramatically to the left, threatening to come apart and topple me out.
“Bud, please. Light. Bud Light,” I said, clutching at the bar and righting myself. “Or Coors, if you don’t have Bud. They all taste the same to me.”
Without a word, he went back to messing with the TV before finding a baseball game and throwing the remote aside. He leaned over the fridge as Austin’s large frame filled the doorway. The patrons down the bar, a few guys sitting on their own and watching TV or messing with their phones, glanced over. Two hunched a little more and went back to what they were doing. The third stared, his elbows coming up to rest on the edge of the bar.
Austin pretended not to notice, though I could feel his swirling aggression at what was on the verge of becoming a challenge. He took the chair beside mine before his body tilted my way. His chair groaned.
He looked down as he stilled, hands braced on the bar like mine.
I laughed. “Don’t bother changing seats. Mine does it too. They probably all do. Just be careful.”
The bartender dropped a coaster in front of me before setting down the beer. He paused, looking at Austin with the same bland expression he’d used on me.
“Same as her,” he responded, bracing his elbows on the bar, probably also to keep from toppling.
“You have money, right?” I murmured. “Because I didn’t bring any.”
He carefully reached around to his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. I stifled a laugh at his delicacy.
“Cheery place,” he said after he’d laid a twenty on the bar.
“Yeah. Matches my mood.”
“Need a little space?”
“Are you offering to head out and give me some alone time?”
His body tensed, and a swirl of emotions filtered through the bond. “If you’d like.”
“But you wouldn’t go far.”
His gaze was piercing, and I knew he was trying to read me. I kept my emotions as stagnant as Sebastian did when he turned into Elliot Graves.
“I’d go far enough,” he replied.
I put my hand on his forearm. “I don’t need space from you. I was just seeing what you’d say.”
He took a sip of his beer. “I would give it to you, though, if you needed it. And if you were inside our smoothly running territory, where I knew the borders were secured, I’d leave you to your own devices. Here, though, with the threat and that douche down the bar…”
I let a smile bloom and leaned toward him to rest my cheek on his shoulder. “I know. I also know that if you did walk away and leave me to my own devices, Mr. Tom would be skulking around somewhere, ready to sound the alarm if anything should happen. And if I were in a bar? Niamh would come in and claim a seat at the other end, telling me that was space enough.”
“She was on her way here when I stopped her. She’s currently waiting for the all-clear.”
I laughed, my mood lightening.
“Do you mind it?” he asked after a moment. “All the people around you all the time? It seems like you’re never alone. Even in your bedroom, you’re not alone. Not with the house listening or Mr. Tom liable to walk in at any time. Does it bother you?”
I shrugged, back to leaning on the bar. “I never really thought about it, honestly. But…no, I guess it doesn’t. You have to understand, I was alone a lot during the twenty years of my marriage. My ex worked all the time. All the time. I had Jimmy when he was younger, but he’d go to bed early, and I’d be alone. When he got older, he started sticking to his room or going out with friends. Arguing with Matt—my ex—about getting him to spend more time with us got old, so I stopped trying. In the end, it was just me. It was fine—I mean, it was my life. I accepted that. But…I guess I never really felt valued or cared for. I did the house stuff, and I got to see Matt when he was available. I cramped Jimmy’s style when I got too lonely. So now…”