Page 68 of Handful

That got another snort from Fewin.

“And then you forgot me. Completely. Wedding and birthday, gone, no trace. So when you walked into Velvet you looked at me like you’d never seen me before in your life — which you hadn’t, really, because you’d never once actually looked at me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of that. I mean it.” He held my eyes for a moment, then the corner of his mouth pulled up. “Though I’d argue the universe had a plan.”

“Don’t.”

“Twice it put you in front of me and I missed it. Third time I walked into your bar—”

“And harassed my staff.”

“—and couldn’t look away.” He spread his hands. “That’s not bad luck. That’s fate.”

“That’s a man trying to spin being forgettable into a love story.”

“Is it working?”

I gave him the look. The one that had ended conversations with men with twice his confidence. He held up both hands, still grinning, and picked up his clipboard.

Fewin nodded at the clipboard in Handful’s hands. “That’s his emotional support clipboard. He reaches for it every time you’re around.” He looked between us. “So do I still have to drink the bad Negroni, or—”

“Yes,” Handful and I said, at the same time, and that broke it. Thank God.

❧

Lex found me at the end of the bar after Handful had gone to deal with a delivery.

“He tell you about Friday?” she said.

“What about Friday?”

“No. Course he didn’t.” She sat, that flat unbothered way of hers. “There’s a regular. Renner. Flashy, expensive suit, big tipper. Been coming years. All that time, he’s been putting his hands on whoever serves him. All that time, every manager this place ever had decided the man’s tab was worth more than the woman’s dignity. Friday he did it to me. Busy night, room full. And your ex walked him out the front door in front of God and everybody, banned him for good, refused to give him his money back. Told him Venom doesn’t sell that no matter how deep his pockets are.” She looked at me. “Cost the house the biggest tab in the building. Didn’t even slow down to think about it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Six years,” Lex said. “First time anyone ever chose me over the tab.” She picked up her coffee. “Thought you should know.”

And she was gone. I went back to my limes.

The fate speech and the grin when I gave him the look — that was Handful. But the apology, what he’d done for Lex on Friday, and picking up his clipboard and letting me off the hook after that fate speech — that was Tyler. One man. That was the confusing part.

I was still working that out when he came back twenty minutes later, clipboard still in hand.

“Fewin still alive?” he said.

“Barely. I think he’s been making the cocktails wrong on purpose so he gets to drink them.”

Handful looked down the bar at Fewin, who was staring into a rocks glass with great concentration, and laughed.

For a second we were just two people at a bar who’d made each other laugh. His eyes were on mine, all the way, the way they hadn’t been at the wedding or birthday party.

My hand moved before I did — toward the clipboard, toward him — and by the time I caught it he’d already seen it.

He stepped back — but not before I saw what it cost him. His own hand had already started toward mine, and he caught it the way I’d caught mine, made himself lower it, his jaw tight with the effort. He wanted the contact. That was plain to see, and he wasn’t hiding it. But I’d caught my own hand half a breath before he did, and he’d read it — that the reach was a slip and not a decision, that I wasn’t ready — and he’d stopped it for me. He didn’t say a word about any of it. Just gave me the room to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Who was this man? Not the Handful I’d met first, all swagger and wandering hands. Not my Tyler either. This was someone new — still every inch the bad-boy biker, still a man who could clear a booth with a look, only there was a patience laid over it now, something almost gentlemanly, that I’d never once seen in him. It was confusing.

“I should go,” I said. “Velvet.”