Page 145 of Rising Heat

“And what’s your success rate so far?”

“Usually works for me.”

“And for everyone else?”

“I don’t take anyone here,” he says simply.

“Oh? So I'm the only fuck buddy you've ever taken to your secret whisky bar?”

Mack glances sideways at me.

“You’re the only anything I’ve ever brought here. And that’s not—” He cuts himself off and reaches for the drink menu instead.

I just stare at him. I’m almost positive that’s the first time I’ve watched Mack MacAllister voluntarily end a conversation before he won it. I let him have it, though, mostly because I’m also trying very hard not to examine why I suddenly want the answer so badly in the first place.

“What do you want?” he asks, eyes still on the menu.

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Bourbon.”

“Perfect.”

Two glasses appear a minute later. Mack’s fingers brush mine as he slides one across the bar, and I decide that’s another thing I’m not going to think too hard about tonight.

For a while, neither of us says much. The bartender dries glasses at one end of the bar while someone near the pool table laughs loud enough to earn a half-hearted shush from his friend. Classic rock drifts through the speakers, glasses clink somewhere behind us, and the bourbon burns all the way down. Somewhere between the first sip and the second, my mother’s voice finally starts to loosen its grip inside my head.

Mack spins his glass slowly against the bar top.

“My parents think I made a mistake,” I say eventually.

“About?”

“Everything.” I let out a humorless laugh. “The breakup, the move…my apparently catastrophic decision to become a person with free will.”

His mouth twitches faintly against the rim of his glass.

“They think I walked away from something people spend their whole lives looking for.”

“And what’s that?”

“Someone who was stable. Kind. Had a good job. Wanted the same things I was supposed to want.”

“But you didn’t want those things?”

“I thought I did.”

He studies me over the rim of his glass.

“No,” he says quietly. “You thought you were supposed to.”

The words land like a bruise I didn’t know I had until someone pressed on it.

“There’s a difference.”

I look at him for a second.

“You sound like you know.”