Page 9 of Unruly

Her niece, and Colt’s older sister, came back three months ago. I’ve known her my entire life, but she’s older than me. Then she went to college, got married, and moved somewhere else entirely, and became just a name that came up at family things. I never thought about her specifically. She was filed under Dawson family details as “not relevant to Cash.”

Then she came back.

She came back with pink hair and a bigger personality than I ever remembered her having. The Halle I remembered was a pretty girl in the background of my summers growing up—quiet and put together.

This version looks like she stopped giving a shit about what she’s supposed to look like, and I find that deeply attractive. So much so that the realization went straight past my brain and landed in my dick.

And then there’s the divorce.

She left her husband—or he did something. Who the fuck cares, though, because she’s back, she’s single, and I have a very specific and well-documented appreciation for divorced women. I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something about a woman who has been through some traumatic shit that makes them animals in bed.

And I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Since her return, I started coming into The Bar more regularly, even though drinking is cheaper at home. But I’m consistent when something interests me. And Halle interests me. So, I’ve been patient. I’ve been charming. I’ve been everything short of showing up with a goddamn sign.

But then she calls me kid and turns away.

Every. Single. Time.

I’m exactly the kind of man that women in this town do not say no to, and Halle Dawson looks at me like I’m a slightly amusing inconvenience, then goes back to serving other customers.

It’s pissing me off.

Halle Dawson is fucking up my order of operations.

I begin to rack the balls at the pool table as my brothers go and grab drinks. Dawson comes back with a highball glass filled with a pink bubbly liquid and a resigned look on his face.

“Halle gave me a Shirley Temple,” he says.

“She knows how old you are.”

“I’m twenty…”

“Tell her that. See what happens,” I say, pointing at Aunt A.

He looks at Aria at the far end of the bar and visibly decides against it.

I laugh, walk over to the bar myself, and flag down Halle.

She comes over without any sense of urgency. The pink hair is down tonight, hitting right at her shoulders, and I make myself look at her face instead, which is also, it turns out, a problem. She’s got this mouth on her with full lips, the kind that look like they need to bleed red from me biting them.

“Hey, Halle,” I say.

She lets out a huff of exhaustion. “Hey, kid. A beer?”

I’m twenty-one years old. I have a full-sleeve tattoo, can bench more than Rhett on a bad day, and I ride a sport bike faster than most people in this county, and she calls me kid. I’ll rearrange her guts with my fucking dick and see if she calls me kid afterwards.

I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

Halle smiles and walks to grab me a beer. I watch her as she moves. Her ass is in tight denim shorts tonight and a crop top that rides high enough to see her barely-soft belly.

“Holy shit. Is that Halle Dawson?” a voice bellows from a few stools down from me.

The guy leaning over the bar is someone I don’t recognize. He’s tall, even sitting on the stool, and wearing an Abercrombie polo that’s a size too small. He looks like the type that peaked in high school.

Halle hands me my beer and looks over at the guy. “What can I get you, Tyler?”

He looks at her, grinning from ear to fucking ear. “Depends…what’re you recommending these days?”