Page 32 of Devoted

“I’m not done.” Her voice didn’t rise. It got quieter, and flatter, and harder to stand in front of. “You had your hands on me Sunday. Then you put them in your pockets and told me it was a mistake, and you’ve spent the week proving it. And tonight you stood at that bar and looked at him like you wanted to put him through the wall.”

“I didn’t want to put him through the wall.”

“Then what?”

“Liv.”

“No. Say it. What did you want?”

He didn’t say it. She waited. He stood there with the truck at his back and nothing in his mouth, and she nodded once like he’d answered.

“Well,” she said. “That’s an answer,” and turned to go.

“Don’t.”

He’d moved without knowing it. Two steps, and his hand was flat on the door of his truck beside her head, and she’d turned back into him at the word and stopped, and now she was between him and the door and neither of them stepped anywhere. He could feel her breath. He could see the cold in it, coming up between them, her eyes on his mouth, then on his eyes, her arms uncrossed, and she did not touch him, and he did not touch her, and the six inches held.

“You were jealous,” she said, from there. “You don’t get to be jealous, Owen. You’re the one who pushed me away.”

He had nothing. She was right, she knew it, he knew it, his hand was on the cold door beside her head and hers were at her sides, and she looked at him one second longer, long enough to see there wasn’t going to be an answer, and then she put two fingers on his chest, flat, no push in it at all, moved herself out from under his arm, and walked back across the gravel to the door without hurrying.

The band came out loud when she opened it, and went small when it shut.

He stayed where he was, with his hand on the truck.

He gave it ten minutes and went back in.

She was in the booth with Lauren, her back to the room. Jett had Ainsley on the floor. Knox was explaining the hitch rule to Chase, who wasn’t listening, and broke off long enough to say, “Where’d you go?”

“Air.”

“It’s twenty degrees, Owen,” Knox said, and went back to the hitch rule. Nobody else looked at the door.

Brody came off the floor with Remi still hanging on his arm, singing, wrong, at the top of her lungs, and he saw Owen and let her go.

“You went out.”

“For a minute.”

“Lot of that going around tonight.” Brody leaned on the end of the booth, easy, and looked at him about as long as it took to say it. “Bateman went out for some too. Came back quick.”

“It’s cold out there.”

“I’d forgot how cold it gets.” Brody pushed off the booth. “You want to shoot one?”

“In a minute.”

“Take your time,” Brody said, and went and took the cue off Chase.

Harvey had a bottle on the bar before Owen got to it, cold, cap off, set square on the wood.

“Figure it out?” Harvey said, to the glass.

“Yeah.”

“Two-fifty.”

Owen paid.