He squeezed my shoulder and tossed me a wry smile, doing his best to lighten the mood. “Come on, think of this as a vacation. Just keep your dick in your pants and your fists out of assholes’ faces, and everything will turn out fine. I’m heading back to L.A. and I promise you I’ll take care of this shit with Jennings, but I can’t do it if you’re here stirring up more trouble.”
Trouble.
I almost snorted.
That shit followed me wherever I went. Didn’t matter if I was here or in L.A.
Anthony’s phone buzzed, and he swiped his finger over it and read the message. “My car’s here.” He tucked it in his suit jacket pocket. “I’ve got to get to the airport. I’ll keep you posted on everything.”
He grabbed his briefcase, adjusted it on his suitcase, and pulled it behind him through the large, open living area toward the double doors leading out front. He paused in the foyer and looked back at me.
“If you can’t do this for yourself, then do it for the band. But know they love you, Baz. Don’t doubt they understand why you did what you did even better than I do. None of them want to see a repeat of Mark. I’m not sure any one of you would survive it. And since Austin’s your family, then he’s their family, too.”
Feeling like he’d just drop-kicked me in the stomach, I stood there in silence and watched Anthony walk out the door, the thought of losing Austin enough to weaken my knees. That kid was my life. My responsibility.
Sucking in a breath, I forced myself to move, turned around, and plodded up the large curved staircase so I could hit the shower. I froze when I rounded the top and found Austin huddled on the top step, fists gripping handfuls of light brown hair as he rocked with his head buried between his knees.
“Austin.” I grabbed the railing to help myself kneel down in front of him. He’d just turned eighteen—was all legs and lanky body—had the same greyish-green eyes as mine, and his hair was shaggy and just as messy as the warped emotions that skewed his enigmatic thoughts. He was good, through and through, but held a heart so full of self-hatred he could see none of it.
He’d taken the blame that was mine and I’d spend the rest of my life erasing it from him.
“Austin,” I called again, quieter this time, tugging at one of his hands that ripped at his hair. “Stop.”
He shook his head almost violently. “It’s my fault.”
I grabbed him by the outside of his head, forcing him to look at me. “No. It’s not. It’s not.” I dropped my forehead to his, pleading with him to believe it for once, my voice rough and shallow. “Not your fault.”
Two
Shea
Dim lights filtered down from the high, exposed rafters of the old historic building, and flameless tabletop lamps flickered from the tall round tables and secluded high-backed booths. The yellowy glow clung to the dingy air, casting everything in a dusky fog. Still, it felt almost as if the night was set on fast motion, a projector beaming blips of indistinct faces and muffled voices through the packed bar, these stolen moments spinning by so quickly as people sought the reprieve found in this special place.
The cavernous room was always dark and seemed to hold a mystery, like a million secrets had been told here and the walls protected them in the safety of their arms.
Never had I imagined I’d come to make this place a piece of my own. The many grueling years spent priming and molding and shaping me for one singular goal, and yet my path had led me straight back here. Irony.
But I learned early on some things are much more important than any ambition.
I wound around the tables set up on the hardwood floor and made my way back to the gorgeous antique bar that sat like an island adrift in this sea of revelry. The massive oblong made a full circle, and besides the times when the stage was serving its purpose where it was positioned at the very far end of the colossal building, the bar commanded the focus of Charlie’s.
I leaned my elbows on top of the dark polished wood. Even though I was tall, I always felt inclined to lift up on my toes, as if to match the lift of my voice. “Hey, Charlie,” I shouted over the din of the noisy room, “I need a gin and tonic and two amber ales.”
Charlie’s back was to me as he hustled behind the bar. He reached up to grab several hurricane glasses from the bar racks suspended on chains from the high ceiling.
Over his shoulder, he shot me a crooked, bearded grin. “You got it, darlin’. Give me a sec to fill your last order. You’ve been firing ’em at me faster than I can fill ’em.”
“That’s because the place is packed tonight. I can’t keep up, either.”
With a short shake of his head, he spun around and began mixing drinks in front of me. “You keep up just fine. This place hasn’t run so smooth in years…not until you came back to me.” He sent me a wink and slid two drinks my direction, which I quickly arranged on my tray. “I was five minutes from shuttin’ this place down until you came and rescued it.”
I rolled my eyes at him affectionately.
“Oh, aren’t you the charmer.”
Always the charmer and always completely full of it. Charlie’s had been a staple in Savannah for years, and he’d never been anywhere close to shutting it down.
Really, it was Charlie who had done the rescuing.
That charmer who scrambled around the gorgeous antique bar? He was also my uncle, my mother’s brother. He was the only one who had been there for me when I didn’t have anyone else to turn to, because everyone else had turned me away. He never once told me it was a waste or called it a mistake. He just encouraged me to live my life…on my own terms…terms that everyone else had previously tried to set for me.
Charlie stepped back and wiped his hands on a towel before he ran it over the bar top, eyebrow quirked as he cast me a teasing smile. “That’s why you love me, Shea Bear.”
The soft spot I’d always held for him glowed with the pet name he’d used for me since I was a little girl.
I balanced my tray in my hands and eyed him over the top of the bar. “I love you because you’re the best, Charlie.”
It was just a flash, but I saw it there in brown eyes the same as mine, that he cared for me just as much as I cared for him.
In my twenty-three years, I’d come to recognize there were three types of guys.
Maybe it was wrong of me to lump them into categories, but I’d learned to do it for my own self-preservation. As a way to survive in a world that wanted to use me up before it hung me out to dry.
First, there were the assholes. They were easy to spot. They were always after one thing and one thing only.
Pleasure.
It didn’t matter if it was sex or money, fame or comfort. It all amounted to the same thing. Every move they made was purposed to bring them self-gratification and they were all too happy to reach out and take whatever they wanted to make it happen. Most of them didn’t give a second thought to those they hurt in the process. Hell, they usually took a little more pleasure in doing it.
Then there were the nice guys. These guys were a little harder to read because they didn’t set out to do people wrong. They were sweet and nice and treated you like a princess right up to the point when they didn’t get what they wanted or after they’d had their fill of it. These guys would hit you with all kinds of valid excuses, rationalizing their actions to make themselves feel better. Half the time they left you feeling like you were the one who’d done something wrong in the first place.
Last, there were the good guys.
Guys with character. The ones who’d sacrifice for someone else, even if it meant it cost them something, or they had nothing to gain. Even if it meant the end result might not stack in their favor. They just did it because it was the right thing to do.
Charlie Cohns?
He was one of the good guys.
He gave me a little salute before he turned to grin at Tamar, one of the other bartenders, who slipped under the small opening at one end of the bar, arms full of bottles needing rest
ocking. She was older than me by a year or two, had flaming red hair, and pretty much looked like a modern-day pin-up girl, all curves and tattoos and flawlessly applied makeup. Plus the girl took crap from no one. She was the perfect fit beside Charlie who was as casual as they came.
Her full red lips spread into a seductive smile. I was pretty sure she didn’t know a different one. “I leave for five minutes and this guy is already slacking off? Get back to work, old man.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He cocked his head her direction, eyes on me, and mouthed, “Slave driver.”
Laughing, I situated the last of the drinks Charlie had poured onto my tray. “Now Tamar is the real reason this bar is still afloat. You’re lucky she headed east when she did.”
“Now don’t go fillin’ this one’s head any fuller than it already is. She already thinks she owns the place.”
Tamar maneuvered to set the base of all the bottles on the far countertop, arms wrapped around them like she was hugging them. Glasses clanked as they settled, and she straightened up to her full five-foot-one stature. Her five-inch heels still didn’t bring her close to Charlie’s chin. She tossed her hair off her shoulder. “What do you mean, think?”
Charlie laughed and tossed a balled-up towel at her, which she snatched out of the air.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of thinking anything, sugar. Now help me fill these orders. This old man is falling behind.”
Somehow that smile turned soft and she went to work.
Without a doubt, it was Charlie who owned all of us.
Both Tamar and I loved him for it.
With my tray balanced, I moved back through the expanding crowd, smiling my most welcoming smile, and saying excuse me and sorry so I could shoulder through. Music blared from the speakers, all thanks to our sound guy Derrick. A local band was setting up on the stage. They played here often, always a big draw for Saturday nights, both for our regulars and the tourists looking for a good time after they’d spent a lazy day on the beach.
I dodged a few grabby hands from a group of college guys who’d clearly had too much to drink and were in danger of skating from nice guy zone straight into asshole territory, but I’d worked here long enough to know how to deal with them. I just grinned and let it slide right off my bare back.
I stopped at a couple of tables and dropped off drinks, grabbed the order from a group of younger women who had pulled two tables together to accommodate their party, and let my gaze wander to see if I’d missed anyone who needed attention in my section. It got stuck on the lone figure hidden away in the farthest corner booth who hadn’t been sitting there the last time I made my rounds.
Weaving through the crowd, I edged toward him. Somehow my footsteps grew slower the closer I got. He wore a black beanie, his head down and his attention trained on his phone lit up in the backdrop of darkness. My eyes were drawn to his hands that held the expensive device, all big and strong, seeming to be just as powerful as this guy’s presence. He wore a long-sleeved button-up shirt, the cuffs rolled up his forearms in a careless fashion, revealing intricate ink scrolled along his skin.
A knot of intrigue formed somewhere in my chest.
I was suddenly wishing to be closer, just so I could make out the design.
Even though people came here from all walks of life, young and old, country and rocker, bikers and businessmen, he still seemed to stick out, too vibrant to belong within the confines of these walls. And I hadn’t even seen his face.
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes at myself. Get a grip, Shea.
Sucking in a breath, I pulled myself together and inched closer to the edge of the horse-shoe booth he was tucked behind. In a voice loud enough to cut through the music and jumble of voices, I gave him my standard greeting. “Hey there, welcome to Charlie’s.”
His hands gripped tighter on the phone when my words hit him, and it seemed to take him an eternity to lift his head, as if he were contemplating whether he really wanted to reveal himself.
And when he did, I kind of wished he hadn’t.
For one rapturous second, time stood still as I got lost in a face that had to be the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It wasn’t perfect, and maybe that was the problem. His full, full lips were a little crooked on one side, his cheekbones high and defined, his jaw severe—sharp angles—and coated in what had to be three days of scruff. A scar split through his right eyebrow, making it appear lower on that side, and there was a trace of another at the bottom of his chin.
But it was the hardness burning from his strange grey eyes that knocked the breath from my lungs.
No, not perfect.
Just beautiful and dark and a little bit frightening.
My heart thudded and I couldn’t stop from taking a startled step back as a slow slide of attraction trickled beneath the surface of my skin—like feathers touching me everywhere—before it gathered to flutter low in my belly. Maybe it’d been far too long since I’d allowed a man to touch me, because all at once I felt the grip slipping on my own little reality. The reality where men didn’t cause a reaction like this in me, because I knew better than to go looking for that kind of heartbreak.
No, I didn’t have a bunch of priorities or concerns.
I had one.
I couldn’t afford to flirt or play—not like normal women my age—couldn’t risk the trouble a boy like this would most assuredly bring.
As if he’d want me after he knew, anyway.
The beautiful stranger’s frown only deepened, and I felt like a total idiot standing there with my mouth hanging open, tongue-tied.
Blinking away the stupor, I swallowed hard and painted a smile on my face, knowing it probably appeared just as fake as it felt, but this guy had left me staggered, confused, and affected in a way I didn’t necessarily like.
“What can I get for you?” I finally managed to say.
Those burning grey eyes narrowed in speculation, and not exactly in a friendly way. Waiting. As if he were waiting on me when I was the one who’d asked the question.
My own head tilted, searching him in the shadows in return, wondering what he was thinking, because he was looking at me as if he were expecting me to call him by name. Suddenly all of those years of self-consciousness came bounding in, and discomfort shifted my feet as I went cold with dread.
Did he recognize me?
It was rare, because I’d grown from a girl to a woman, and my once short, straight blonde hair was now long with wavy curls, woven with streaks of light browns and blondes.
Just when I was about to bolt and send over a different server, he leaned forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Uh…yeah…sorry. Gran Patron Platinum or Suprema. Neat.”
That voice chased away all my worry. Eclipsing it in song. A rich, velvety sound filling up my ears and tickling my senses.
“Please,” he said a little harder than the last, jarring me from the faraway place my mind had just gone. A smirk ticked up at the corner of his pretty, pretty mouth, like he knew precisely where my head had been.
God, this guy was dangerous. And had very expensive taste in tequila.
With one harsh shake of my head, I regained my composure, that feigned smile back in full force. “Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”
He only nodded, but his eyes softened a fraction.
Just like quicksand.
I wondered what it’d be like if I jumped in.
Tearing myself away before my mind had a chance to entertain any more ridiculous thoughts, I spun around and put some much-needed space between us. I stopped to check on a few other tables on the way back to the bar, all the while pretending I couldn’t feel the heat of his stare penetrating me, or my spine tingling in awareness where his gaze traced along the skin exposed from the draping, backless fabric of my blouse.
When I returned with his drink, he mumbled a quiet, “Thank you,” and I found myself having to force myself not to linger or stare, but couldn’t help it when he kept those grey eyes trained on me and tip
ped the crystal to his pouty mouth, just enough to wet his lips. His tongue peeked out for a taste, and my knees went a little weak.
Good God, he was a sipper.
With shaky fingers, I touched my forehead and felt the heat there. Self-consciously, I tucked a thick lock of my long bangs behind my ear and did my best to clear the lump from my throat. Still, my voice was hoarse. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can get for you,” I said, fumbling as I backed away.
Every instinct told me I needed to run, that there was something about this beautiful stranger I couldn’t resist. What scared me most was the intensity of his stare telling me that he knew exactly what I wouldn’t be able to resist and he wouldn’t be opposed to using it against me.
I almost breathed a sigh of relief when I found him gone the next time I made my rounds, a hundred-dollar bill trapped beneath the empty glass. However, the overwhelming rush of disappointment distorted the relief.
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