by Emily Rose
“Did I just see you checking out the merchandise?” Danny asked wryly.
I looked at her. “Uh, no. I mean I just looked over when I heard the door open.”
She smiled, “I’m just kidding. Jeez, but in case you’re wondering, it looks like he works here,” she said and nodded down the bar.
I followed her gaze and sure enough, I saw him take up a spot behind the bar. Of course, he was a bartender. I mean why the hell not? It seemed those were the worst kind, especially ones with multicolored eyes.
This caused me to relive the last few years. So much had changed with me, with Danny, with our lives. And it all started the second I walked into Twisted and saw Miles Conrad.
Miles.
He was the reason I sat on this damn barstool. It amazed me at how much life can flip-flop in a matter of hours. Just this morning, I was curled up on the couch with him, watching a movie.
Now, he was in a totally different state and for a totally different person. I tried to understand why he did it, but I still couldn’t make sense of it. I was his wife, but right now, I felt like his second choice. The only thing I knew for sure at this moment was that Miles had a past I knew absolutely nothing about.
I stared down at the ring on my finger. It felt heavier than usual and I spun it mindlessly as I tried to piece together the events that led up to Miles getting in that damn car with her. The answers he had given me weren’t really answers at all. They sounded a hell of a lot like excuses, and half-truths to me, but I couldn’t let my mind go in that direction, because once it did, there was no turning back.
Unlike him, I couldn’t just drop everything and take a road trip. I had work, school, and now my mother’s wedding.
For Miles though, he had finally agreed to be sole owner of Twisted a few months ago, so he pretty much came and went as he pleased.
“Ray?” I heard Danny beside me.
I blinked and looked up to meet her concerned gaze.
“You okay?” she asked, glancing between my ring and my turbulent eyes.
I nodded and pulled my hand under the bar. “Yeah, just freakin’ fine.”
She sighed, “Why don’t you stay with me and Jax tonight? We have room.”
I nodded again, “Ok, yeah. That sounds like a better idea than staying in an empty house by myself.”
Danny’s gaze held a smidge of pity, but it faded quickly and was replaced with a smile. “We can stay up all night and watch dumb movies,” she said.
I laughed, “I’m sure Jax will love that.”
She shrugged, “He won’t mind. He’ll be working tonight anyway.”
“Ok,” I said and took a deep breath before I grabbed my drink to finish it off. The thing was huge, so by the time I finished the whole glass, I could feel the tiniest bit of a buzz starting to flow through my veins.
I shook my head and pushed it away gently. “I would be in so much trouble if I had too many of those,” I said.
“A lot of people have said that,” I heard a deep, calm voice say.
Danny and I looked up to see the male bartender who had come in earlier in front of us, a glass and a rag in his hands.
“Just saying, if I wanted to get drunk pretty quick, I would pick that one to do it with,” he said and sat the glass down only to grab another one.
I blinked, but Danny was the one to respond.
“You act like you know your drinks,” she said.
He shrugged and switched out the glasses again, “I’ve just worked here long enough to know a few things is all,” he said.
I remained silent as Danny continued the conversation.
“How long have you worked here?” she asked.
“A few years,” he said, and then sat another glass down before he threw the towel over his shoulder and braced his hands on the bar.
“How old are you? No offense, but you don’t look old enough to have worked here a few years,” she said, and I smiled at her bluntness, but I was also curious. He really didn’t look much older than us, me being only twenty-one now.
He smirked. “I’m twenty-four. How old are you ladies?”
“I’m twenty-two and my friend here is the ripe old age of twenty-one,” Danny said.
He looked at me and I didn’t miss the way his eyes glanced at the ring on my finger, which was in clear view now.
“Interesting, I would have assumed you were older,” he said.
I blinked, “Does that mean we look older than we are?”
He shook his head and chuckled softly, “Oh, no. I just meant you both seem older attitude wise.”
Danny laughed, “Gee, thanks. Now I’m going to think I’m acting forty when I’m thirty.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Sorry, that’s not what I meant at all,” he said and then stuck his hand out for Danny to shake first, “My name is Chase Bryson.”
She eyed his hand and then reached up to shake it. “Danny Marshall.”
He nodded and then stuck his hand out to me, “And you are?”
I debated, but then reached across the bar to put my hand in his. It felt warm against my skin as I shook it for a second and then released him, “Reanna Conrad.”
“It’s nice to meet you ladies,” Chase said as he placed his hand back on the bar.
“You too,” Danny said and then began to stand up, “We should probably start heading back.”
I nodded in agreement and grabbed my purse to get some money out, but before I could get it out of my wallet, Chase spoke.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and I looked up to meet his gaze.
“You sure?” I asked.
He nodded, “Yeah, we aren’t hurting for a few dollars. Be safe going home.”
“Thanks,” I said and stood up.
We started toward the door, but his voice stopped us once more.
“Danny?” he said.
She stopped and so did I. I watched as she turned to look at him.
“I know this might come off as a little forward, but I can’t let you walk out of here without asking,” he said.
She blinked but waited.
“Are you, um, seeing anyone?” he asked.
My jaw went slack. I couldn’t believe this was happening right now, but I was glad it wasn’t me that was put into that awkward position.
Danny didn’t answer for several minutes and that made me wonder as I glanced between them. I knew how Danny could get, even when she tried to change. I knew she still had to fight the urge to run from all that she loved, including Jaxson. I hadn’t kept up with her and Jaxson’s relationship that much lately, but I couldn’t think of a time when she told me they weren’t doing okay, so her hesitation definitely raised some red flags for me.
“I am,” she finally answered.
Chase nodded as if he already knew the answer, “I didn’t figure you were single.”
“Sorry,” she said and then turned away as she headed out the door.
I stood there a moment after she left, long enough for Chase to speak once more.
“Whoever it is that’s seeing your friend is a lucky guy,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder at him and for whatever reason, maybe it was just sisterhood or it was just the simple fact that my own husband left me here without answers, I felt the sudden urge to smack Danny for her hesitation and defend Jaxson since he wasn’t here to do it for himself.
“Yeah, he is and if I were you, I wouldn’t try to cross him,” I said firmly and then walked out without another glance back.
When I came outside, Danny was standing on the sidewalk. I stopped beside her as we waited for the traffic to pass by, so we could make it to where the car was parked.
“What was that?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I had just grown two heads. “What was what?”
I rolled my eyes, “Oh, you know, that hesitation I heard in your voice when Chase asked you if you were seeing anyone. Is everything okay with you and Jax? I mean you did invi
te me to come over. I don’t want to come over if there’s issues you two need to talk about,” I said.
Danny crossed her arms and looked at the ground. “Everything’s fine.”
I tilted my head at her. “Oh no. We are going to talk about this when we get home. You said that like it was the worst thing in the world, but everything being fine sounds perfect to me.”
She sighed heavily but remained silent as the light turned and we crossed the road, heading back toward my car that was parked against the curb on the other side. When we reached it, I handed Danny my keys and we both got inside. I pulled my seatbelt over and clicked it into place, but Danny sat silently with the car keys twirling between her fingers.
I waited, but she didn’t put the keys into the ignition.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded a little too quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I pushed, because I knew there was more. Danny was like my sister and she couldn’t hide much from me.
Danny sighed heavily and then let her head fall back against the seat. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She lifted her head and met my gaze. “I love Jaxson. You know that. He knows that. I just…I don’t know. I’m having a hard time getting over everything that happened. I want to be able to say that I’m okay and that what happened with Brody doesn’t affect me anymore, but that would be a lie. It does, Ray. It’s affecting things way more than I ever thought it would.”
My heart broke a little for her.
And Jax.
“I’m sorry. How is Jaxson doing with it all?” I asked.
She laughed, but it held no humor. Only sadness. “That’s just it. I don’t know. He won’t talk about it and I get it. I mean he took someone’s life. I know what that feels like. I went years thinking it was my fault that I lost my baby, but Jaxson brought me back.”
I smiled weakly. “Then maybe you’re going to have to be the one to bring him back.”
Danny nodded, but I could tell that she didn’t believe she could, and it made me realize that while I had my own problems with my marriage, others were hurting too.
And I hated it.
All of it.
“Let’s just get to the house. Like you said, we can watch movies and eat popcorn,” I said.
She smiled weakly, “Yeah.”
I waited as she reached up to put the keys in the ignition and turned the car over. She put it in drive, and we took off, heading back toward Hampton.
Back toward home.
Chapter Two
Miles
Fuck.
That was the first thing I thought when I opened the front door and saw who stood on the other side. I knew at that very moment; fuck was the strongest word I could use and yet it wasn’t strong enough to convey how I felt about the current situation.
I stared out the window of Mia’s Mustang and all I could picture was the look on Ray’s face when I told her that I had to go. I had to help Mia.
There was nothing like telling the woman you love that you had to leave them behind to help another woman you never loved but had history with.
It didn’t sit well.
Mia Henley was from a part of my past that Ray knew nothing about. A part of myself that I never wanted her to find out about. She got a glimpse back when Owen nearly killed me and she saw the scars on my wrists, but that was as close as I’d let her get and that wasn’t even by choice. If it hadn’t been for her seeing the scars while I’d been out of it, I would never have told her it happened.
It made me feel weak.
It pissed me off.
It brought back painful shit that I’ve done a good job of burying these last few years.
“You okay over there?” Mia’s voice pulled me from those thoughts, and I inhaled deeply as I turned to look at her in the driver’s seat.
Mia was a year younger than me. She had her hair thrown into a messy bun and I could see the sparkle in her green eyes.
She was beautiful, but she wasn’t Ray.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked as she glanced between the road and me.
I blinked and looked away, “Sorry, just thinking.”
“About Ray?”
I smirked, even after all these years, Mia still had a way of knowing what I was thinking without me even telling her. It was a dangerous connection we had always had, and it seemed, we still had.
She had been really close to me back then and our relationship, if that was what it was even called, had always been different from what I have with Ray. Even back when we were in high school Ray and I were like gravity, constantly circling one another’s orbit.
Mia came after all that. She got to see a part of me no one else had, not even anyone at Twisted and for a long time, I considered her my best friend.
“How’d you know?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
“Because I know you, Miles,” she said, and I could hear the smile that I knew crossed her face with that statement.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a teasing tone.
She laughed. It was a laugh I remembered, one that used to cast a fucking spell over me, and it was at that moment that I realized being around Mia was going to be harder than I thought it would be.
“Miles?”
I didn’t look in her direction, but I knew she was looking between the road and me again. “Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry I had to come to you. I know asking you to go with me and leaving your wife without any answers probably won’t be good for you,” she said.
And I could hear the genuine apology in her voice. Mia hadn’t come to me to cause problems and she hadn’t wanted to ask for help, but despite how much I hated leaving Ray without the answers she so desperately wanted, I was glad Mia still felt like she could come to me for help if she needed it.
“You’re right. Ray will probably have all my shit thrown out and my car beat to shit by the time I get back,” I said truthfully.
Mia started to laugh but not before she tried covering it with a cough. I blinked and then slowly turned my head to stare at her as she worked to compose herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but the laugh was still fighting to break free.
“How was that funny?” I asked, honestly confused.
She shook her head, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the reason all your shit is thrown out or the reason your car gets beat to shit,” she said.
I stared at her until she glanced at me and then back at the road.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Miles….”
“Mia…” I said her name the same way she had said mine.
“You’re so hard to talk to sometimes,” she sighed, and I could tell she had given up.
Mia might know a lot about me. But in all honesty, she knew me better than anyone back in Hampton, including Ray, but I also knew her just as well.
And I knew she wanted to say more.
“Spill it,” I said.
She laughed as she flipped on her blinker to switch lanes on the highway. “What do you mean? I don’t have anything to spill,” she said.
“Bullshit.”
Mia sighed and that was my signal that I had won this round. It had always been her tell.
“I’m just, I don’t know, I’m surprised is all,” she said as we switched into yet another lane, passing a slow minivan driven by an elder woman who looked like she could barely see over the steering wheel.
The girl had a heavy foot. It was one of the things I liked about her back then. The road rage this woman had could scare even the toughest guys and considering the car I drove; I wasn’t fond of driving behind slow ass people either.
“Surprised by what?” I asked.
Even from this angle, I saw the eye roll she gave me.
“The marriage. I don’t know. I’
m surprised you did it. Got married, because the Miles I knew wouldn’t have done it. He would have said fuck that and moved onto the next woman who gazed adoringly at him,” she said.
And there it was.
The Miles she knew and sadly, she was right. That Miles would have said fuck that and he wouldn’t have fell in love. He wouldn’t have spent the amount of time I’ve spent on Ray. I thought about her statement and it made me realize how much has changed since I was around Mia.
So. Fucking. Much.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. People change.” It was all I could say. It was the truth, because while I might have been a different guy with Mia, I was this guy now.
I was a husband.
I was settled.
“Hmm,” was all Mia said.
I turned to look out the window again.
It had been a little over seven hours since I left Hampton, which put us about an hour from the Arkansas state line, but that wasn’t our stop. We were headed back to Fayetteville, Arkansas. A town in the western part of the state. I hadn’t been back there in years, but I knew not much could have changed since I left for Georgia.
“Do you care to drive? I’m getting tired,” Mia asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
“I don’t care,” I said.
She flipped on her blinker again, switched lanes, and then took the next exit. We pulled into a gas station and stopped at one of the pumps. I leaned up, stretching my arms, as she shut the car off and grabbed her debit card from the center console.
“I’m going to fill up. Do you want anything?” she asked.
“No, I’ll pump the gas,” I said and got out before she could argue with me.
When I made it around to the other side of the car, Mia got out and glared up at me. I forgot how short the girl was. Her nose was about level with my collarbone.
“How much are you getting?” I asked, ignoring her glare.
She crossed her arms like it would somehow make her look tougher, “Twenty, I’m going inside, so I’ll pay for it then,” and before I could respond, Mia turned to walk toward the entrance.
I shook my head and began pumping the gas. Once that was going, I leaned against the car and pulled my cell out of my pocket as I waited. I knew she probably wasn’t ready to talk, but I had to try. I powered on my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I found Ray’s number. My finger hovered over the call button, but then I pressed it. Her face popped up on my screen and I grinned at the sight of it before placing the phone to my ear.