by Cara McKenna
“Dude, I share a bedroom wall with my brother—it’s a fucking nightmare. If Kim doesn’t find a place soon, I’m gonna make a break for it myself.”
Casey filled a few orders, and found Duncan still studying him with that curious look on his face.
“I know what you’re thinking, Welch. It’s not gonna happen.”
Duncan’s eyebrows rose. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“It’s so fucking obvious. You and Raina want to recruit me for a three-way. Sorry, man, but I couldn’t bear to show you up like that. I’m a lot of things, but a home wrecker ain’t one of ’em.”
Duncan laughed, looking as disgusted as he was amused. “And for a second I thought you were a mind reader.”
Nope, not quite. Not far off, but not quite. “So, what is it, really?”
Duncan took a deep breath, then surprised the hell out of him. “I want to buy the bar.”
Casey squinted at him, way confused. “This dump?”
Duncan nodded.
“You want to buy Benji’s?”
“I believe I do.”
“Is Raina even looking to sell?”
“She is. Though do keep that between us—no reason to worry people.” He nodded subtly in Abilene’s direction.
“Well, that’s a kick in the balls . . . But you gotta tell me why you want it, Dunky. I’m fucking dying to hear.”
“I came here with the casino. Fortuity was nothing more than a weedy lot to me then, a blank bit of land for building on, its residents no more than loitering pests.”
Casey’s hackles rose a fraction, but he held his tongue for once, curious where this was headed. Plus, he couldn’t really be too annoyed—he’d been over the fucking moon to escape his podunk hometown nine-plus years ago.
“Those opinions changed, obviously,” Duncan said.
“Raina sure must be psycho in bed.”
Duncan ignored that, tending to a customer. When he returned, he went on. “I came here thinking it was my job to paper over the rougher parts of this place, to better it. I thought Fortuity was standing in its own way, and that I was part of a greater vision for it.”
“My brother would pop you for that one. But me, I’m inclined to agree.”
“I rather hated this bar, in fact, when I first arrived, but since then it’s changed me, for the better. Raina’s father had a lot of hopes for it, ones that he wasn’t able to implement in his lifetime, which seems a shame. Now Raina may be ready to move on and leave it behind, but I can’t help feeling I’m not.”
“Town’s got its creepy-ass vines on you, huh?”
“Its what?”
“Nothing. It’s just fucked, how hard it is to leave this place. Thought I’d managed it myself, but just look at this shit.” He gave his bar towel a flick. “Back working the same job I had before I left. Swear to God this town’s built on quicksand.”
“So you’re staying?”
Casey shrugged. “I promised my brother I’d stay through all this shit with the investigation, and that’s far from over. We still don’t know for sure who arranged to fuck with you. Or who killed Tremblay, for that matter.”
“One would hope the conspirators are among the VRC managers who’ve been indicted.”
“Yeah, you would hope that, but considering how the fucking county sheriff was involved, don’t hold your breath that this rot doesn’t go deeper.” Plus, there was the little matter of waiting for the rainy season to arrive with its so-called starless nights, to make sure that scary shit he’d seen didn’t actually come to pass.
And beyond the dangers, Casey had to admit there was a certain satisfaction to doing the right thing by his mom, depressing though it was.
“So yeah, I’m here for a while, anyhow,” he told Duncan. “Maybe when you take over Benji’s you could give me a raise. Raina barely pays me more than her dad did when I was twenty-three.”
“I was actually wondering if you might like to go into business with me. As partners.”
Casey laughed, incredulous. Lost. He delivered the shots and dried his hands on his towel, turning to face Duncan properly. “Okay, hold up. First, you want to run a bar. That’s fucking weird. On top of that you want my help, which is just fucked. I can mix a few drinks, but my expertise ends there. Plus, who the fuck would take me for a businessman?”
“I would,” Duncan said. “Because I suspect your simpleton shtick is as put-on as your Southern accent . . . What do you do, Mr. Grossier?”
“Something that pays real good,” Casey said carefully. “With shit benefits.”
“I believe that. You don’t reek of desperation, the way so many of your fellow natives do. You’ve the confidence of a man who doesn’t need to check his bank balance before writing his rent check.”
Casey shrugged, deflecting. “I live with my mom.”
“You know what I’m implying, Mr. Grossier.”
“You’ve got more money than I do, I bet. Why not go all in?”
“I could. But part of me thinks Benji’s deserves to be owned, at least in part, by a native son. I buy it outright—if Raina would even let me—and I can make it as true to her father’s vision as humanly possible, but it’ll still be an outsider’s makeover. Plus, I can’t help thinking you rather like being back here. Back in your spawning grounds.”
“You suspect a lot of shit about me, Welch.” And too much of it was true.
“I’m a very presumptuous man.”
“You’re a confusing bastard is what you are . . .”
“What do you think?”
What did Casey think? He thought precisely zero things that were respectable enough to share. He thought, first and foremost, that this bar was a cash-based business, and that he could launder a fuck-load of sketchy income through it. Except this wasn’t any old convenient storefront. He loved this shit hole. He didn’t trust himself not to piss all over that with the opportunity to exploit it right there in front of him. He was a man who considered every situation, every invitation and relationship, first and foremost with the question What’s in this for me? It had taken him thirty-three years to notice that about himself, but since he had, it had begun to unsettle him. After all, his father had looked at their house, this town, at his wife and young sons, and asked himself that same question, twenty-some years ago. And the conclusion he’d come to was Not enough.
Casey shook his head. “You don’t want me for a business partner. Trust me on that one.”
“You’d have to keep it separate from whatever endeavors you’ve been calling your career these past few years, that’s true. Fortuity’s made me lax, but I still respect the sanctity of accounting.”
“That settles it, then. We’re not built to be partners.”
“You’re not twenty-five anymore, Mr. Grossier. And in a blink you’ll be fifty.”
Casey frowned. He also couldn’t keep reporting that his assets were gambling windfalls forever.
“In a blink you’ll find yourself attached to a place, or a woman, or a child,” Duncan went on. “Like Raina, you may want to quit mistaking roots for anchors, and realize setting them down has its benefits.”
“That’s real deep, Dad. Thanks.” But he couldn’t help picturing Abilene. Sure, there was no future there, but the shit she’d made him feel when they first met . . . That could happen again, with some girl who wasn’t such a train wreck. There was a bigger snag, though—miles bigger. “I could be fucking incompetent in five, ten years,” he reminded Duncan. “Camped out on the couch in my slippers next to my mom, waiting for the Family Feud to come on.”
“That all remains to be seen. Just give me two years,” Duncan said. “I’ll buy you out after that. I’ll put as much in writing.”
“Why not ask Vince? He’s not going anyplace.”
“Your brother’s rich in loyalty, not capital.
”
Casey slumped. “True enough.”
“He also lacks the disposition this job demands. But you—you’re as charming as you are offensive.”
“Thanks?”
“Two years,” Duncan repeated. “Long enough to renovate, to install a kitchen, to set Benji’s up to be the last authentically local venue in this town. The last place that truly belongs to Fortuity. Be my manager, if not my coowner. Help me get it set up, and whatever shape it takes, I’ll keep it that way.”
“You settling down here for the rest of your life?”
“I couldn’t guess,” Duncan said. “But I’d like to leave this town feeling I’ve helped preserve something. A penance for the man who arrived thinking Fortuity was fit for a wrecking ball.”
“I dunno, man. Neither of us knows jack about running a restaurant.”
“But I guarantee we’re smarter than the vast majority of the people who manage to pull it off.”
Goddamn if this prick didn’t know just the right angle to do the old reach-around and stroke Casey’s ego.
And he could picture it a little now. As the sole heir to the ranch, Miah was surely the crown prince of this town. But the owner of Benji’s commanded a certain level of respect, too. If Fortuity had a heart, the bar was it. Plus, two years . . . He’d promised Vince he’d stick around through this casino drama. Light had been shed on Alex’s death, but there was still plenty of upheaval likely to come in the couple of years before the Eclipse would open. Probably longer than that, now that Sunnyside had to find a new contracting outfit to finish the fucking thing. Casey could commit himself to the club long enough to be here through the changes destined to come to town.
And yeah, it really was a bit pathetic that he worked, like, fifteen hours a week and lived with his mom.
Plus, if he ran Benji’s, he could give Abilene a big-ass raise. Get his Robin Hood on, just as he’d been wishing he could.
“I’m not saying yes,” he said to Duncan, but the man’s smile said it all. Yeah, Casey had cracked. Just a little.
But cracks never got smaller with time or pressure, did they?
“You’re not saying no,” Duncan countered.
“Not yet. But I prefer my assets liquid. And my commitments flimsy. Manager, sure. Owner? I dunno yet. And this is all if Raina will even agree to it.”
“Naturally. So, shall we shake?”
“No fucking way. Gimme a chance to sleep on it.”
* * *
Duncan was pleased Raina had obeyed his orders and taken the night off—the night off work, and since her TV was downstairs, a night off the news as well. She’d called the bar’s number to check in around eight, saying she’d slept plenty and was ready to relieve someone, but he’d been insistent.
“Abilene and I got this,” Casey said later, when things quieted. “Go up and tell Raina your crazy-ass plan. Lemme know how it goes.”
So Duncan surrendered his towel and checked his phone. Missed calls, many of them, most probably from the press, and one from his boss at Sunnyside. And one from the auto shop. He’d forgotten about the car.
How very unlike me. The old me. A few weeks ago, he could no sooner have forgotten about his car than he might have misplaced his spleen. It had been very much a part of him, and yet now . . .
He actually missed the bike, if anything. It was an accepting sort of machine, whereas Duncan had always made sure to dress well enough to look worthy of the Merc. Like a trophy wife.
How utterly fucked that made him, he thought as he headed up the back steps, that he’d so prized a vehicle he felt judged by. How fucked that he’d spent so long craving judgment, living in a constant state of approval-seeking, all the while presenting as the epitome of self-satisfaction.
Upstairs he was greeted by the cat, and was surprised to see her steel bowls back in their place. To the lit den he called, “You collected my things, I see.”
Raina wandered over to the threshold, looking as alluringly disheveled as always in her shorts and tank top, hair messy from a marathon of well-deserved sleep. “I didn’t, actually—Flores had somebody bring all your stuff over.”
“Finally that man decides to do me a favor . . . Just as well. I could certainly stand a change of clothes.”
She smiled, looking just a touch shy. “Hello, Duncan.”
“Hello, Ms. Harper.”
“Come hang out,” she said, a curling finger inviting him to join her. And not in the den—she led him to her room. Duncan found his suitcase on the floor and changed into lounge pants and a clean T-shirt. As he sat cross-legged with her on her bed, everything about this room felt right, smelled right.
“You do okay, downstairs?” she asked.
“Surprisingly well. I’m not much use with a shaker, but there’s hope for me.”
“Thank you. For that. I really, really needed a night off. Not as much as you, I bet, but thank you all the same.”
Nervous and a touch needy, he reached out to take her hands. “I did a lot of thinking down there.” He swallowed, took a deep breath, all at once awake and fretful. Idle chat with Casey was one thing, but as he braced himself to tell her his wishes, he realized with a fearful pang exactly how badly he wanted this.
“Thinking,” she prompted. “What about?”
“Do you remember how you told me, if I wanted the bar to stay, I should buy it my own goddamn self?”
She laughed. “Oh Lord—stop now, please.”
He plowed onward. “I want to buy the bar from you. Casey and I would run it.”
“Casey? Casey Grossier?”
“Yes. We want to take over Benji’s from you, and do our best to respect your father’s plans, without turning it into a memorial to him.”
She was shaking her head, more incredulous than angry, he hoped.
“That bar changed my life,” he went on, “and I want to see it thriving beside the competition the casino might bring. I want to preserve something from the town I came here planning to renovate. I want the people who live here to have a place to drink that still belongs to them.”
A pause. “Any other reasons?”
“No, none like those you worried about, when I said I wanted to give you that money yesterday. It’s not a shackle to keep the two of us attached. Whatever may happen with you and me, whether you decide to stay here or not, I want this. For myself. You’ll get any say you want, of course—you want to hang on to the building and just sell me the bar, that’s fine. You want to move away one day . . . ? Your choice. The property or just the business—whichever entity you might wish to part with. Whichever would give you the freedom you’re after, that’s what I’ll buy.”
“And how on earth did Casey get sucked into this madness?”
“I want a local involved, for authenticity. And because I have no clue how to run a bar.”
“And Casey’s going to sit still long enough to make this all happen?”
“He says he will. If he runs off after something shiny next week, I’ll find a way to make it work. Tell me, would this make you feel better or worse—knowing the bar’s staying?”
“Run by you and Casey? Better. Bought and bastardized by some cheesy chain outfit . . . ? I’d rather see it burned to the ground. Though I know that’s who most of the potential buyers are likely to be.”
He rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs. “That settles it, then. I want to buy your father’s bar. Your bar. I’ll buy it and run it to the best of my abilities. And I’ll change the name. I’d never claim I know your father’s wants enough to make it what he imagined—”
“You’ll change the name over my dead body.”
Duncan smiled at that, just as Astrid arrived to head-butt his thigh. “All right. Benji’s it stays.”
Raina sighed softly, dropping her head, smiling when she raised her chin and met his eyes again.
“When he was dying, my dad told me that bar’s the best tombstone a man could ask for. His name up there, lit for everyone to see, dozens of well-wishers visiting him every night. You want to keep it going, you have at it. But don’t you dare change the name over that door.”
“I won’t. So, do we have a deal?”
“Not yet. I haven’t decided what I want to do, aside from make tattooing my full-time focus. Maybe I would like to hang on to the building. Maybe . . . maybe I’d like to keep a little stake in this place myself. Like a silent partner.”
Duncan felt light as air. “Anything you like. I merely want it to stay open, and to succeed.”
“On that we agree.”
“I’ve a fair bit of savings, and I’ll have more soon enough, once I sell my place in San Diego. I doubt I’ve purchased the last three-thousand-dollar suit of my life, but I’m ready to start investing in things more substantive than my self-image. Plus, I’ll be saving quite a lot on therapy.”
She laughed softly, squeezed his hands. “You’re so goddamn weird.”
“And goddamn exhausted.” Though there was one thing he still needed to say tonight. He toyed with her fingers. “I’m worried you’ll write this off again, because it’s impulsive, or because I’m falling asleep, or any other reason. But I need to tell you again, I’m in love with you.”
She didn’t say a word, just held his stare.
“I’m so in love with you,” he said. “So deeply it hurts. More deeply than I’ve ever felt anything . . . Any nice emotion, anyhow. As intensely as I’ve ever suffered panic, or anxiety—I want and need and love you.”
She laughed, looking shy. “Thank you, I think.”
“I want to be with you. For as long as this is supposed to last.”
“I want that, too. It’ll take me longer to say those words, but I want those things. I want you.”
He smiled, feeling the best kind of drunk. “Come here.” He urged her to come close, to scissor her legs with his. He took her face in his hands. He studied her eyes, lips, skin, fascinated by this woman he loved. By the vulnerable, frightening, dizzying height of these feelings . . . and by the view they afforded, so worth the risk of falling.