I shove her forward, rolling my eyes. “Go see Avie before he freaks out.”
Looks like I’m gonna have to tend bar with McMoody over there.
Lucky me.
Zinc Anodes - Small pieces of zinc that attach to metal boats and the engine components to help protect them from corrosion due to electrolysis, an effect caused when dissimilar metals are placed in a saltwater solution.
I shouldn’t be here. You’re probably going to hear that a lot from me. I shouldn’t even be in this goddamn town, yet here I am, sitting at the bar, trying to tell myself to leave. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Leave her alone. Leave this town and her behind. It’s as simple as that. Yet, I can’t force myself to leave.
But I’m a slave to my desires for this girl, completely enthralled with everything about her. From the way she moves around the bar, her chocolate eyes that look like specks of caramel swirling in them, to the way her fingertips brush my knuckles when she reaches for my shot glass.
“Need anything else?”
Yeah, let me fuck you again. Hard.
See, that’s not the direction I need to be heading. I watch her. Probably too blatantly. Behind her fixed expression, a storm rages on. I’ve pissed her off somehow. My first instinct is to jerk her across the bar and kiss her until her lips bruise. My second, walk out of this bar and never look back. I don’t have enough self-control for either.
Nodding, I lift my gaze to hers, edging my shot glass toward her. Our fingers touch and I regret it instantly. She’s extraordinarily beautiful in ways I hadn’t thought she’d be. In ways I didn’t want her to be.
“So,” she begins, tucking strands of her hair behind her ear and reaching for the whiskey, “in town long?”
I stare at the glass and the amber liquid. “Hopefully not.”
Her face distorts with an emotion I don’t recognize. “Yeah, I said that too.”
My breathing shifts. For some reason, I want to know everything about her, and then again, nothing at all. I shouldn’t get to know her under any circumstance. I hate to know even the smallest details spark my interest, yet I can’t stop myself from wondering how it all happened. I wait for her to say more, and when she doesn’t, I fight the urge to ask.
Nervously, her weight shifts from one foot to the other, her eyes scanning the bar. Details I didn’t see earlier come to life. Her shyness. It’s there, but it’s outweighed by a stubbornness I predicted. Tending to the other patrons, I watch her. I memorize those tiny details that make her so completely different than Athena. Not that I thought they’d be similar. It’s just… I don’t even know what it is. Maybe I thought something would be familiar between them.
I don’t pay any mind to those around her either, but I notice things. Like the kid who keeps stocking the glasses. He watches her when she’s not looking, and it makes me want to take the knife in my pocket and make him chum. I remind myself I have no attachment to her, or claim, but then again, don’t I? If anyone does, it’s me.
A man sits two stools down from me. He eyes Journey, then smiles.
“What’ll it be?” she asks him, her interest unfocused and darting around the space behind us.
“Surprise me,” he tells her, giving a nod.
Journey frowns, a slow shake to her head. “Don’t tell me that. I’ll serve you a domestic beer and you and I both know that’s not what you want.”
The man shakes his head, a huff falling from his lips. “Gin and tonic.”
“Figures,” Journey mumbles, twisting away from the bartop as she takes a glass in her hand.
“Is she always this feisty?” the man asks me.
I don’t look at him but amusement touches my lips. “You have no idea.”
For hours, I argue with myself to leave, and before I know it, the sun’s swallowed by the sea, and darkness takes over. I’m left with a decision. I should leave this town and never return, but something keeps me on this stool, and it has everything to do with the one serving whiskey.
“Hey, babe? One more!” a man at the other end of the bar yells, slamming his glass down, the hollow thud catching my attention.
Craning my neck forward, I search the sound of the gruff voice, my gaze lazy, but my jaw anything but. The man must feel