Page 37 of Don't Burn Bridges
Right. He hadn’t come in for a drink, and they both knew it.
She nodded anyway, forcing herself to stay in motion. “Then I’ve got to finish up here. It’s almost the end of my shift.”
The excuse sounded thin, even to her own ears.
“Then finish.” He pulled out a stool and sat at the bar as though he had all the time in the world. “I’ll wait.”
She stared at him for a second, then set the tray down a little harder than necessary. “You planning just to sit there?”
“To wait for you? If that’s what it takes.” There wasn’t any bite in his response. No pressure. Only a quiet persistence that said he had nowhere else to be.
Annoyingly effective.
“What do you want, Seth?” she asked, lowering her voice as she set the tray aside, needing something to do with her hands.
A beat passed.
“You.”
The one word landed hard, cutting through the noise of the bar—the low hum of conversation, the clink of glassware, the muted game playing overhead. Her breath caught, her pulse kicking up before she could stop it, and every nerve in her body came alive. She forced herself not to look away. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Because I’m not who you think I am. Because I’m leaving. Because this is going to blow up.
“I’ve got things going on,” she said instead, reaching for the first excuse that sounded reasonable. “I've got work. Things I need to deal with.”
His focus remained fixed on her. “You said that the other morning.”
Irritation flared even as something else twisted underneath it. “I meant it. I’m busy.”
He didn’t move or look away. Instead, he watched her as if waiting for her to admit something she had no intention of saying out loud. “You’re dodging, Shylo.”
“I’m not—” She broke off with a frustrated breath, dragging a hand through her hair as the weight of his attention pressed in on her. “We had a good time, Seth. That was it.”
The words rang hollow even as she said them, but she pushed on. “What do you want from me?”
“That morning,” he leaned on one forearm against the bar, angling toward her, “you couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Why?”
Her gut knotted at the reminder, the image flashing too easily—pulling on her clothes, not meeting his eyes, and talking too fast. “I wasn’t trying to make a big deal out of it?—”
“No,” he cut in, a trace of irritation breaking through. “You were trying to make it nothing.”
That stung more than she’d expected. Not because he was wrong, but because he wasn’t.
She looked away, her fingers curling against the edge of the bar, the worn wood rough beneath her palm. The silence stretched between them until she thought it would snap. “I don’t do this,” she finally said. “Whatever you think this is.”
“I don’t know what this is. Damn it.” He dropped his chin and dragged a hand along the back of his neck. “I just...” He exhaled, then met her eyes again. “I wanted to ask?—”
“What?” she cut in, her brows pulling together.
“I wanted to ask you out to dinner,” he said. “One night.”
It should’ve been easy to say no.
It wasn’t.
She missed him—four days without seeing him felt like a month. If anything, time had made it worse, not better—sharper, harder to ignore. She’d thought about him more than she should have, replaying that night in fragments—like movie clips she couldn’t shut off.
