Page 17 of Unravel Me

“What’s your drink?”

“She’ll take a vodka tonic. Make it two,” Penny pipes up as I nod, turning back to place the order. I get myself a double whiskey, neat, and pull a toothpick from my pocket—a nervous habit for when I want a cigarette. I let it dangle from my lips and hand them their drinks.

Audrey keeps her eyes on her friend but when I scan the crowd around us, I feel her eyes raking me over. It fills me with heat, and I know if I keep drinking these whiskeys, I'm going to be a man in trouble.

The mass of people near the bar makes it hard to have a real conversation, and when Ky taps me on the shoulder, telling me he and the guys are migrating towards the dart boards in the back, Audrey swoops in, eager to go as well.

“Go with your friends. I’ll see you around, yeah?” she offers, a small, flirty smile on her face, and I nod. She’s so polite and reserved, I still don’t know what she’s doing here.

I watch them walk away into the crowd.

But she’s crazy if she doesn't think I'll be looking out for her tonight. Not that I doubt her and Penny can’t hold their own. I just know the guys in this town.

None of them are good enough for Audrey.

Except, in my buzzed, delusional mind maybe myself.

Chapter twelve

Audrey

My body is buzzing as we push our way through the crowd, and I’ve only had two sips of vodka. I follow Penny to a high-top table tucked against the wall on the opposite side of the bar from Rhett and his friends. My mind reels, unable to believe he’s here again.

“Okay, you have about thirty seconds to tell me how you know that cowboy Casanova?”

I shake my head, sucking down my vodka soda in an ungodly short amount of time, buying a moment to find the right words.

“Like he said…we met last weekend on the rooftop of my building.”

“I’m going to need a little more to go on,” she demands, leaning over the table. We have to talk loudly to hear each other, so I quickly look over my shoulder, praying he’s not right there.

“After the phone call, I went up to the roof, the bottle Jackson got me in tow, and low and behold, Rhett was up there. He does some type of work, I’m not sure what, but he was working on the apartment below mine. You know the rude, older woman Mrs. Lawson?” Penny nods, her eyes wide as she leans in intently, chewing her lip. “Anyway…I was crying, and I drunkenly told him my sob story.” I bite the grin trying to spread on my lips, because something about that night, standing up there, sharing a moment like that, a cigarette between us...it felt more intimate than I'd been willing to admit to myself this past week.

“And then he walked with me back to my apartment. That’s it. Tonight is just a wild coincidence. I mean, there’s probably only one decent bar this side of town, and so of course, a guy like him would be here.”

“A guy like what?” Penny pushes.

“A guy not like Jackson. I don’t know, Pen!” I begin to feel flustered and look away from my best friend who is nonetheless trying to peer into my soul. She won’t find anything there to uncover, other than a very lost person whose boots were not properly worn in.

We agree we need refills, and Penny needs to reapply lip gloss, so she goes to the bathroom, and I stand up to get drinks.

As I weave back towards the bar, I find myself scanning the crowd. My pulse quickened as I quickly clocked faces. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to find those blue eyes or hoping to avoid them. Nothing was clear right now to me.

But one thing made my shoulders relax—I could almost guarantee not a single person in this establishment was friends with Jackson Tippins. And not a single guy in here looked like him. This crowd couldn’t be more different; a stark, deliberate escape. I’d said I wanted to be anyone but myself tonight, and for the first time, it almost felt possible, wrapped in the smoky haze of the Bourbon Barrel.

I find an empty spot near the end of the long bar; the smell of liquor, leather, and cologne filling my senses. An enormous pair of bull horns hang above me on the wall, and I silently pray they don’t fall on me as the live music nearly rattles everything in here.

After I order drinks, I shift my gaze cautiously down the bar, taking in my surroundings. I haven’t stood at a bar like this in a long time—and most certainly never in an outfit that sat on my body like paint. Jackson had a shortlist of exclusive bars and speakeasies he liked to frequent when we went out, the kind you had to be a member of or know someone to get into. And you never waited at a bar, the drinks were brought to you.

This was kind of freeing and as the thought crosses my mind, a small smile pulls on my lips. Just as the bartender hands me two drinks, she gazes flirtatiously at whoever is standing behind me.

“You here with Kylan?” she asked the person I couldn’t see, and I grabbed my drinks, turning to leave.

“It’s his birthday. The big three-oh, so we had to get him properly obliterated.” The same gravelly voice that seemed to follow me everywhere wrapped around me, freezing me in my spot with my back against the bar, chest against him.

Rhett’s chest is nearly eye level, and I can’t help but notice the way his short sleeve shirt is unbuttoned halfway down. It’s not like the two-hundred dollar ones Jackson wears. It looks like something a mechanic would wear and just enough chest is showing so that I have to pull my gaze purposely away. But not before I got a peek of a tattoo that stretches across his impressively thick chest. My neck grew hot, and I exhaled slowly.

For five very long years, I had trained myself to not look at anyone but Jackson. And it wasn’t very hard. I was loyal to the man I loved. Something that I now realize was pointless. It was easy to feel proud to be Jackson’s other half...back then at least. The cloak of naivety was lifted from me, and nothing made me squirm quite like being attached to that man in any capacity. Even the label of ‘ex-fiancé’ felt like a heavy burden to bear.