Page 9 of Smoke and Glitter

There's still another question sitting there. I can live without knowing what to call this yet. What I don't know is whether the Sam who pulls me into dark storerooms and kisses me like that is the same Sam I'll get when the lights are on and the club is full.

My entire career is built on walking into rooms and saying the thing everyone else is avoiding.

I don't ask this one.

"I should go."

Neither of us moves.

Sam braces one hand against the shelving beside me, his eyes staying on my face while the room settles around us, quiet enough now that I can hear both of us breathing.

"Autumn."

"Yeah?"

"Come back tonight."

My stomach pulls tight. He could have added something casual to it, given me room to pretend he didn't care whether I came back.

He doesn't.

I look at his mouth, then his eyes.

"I was always coming back tonight."

Chapter two

Chapter Two

Sam

She leaves, and I stay in the storeroom with the clipboard in my hand long enough to realize I haven't read the same line three times. I haven't read it at all.

Weeknights usually run like clockwork. Slow until seven, a rush around the first act, a lull, then the crowd that comes for Marisol and stays because they like the room. I know which regulars want conversation and which ones want a whiskey and ten feet of space. Most nights, I can move behind the bar without thinking much about any of it.

Tonight I put a Templeton in front of the wrong man.

He looks down at the glass and then over at me. "Not yours."

"Nope."

I move it one stool over, where it belongs, and go back to work.

A few minutes later Bex comes through the service station, and I put a water on her tray before she can pass me.

"I didn't ask for this."

"You never do."

"I also never drink it."

"And yet you always take it."

She takes it with her anyway.

Around eight, a guy points toward the top shelf and asks me something. I hear him clearly enough, but by the time he stops talking I couldn't tell him what he said.

"Sorry. What?"