Page 4 of Until You

“I didn’t accuse you of anything. I made an accurate observation.”

“There a difference?”

“Tone,” I say. “Mine was charming.”

That almost-smile again. God, it’s maddening. Like he’s got the full version of it locked somewhere and he’s not sure I’ve earned it yet.

“Your friends put you up to it?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m used to making decisions on my own.”

He turns us slightly, steering us away from another couple without looking. Smooth. Practiced. Like he’s danced in small spaces before and learned the geometry of it.

“You do that a lot?” he asks. “Things on your own?”

Something about the question snags. Like a fishhook grabbing onto a root. I metaphorically brush it away.

“When they’re worth doing.”

“And this qualified?”

I look up at him. “Jury’s still out, Cowboy.”

His brows lift just slightly at the name. He doesn’t correct me.

“You’ve got a lot of those,” he says, nodding toward the ink on my forearm where my sleeve is pushed up.

“I do.”

“They mean something?”

“Most of them.”

“Which ones don’t?”

I glance down at the small, simple star on my wrist—the first professionally done tattoo I ever got, age eighteen, the day I aged out of the foster system, and no one on earth knew where I was or had any claim on me. My first act of being entirely my own.

“That one means something,” I say. “They all do, actually.”

He doesn’t push. Just looks and nods, like that answer was enough.

“What about you?” I ask. “You always haunt the corner of the bar like you’re getting paid for it?”

A tiny shift in his lips. “I was standing.”

“You were brooding.”

“I was having a beer.”

“With tremendous emotional weight.”

A real breath of a laugh escapes him at that—short, almost surprised, like it got out before he could weigh it. It transforms his face. Makes him look younger and considerably more dangerous at the same time.

I feel it like a match strike, low in my chest.

Don’t do it, Cora. I tell myself. That’s not what tonight is.

The song shifts. Something with a little more pace to it. He adjusts without missing a step, like the change in tempo is nothing.