Page 5 of Until You

“You’re from here?” I ask.

“Yeah. My cousin,” he tilts his head towards the bar to the man he’d been standing with. “Is in town.” His hand shifts slightly at my back. “You?”

“Nope.” I let the ‘p’ pop at the end of the word. “Should I let you get back to your cousin?”

“Nah. You smell better than he does.”

I give him a saucy smile. “I grew up about forty miles north of nothing,” I say. “Small town. Smaller than this.” I glance around the bar—the scarred wood, the boot-worn floors, the neon. “Moved around a lot, actually. But small towns are all I know.”

He looks at me then. Really looks. Like something in what I said caught his attention in a way that polite small talk doesn’t. “You don’t look like a small-town girl.”

“What exactly does a small-town girl look like?”

“Touche,” he says. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

I shake my head.

“No names,” he says. “I gotcha.”

“What?”

“You. The no names thing.” He tips his head. “Somewhere between the opening line and now, I got the feeling that was coming.”

I look at him for a moment. “You pick up on things fast.”

“I observe.”

“So you say.”

“And what I’ve observed,” he says, “is that you’ve been real careful about every single thing you’ve said to me.”

My pulse does something inconvenient. “Maybe I’m just private.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “Or maybe you’re looking for a little escape.”

I hold his gaze. Don’t blink.

“Everyone needs a little escape every now and then,” I say.

“What are you escaping? Can you tell me that?”

I blow out a little breath. “I had a shitty job interview today. Some people only see what they want to see.”

“Fair enough.”

“Are you interested in escaping with me?”

His eyes lock onto my own, and I swear he can see into my very soul. But then he gives the tiniest of nods. “No names,” he says. “No expectations. No tomorrow.”

“Exactly,” I say.

Precisely the rules that keep things clean. Contained. Just the small, careful architecture of a life where temporary is the only kind of safe.

“Alright,” he says, finally. Quiet and certain.

My pulse kicks.

Because I should feel relieved. That’s the part where I feel relieved — where the thing I wanted gets agreed to and the rest is just easy.

So why does it feel like I just stepped into something I won’t be able to put back in the box once it’s opened?

I smile anyway.

“Good.” I glance toward the bar. “Now buy me a drink, Cowboy.”

He looks down at me with that almost-smile—closer to the full version now, just slightly, just enough that I feel like I’ve won something.

“You’re going to be a lot of trouble,” he says.

“I know.”

He doesn’t look the least bit sorry about it.

Neither am I.

And just like that—the bad decision is officially, beautifully, gloriously underway.