Before either of us could say something that we might regret, my eyes latched onto Lucy on the other side of the bar. I couldn’t tell if she had seen me yet, but my desire to talk to the woman next to me instantly evaporated.
As if it had ever been there in the first place…
What was it about Lucy that kept me coming back for more, that kept my eyes glued to her whenever she was in the room? No other woman had ever driven me crazy the way she did.
Lucy’s brow furrowed as she caught sight of me on the far side of the bar. I wanted to get up and walk over to her, but I couldn’t help remembering how bad we had left things. What would I even say to her? It wasn’t that I was afraid of what her brother would do to me, but the fact I was afraid of finding out that Lucy might have deceived me in any way.
If she and Bobby were as close as they seemed to be, then she must have known that he was involved in a gang. At best, she had been negligent in not telling me. At worst, she had kept it to herself for malicious reasons.
Yet, the betrayed expression on her face screamed that I should be heading over to apologize to her.
“Is she the one that you’ve been waiting for?” the woman next to me asked.
I looked over at her in surprise and she gave me an amused grin. “You’ve been looking around for someone the whole time you’ve been sitting here. Don’t think I didn’t notice,” she said. She winked at me and then hopped off her seat. “Good luck in your tournament.”
I blinked after her, then looked back to Lucy, who was looking decidedly hurt. I swore under my breath. This is not what it looks like…
I downed the rest of my beer, making up my mind. I needed to talk to her. A long and in-depth talk, one that didn’t end in arguments and name-calling like at the hospital. I didn’t know what she was playing at or why exactly she’d gotten involved with me in the first place, but I realized that I needed to hear the truth coming from her instead of jumping to my own conclusions.
Otherwise, I was never going to be able to forget about her. Nor would I ever be able to forgive myself for screwing things up the way that I had. It was one thing for things not to work out in the end, but it was another for me to throw accusations at her face, with nothing to go on except James’ word. I didn’t have any proof of my own.
I made my way through the crowded bar, heedless of the people I bumped into. I had only eyes for Lucy.
She wasn’t running away from me. She hadn’t turned her back on me, yet. I had to take that as a good sign. Maybe she was willing to hear me out. Maybe we really could talk.
Of course, before I could make it to her side, all hell broke loose around me.
Someone barreled into me, nearly knocking me down on the sticky bar floor. I stumbled back a few steps, crashing into the group behind me. I could feel the spill of drinks down the back of my shirt, and I knew that I hadn’t been the only casualty.
I didn’t turn to apologize to them. Instead, I focused my gaze on Bobby, who was staring at me with murder in his eyes. “What the hell, man?” he snarled, all up in my face, and loud above the chatter of the bar. Granted, everyone had quieted down, all eyes turned to us. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a commotion by the door—bouncers facing off against Bobby’s friends? Great.
When I thought about the fact that I didn’t have any proof that Bobby was a gangster, I hadn’t exactly been hoping to get that proof on a silver platter.
I glanced over towards Lucy, wondering if she would jump between us. If not, it was sure a sign as any that she had just been baiting me this whole time to give her brother an excuse to do something to me—or at least had been meant as a distraction to throw me off my game.
“Hey,” Bobby snapped, moving to shove me again. This time, I was ready for him, leaning into his hands and swatting them away roughly. “Quit fucking looking at her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or you’ll what?” I challenged. There was only so much that he could get away with in the middle of a crowded bar, and we both knew it. Besides, as strong as his buddies might be, it was only a matter of time before the bouncers came to break things up between us.
“Don’t mess with me, man,” he growled in a low voice.
“Look, Lucy and I have some things that we need to talk about, that’s all,” I told him.
“What?” Bobby sneered. “You mean like the fact that you show up here in one of her regular spots so that you can chat up other women right in front of her?” He kept swearing at me, practically frothing at the mouth.
Of course, there was no convincing him that that wasn’t what I’d been doing. Hell, I had barely said two words to the other woman, and I certainly hadn’t been the one to initiate the conversation. The
