Free Bounty by Aubrey St. Clair Page B

drive separately, and on the way I start to question my choices.
    He’s impossible to resist. He’s trouble.
    The ghost of a smile wisps across my face. He called me that, too. Trouble.
    My life is such a mess. Is this the right choice, giving this guy a second — no, third — chance?
    I miss my mom.
    Before I know it, I’m pulling up to a dive bar in a part of town not too far from my place, but in a little tougher neighborhood. The rain is coming down again. Liam is waiting for me.
    “You weren’t kidding about this place,” I say. The walls are grimy, the floor is sticky, and the room seems to be lit entirely by those lovely neon beer advertisement signs.
    “I don’t even know your drink of choice,” he says.
    “Whisky sour,” I say.
    “I’ll get two.” He winks.
    We pick a booth and I crawl out of my rain jacket, hair just a little damp, feeling just a little crazy. He sidles up with the drinks right away.
    Okay, time to jump right in. Let no one say April Fitzpatrick doesn’t get things started with a bang.
    “I didn’t realize you were like me,” I say.
    “Hmm?”
    “Motherless.”
    I don’t tell him that I’m not sure my mom really died in an accident. I don’t tell him how many lines I’ve already crossed, telling him these things.
    I don’t tell him that I’m not sure I forgive him, yet, that I’m only here to hear him out.
    I don’t tell him that I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m just a sucker for thugs with secret feelings.
    But somehow our conversation unspools before me, an unraveling thread, and I start to pick him apart, pull at the seams, see the Liam that’s under the scruffy, handsome, bad boy exterior. The man behind those dark blue eyes.
    He keeps trying to keep me out, and then pauses, tense, and breathes. Then his muscles relax, and he tells me one new luscious detail from his life. His past loves. His line of work in statistics and research, all the time he spends at the computer. His brother, who’s a junkie and in jail. His lack of friends. Every new detail should make me feel worse about him, but I only feel drawn closer.
    My head is starting to feel drunk on it. Drunk on drinking him in. Or maybe it’s the whisky sours.
    “I think I’m drunk,” and somehow the thought has skipped right from my thoughts to my tongue. “Oops.”
    “Okay,” he says, and his smile is warm . He’s smiling warmly at me.
    “Time to get you home.”
    “I’m still not forgiving you,” I say, “necessarily. Jury’s still out.” But he’s helping me into my jacket and patting me between my shoulder blades, and it’s hard not to just let him.
    “You’re not driving,” he says.
    “Neither are you,” I insist.
    “I’ll call a cab.”
    And I remember, now, that he probably won’t be coming home with me. That he wants to go “slow.” That there’s something about him, even with all this sharing, that makes me feel… out in the cold.
    Then again, I am now standing outside the bar.
    “Oh, shit, left my jacket,” he says, and ducks back in.
    It happens immediately and I don’t see it coming. It’s hands, on me, and my arms being wrenched behind my back, and something pressed over my face.
    I try to scream but I can’t.

13

Liam
    H eading back to our table to grab my jacket, I catch a concentrated whiff of April’s scent — something fresh and delicate, some kind of flower, but something deeper, too, like maybe a mossy creek. It smells amazing. Unique.
    I’ve gotten back in her good books. I’m getting a treasure trove of useful intel from her. Even if I have to tell her things about myself I’ve never told anyone. It’s almost like a trade: the true things about her life, in exchange for mine. And in spite of myself, I find myself coveting the tiny, lovely details of her life. Her favorite welding techniques, the first flavor of ice cream she ever had, which friends stuck by her when her mother died, and which ones didn’t. I feel attached to these small