Page 135 of Tell Me Something True

That he was terrified of her and the way she made him feel.

The things she made him want.

“Thank you,” she told the guy. She cleared her throat. Amped up that forced smile. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the game?”

The guy laughed. “Probably. But I have a few minutes before I have to leave for the field.” His voice dropped. “I just wanted to see you before I left.”

And her gaze once more went to Reed.

He locked eyes with her. Wanting to hold on to that connection. To make it last.

The guy must have noticed he didn’t have her full attention because he continued, “But if you’re doing something, I can just call you later.”

She blinked as if coming out of a trance. “No,” she said slowly, looking back at the phone. “I’m not doing anything.” Then she met Reed’s eyes once more and went for the killing blow. “Nothing important anyway.” She smiled at the guy, this one warmer. More real. “And I’d much rather talk to you.”

With that, she turned on her heel.

And walked away.

Just like Reed told himself he wanted her to do.

Chapter 26

“Two Sam Adams,” Miles told Walsh, leaning across the bar and pitching his voice to be heard over the mix of music and conversation. “And a vodka cranberry.”

Walsh added soda to the mixed drinks he was making but took the time to give Miles a flinty look. “Starting a tab?”

Miles nodded and Walsh’s expression darkened even more.

And he glanced down at the other end of the bar.

Miles didn’t follow suit.

He knew what the kid was looking at. Who was sitting there.

She was the first thing Miles had seen when he’d stepped into The Cockeyed Chameleon a few minutes ago and the moment his gaze settled on her, the tightness he’d carried around in his chest the past two days loosened.

As if he’d been searching for her all that time and now that he’d found her, he could breathe again.

But he was keeping his distance. He was still processing everything she’d told him two days ago in his car. Was still trying to come to terms with the mistakes he’d made and working on accepting his fair share of responsibility for her leaving.

But the main reason he wouldn’t approach Tabitha was because she wasn’t alone.

Lincoln Black, a local attorney who’d gone to school with Urban, sat next to her, his body turned toward her. Like she was the only thing in this bar worth looking at.

“It might be a few minutes,” the kid told Miles as he moved on to pulling a couple of draft beers. “I can bring them to your table.”

“No you can’t,” Hayden said as she joined him to scoop ice into two squat glasses. She gave Walsh a gentle hip-check. “You handle this side of the bar. Let Greer handle the tables.”

Setting the beers on the bar, the kid’s mouth thinned. “I’ll have Greer get them out to him, then.”

“That’s not the system we have in place,” Greer, the pretty, tattooed waitress lightly scolded Reed as she joined him on his other side. “The system we have in place,” she continued, loading the beers, then the mixed drinks onto her tray, “is that customers who stay at their table and place an order from their table, get their orders delivered. Customers who come up to the bar, don’t.”

Walsh lifted a shoulder. “We can make an exception for the assistant police chief.”

“No exceptions,” Hayden said, quick and firm.

“We work the system,” Greer insisted. “If we don’t… you know what happens next…”

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