Page 17 of Love You Truly

“Oh no, you don’t.” I cross the space in two strides and stand in front of her so she can’t easily evade me. “What the hell was that all about?”

She shrugs. “I’ll tell you in a minute. First, I need to make a phone call.” She hands the darts off to her friend, and a second later, I’m watching her tight little ass sashay through the bar in the direction of the restrooms.

“She means she’s got to use the loo,” her friend explains helpfully with a cackle.

“Yeah. I caught that.”

It’s the only part of the conversation we just had that makes any sense.

CHAPTER 7

Dash

I hover next to the round table where my friends have ordered a pitcher of beer and have already finished half of it. Lucas hands me a full pint glass and toasts it with his.

“Just when I thought you couldn’t outdo yourself, you managed to be lip-to-lip with a lady within two minutes of entering the place. I thought you weren’t seeing anyone. You holding out on us?”

Just like that, three pairs of eyes size me up, and each friend sits eager to give me shit or congratulate me or both. Lucas nudges the fourth chair away from the table with his foot and nods for me to sit.

“Not holding out on you, but I’ll be back in a minute, and you can ask me whatever you want. Not saying I’ll answer, but you can ask.”

I take my beer and walk in the direction Mallory went.

People have their opinions about me—some call me a playboy, lady-killer, man-slut, while others think I’m as lazy as they come—but whatever their assessment, most would probably agree that I mind my own business.

I can’t speak to people’s opinions because they tend to be formed based on rumors and old reputations, so I mostly ignore what people think and go about my affairs. No sense in encouraging the irony of putting in a lot of work to convince people I’m not lazy.

Minding my own business seems like good sense, and it’s one of the few lessons I recall my dad instilling in me when I was a kid. “Stay out of other people’s way and don’t go looking for a fight,” he said one afternoon while I sat at our kitchen table trying to scrub the word ‘loser’ out of the fabric of my school backpack.

With two older brothers, I rarely got picked on, but that particular year, I was still in elementary school, and both of my brothers had graduated. So there was no one to defend my scrawny ass against a group of kids in the grade ahead of me when they decided I was ‘too small and too stupid’ to join their game of kickball on the schoolyard.

I made the mistake of sticking up for myself, which is what I told my dad. “I wasn’t looking for a fight. I was trying to avoid one.”

My dad stirred milk into a cup of coffee and watched me scrub the black ink so hard that it formed a muddled gray patch on the fabric. He didn’t offer to help, but from the way his sharp blue-eyed stare assessed me, I had the feeling he knew a better method for removing ink. He just wasn’t about to tell me.

“There’s power in observation.” He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his cheeks and chin as though checking to make sure his clean shave hadn’t missed a spot. “You don’t need to be the loudest one in the room. You need to be the smartest. And sometimes you can do that best by being unseen and unheard until the time is right.”

At the time, I didn’t understand his meaning because I wanted to unleash ants into the lunchboxes of every one of those kids. It took me several more years before his wisdom started to make sense to me.

My dad was rarely unseen or unheard. His loud voice bellowed through our house and put the fear of God into employees at Buttercup Hill. Sometimes I wondered if he forgot to take his own advice.

But I digress. The point is that I normally mind my own business. I observe. I plot my moves and execute them when the time is right. It allows me to work under the radar and avoid a lot of drama.

However, walking into the Dark Horse and finding some asshole trying to shove his tongue down Mallory’s throat obliterated my bystander instincts. Okay, his tongue wasn’t actually involved, but still. He was in her face and in her space, and I could tell she was uncomfortable—partly because she looked just as pissed off as she did after taking down the pickle display last month.

Seeing that expression directed at some other dude could mean that she always looks annoyed, but I chose to trust my powers of observation. She didn’t want him anywhere near her, and as soon as I intervened, she seemed relieved.

So relieved, apparently, that she concocted a lie of mammoth proportions. Well, fine. I’ve been with enough women for enough years that I knew how to bring it home. Now, I want a little payback in the form of an explanation.

In case Mallory plans on slipping out the back door of the bar without coming to find me, I plant myself in the hallway where the restrooms are.

“You the bloody stalker, now?” The clipped British accent throws me at first, and I’m not sure it’s directed at me. When I turn, I find Mallory’s friend staring me down. She’s a good foot shorter than me and wears no makeup. Her brown hair is tied in a ponytail, and she’s drowning in a baggy beige sweater. But there’s no mistaking the sharpness of her stare, which could wilt a pot of daisies in one go. Based on that, I can see why she and Mallory are friends.

“I didn’t catch your name. I’m Dash.”

She huffs a laugh. “I didn’t tell you my name so there was nothing to catch.” Salty, this one.

“You want to tell it to me now, English?”

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