Page 56 of Undeniable

“How about you? How’s life in Austin? You still livin’ there?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Just working a lot. My company is actually about to acquire another company, so that’s been keeping me pretty busy.”

“Sounds… interesting. You’re not married, right? No kids?”

That question required another long gulp of beer. My life sounded so boring compared to his. I was successful in my career, that wasn’t ever a question, but it was everythingelsethat I was missing. I had nothing else but my job. I had my friends, sure, but that wasn’t the type of information you gloated about like you did a family. Hell, I didn’t even travel enough to talk about that.

“Nope, not married. No kids,” I finally confessed and promptly ordered two more shots.

Dylan laughed and turned to pour the shots. “No, but you came into town with Ivy Sharpe. Is that happening? I heard that y’all were pretty hot and heavy for a while back after we graduated. God, that feels like ages ago.”

He spoke rather loudly from several feet down the bar, and other patrons quickly turned their heads to see who he was talking to.

I gritted my teeth and refrained from saying anything that would get my ass kicked or kicked out.

He set the two shots in front of me, and I took them both back to back.

Dylan’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He fished the whiskey bottle out of the well in front of him and set it on the bar. “You want the bottle?”

I glanced at it momentarily but didn’t have to think too long before I poured myself another.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there’s probably a reason you walked in here tonight? Why you’re drinking whiskey like water? And—”

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Detective? Willowwood PD know about you?” I murmured sarcastically.

Dylan chuckled and grabbed the rag from his back pocket to clean the counter. Completely unbothered by my interruption, he continued, “And I have a feeling that reason is a smart, sassy redhead. The same one that recently declined Brendon’s proposal and immediately left town.”

The look I gave him was deadly. Or at least I hoped it was and that it would keep him from saying another word about Ivy. I wanted a reprieve from my thoughts, fromher. That’s why I found my way into the bar in the first place. I didn’t need my high school buddy/bartender questioning me.

But I wasn’t so lucky.

“Hey, man, I can’t help it. People talk, and it also comes with the territory. People really open up to me after they’ve had a few.”

I shook my head and leaned back on the barstool. “I don’t care what people have been saying. They’re all wrong anyway.”

“So, you didn’t come here with Ivy?”

My eyes closed, and I breathed through my nose.

“I did.”

“And you’re not staying at her parents’ house in the same room as her? You didn’t have a run-in with Brendon, her almost fiancé, at the high school today while setting up for the festival tomorrow?”

“How is that even—” I stuttered.

“Possible?” Dylan finished for me, and I nodded. “I know you’ve barely been back over the last several years, but you couldn’t have forgotten that gossip spreads like wildfire around here.”

He was right. I shouldn’t have been surprised. All the more reason not to add to the fire and continue talking about it.

“You’re right. Which is why I think I’m just going to drink and not say anything else about it.”

Dylan nodded and left with a mock salute and instructions to holler if I needed anything.

I glanced up at the TV hanging in the corner of the room, but it was playing a high school football game between two schools I’d never heard of, so instead, I pulled out my phone.

And I’d missed an entire conversation in our group text. They were arguing over tile for Hazel and Luke’s new pool, which had then descended into baby talk. I rolled my eyes that all of my friends thought they had a say in it, but I wasn’t surprised.

Hazel: Ok, we will go with the light blue and black tile.

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