Page 5 of Love Me, I Dare You

“Sure, we have a few minutes till our last rush of the night comes through.”

Sunday nights people look for comfort, and here at Stingers, that means comfort food. Carolina Barbeque sliders, chicken-fried steak and fries topped with our very own homemade cheesy country gravy, fried green tomatoes, and jalapeño cheddar hush puppies, all courtesy of our resident chef, Parker Michaels. Usually our dinner rush consists of locals who stop in after their long shifts or those who are preparing for the long work week ahead.

Sundays are rather slow, nothing compared to Thursday through Saturday nights, so I’m expecting to catch up on some office work after our dinner rush.

Penny’s eyes flick back and forth between me and the folded up paper in her hands. “I was taking inventory of the stock we ordered this month before I placed next month’s order, and it looks like we have two full cases of bourbon that aren’t accounted for. I searched out back in the stock house, and even asked Kellie about it, but she has no clue what could have happened to it. I just want to make sure everything’s in order when I run the reports by Jameson tomorrow.”

I can see the unease in her as she twiddles with her fingers when she speaks. Penny’s always been loyal to not only Jase and me, but to all of Crossroads. Her mom, Annabeth Taylor, was one of my mama’s best friends before she moved out of Crossroads and closer to downtown Raleigh. When Penny and I reunited at UNC nearly a decade after she and her family moved, it was like no time at all had passed. When she moved back to Crossroads last summer to care for her ill grandmother, it was a simple decision to hire her not only for her degree in business and background as a retail buyer, but for her familiarity with my brother and I.

I know the missing merchandise is something that must really have her worried.

Though before I can respond, the front door chimes and the room goes eerily silent. Our live band stops playing, and even Earl has stopped harassing old man Higgin’s over the game ofpoker—and wife—he lost to him nearly three decades ago. It’s like you could hear a hair pin drop from how incredibly quiet it’s gotten.

“Look Penny,” I say, making the woman passing us on her way to the restroom stop in her tracks. I glare at her and she keeps walking. “Just cash it out as cleaning supplies and we’ll call it a night. Don’t worry, I’ll ask Jase tomorrow if he knows anything about it.”

Penny nods, but not before I notice her posture and entire demeanor changes. Her face pales, eyes shoot wide and mouth gapes open as she stares behind me like she’s seen a ghost.

And the moment I turn around, I see one too.

Dark eyes, the same shade that have haunted me for the last decade, watch me meticulously as the man they belong to, dressed in dark jeans and a leather jacket currently drenched from the rain, stalks toward me. I hold my breath, unable to see, hear, or feel anything but him. The way his eyes never stray from mine. Even from this distance, I can see his jaw tick, the vein on his neck stiffen as he clenches his teeth tight. Tattooed hands are fisted at his side while his hair and beard are both wet and overgrown since I last saw him, yet they look like they’ve been recently trimmed.

The low thud and squeak of his boots on the wet hardwood as he approaches matches the rhythm of my heartbeat, accelerating the closer he gets to me. The scent of his cologne hits me with a wave of familiarity and I can’t help but close my eyes to ground myself, praying to God when I open them, he’ll be nothing more than a figment of my twisted imagination.

Though when I open my eyes and he’s still there, right across the bar counter, a mere three feet away, all the air leaves my lungs at once. The way my skin itches from how he's looking at me has me so close to fleeing.

I can’t breathe, can’t think of anything but that night between us nearly a decade ago. Ten years of grieving a love I never had, and in one second it’s like I’m back in my bedroom, an eighteen-year-old naïve little girl crying myself to sleep because a boy I thought I loved realized he wanted nothing to do with me.

This can’t be real. It’s a cruel joke the universe has played on me because I haven’t been the best of people in recent years.Or has my mama finally convinced the man upstairs to screw me for all the shit I put her through?

I don’t get to dwell on the reason for too long because in the next second, the ghost of my past speaks and my entire being crumbles into the same broken mess I became the night he left and never looked back.

Because Nash Bishop broke more than my heart when he walked away from me ten years ago. He destroyed everything good in me. Made my trust in people wither away because I’d blindly trusted him and he made me regret ever doing so. Worst of all, he ruined me for any other man.

Because since him, every date I’ve been on, every relationship I tried, and failed, to make work, became meaningless when I compared it to how I felt about him.

“Hey there, B. It’s been a while.”

My breath hitches as he speaks, my heart pounding in my ears the longer time passes with no response from me. I don’t know what to say or how to reply. Just a few meaningless words, in the sexiest goddamn tone, and it’s like the last ten years never happened.

Suddenly, I’m the same stupid girl who woke up one morning to find the boy I loved gone right after I’d given him all of me in a ridiculous display of my undying love. The hatred, the excruciating pain and anguish I felt thereafter, grieving for a man who never died, comes back to me in raging waves of hurtand nearly drowns me as it drags me into the dark place I barely escaped.

Two years ago, I made myself a promise. I would no longer mourn what could have been with Nash Bishop. I wouldn’t continue to long for a man I’d never again see. I couldn’t live my life comparing any other guy I dated or even those who showed even a smidgen of interest to a boy who wanted nothing to do with me. Because that’s what Nash was the last time I saw him. A boy who broke my heart, just like everyone around me, warned me he would. Just like I’d refused to accept he did.

Though just because I wanted it didn’t mean I could make it happen. Because the man who walked into my bar looking like fucking sex and sin wrapped in a deliciously wicked package of leather and grit isn’t the boy who left me all those years ago. Nash Bishop is now a grown man, and a goddamn dangerous one.

And just like that, those damn butterflies I thought had been long dead and buried take flight.

Chapter Three

Bailey

The moment I saw Nash Bishop for the first time, I knew he was my forever. It didn’t matter that he thought of me as nothing more than a bratty little girl, the little sister of his best friend. I promised myself that day that he was going to be mine.

Did I know it was going to nearly cost me everything to make this reckless dream a reality?No.Was it worth the hell he put me through?Absolutely.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. The sky was screaming, rain pouring down from dark clouds onto Crossroads like no one had seen in years. It had been all over the local networks. “The Storm of the Century” they were calling it. All it did was rile everyone up, causing grocery store shelves to become vacant and the townsfolk to run amuck around town like headless chickens.

But not my mama. No, Magnolia King was sitting on her floral upholstered recliner sofa, knitting my sister and I sweaters for the harsh winter that was about to come down upon North Carolina.

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