Page 32 of Bourbon & Blood

“Sounds good,” I said with a nod and I felt something very akin to electricity flow through me, energizing me and filling me with… I don’t know what.

“Boss,” Bennie said, and I turned my head slowly in his direction, my eyes fixed on my little Alina’s back as she made her way back to the bar.

“Boss?” Bennie asked again, and I turned to look at my men.

“What?” I demanded.

“You mind telling us what that was all about?” Cy asked.

I shook my head and turned it to look back at Alina who was back working her bar.

“No,” I said, and I got up. “Gonna take a piss. Don’t follow me.”

I left them both sitting there, shrugging, and giving each other mirrored looks of confusion.

I took a piss, washed my fuckin’ hands, and splashed some cold water on my face.

I didn’t understand how one look from her could unravel my resolve so much. How those cool gray eyes left me stuttering and a fuckin’ speechless mess, saying stupid shit and short circuiting my fuckin’ brain.

I tore some paper towels from the dispenser and mopped the water from my face. After a few deep and even breaths, staring into the blackened pits of my own eyes in the flaking and rusting mirror over the sink, I felt like I had my shit together enough to go out there and face her.

I was halfway back through the crush of people around the bar to my booth with the boys when she crashed into me.

“Oh, God!” she cried as two empty glasses fell from her tray and shattered against the concrete floor. “I’m so—” her voice cut off before she could say sorry and I was keenly aware of her hand on my cut at my side, bracing herself from pressing full against me as people milled around us.

She took her hand away slowly, and I looked down on the crown of her copper hair and waited her out.

She slowly raised her head, her eyes tracking a little bit slowly, and the confusion in her eyes was telegraphed clearly as she looked up at me.

Her voice was lost to the crowd and the pounding music, but I could read her lips easily enough.

“It’s you… it was you…”

I didn’t give anything away, keeping my face neutral and devoid of any emotion. I simply stared at her for as long as she stared at me.

Finally, as though waking up from a spell, she sidestepped me and was gone amid the crowd.

I looked back at Bennie and Cy who were openly staring at me through the shifting bodies between us, and with a scowl, I went back to the table.

“What’d you do?” I demanded.

“Nothing, man,” Bennie said, his voice a little tight with fear as he raised his voice above the crowd and music.

“We just finished our beers,” Cy added.

I dropped into my seat and shifted back so I could see all the angles and soon, my little Alina had returned. She set down Bennie and Cy’s beers and then tossed down the patch I’d left with her onto the table before me and the boys, arching her elegant eyebrow at me. Her mouth was set in a stern and stubborn line and I felt one of my eyebrows arch in return.

I turned my head to Cy and Bennie and in a tone that would brook no argument, I told them both, “Fuck off.”

Wordlessly, they got up and left us, going to chat up some girls in the opposite corner.

Alina took Bennie’s seat nearest me.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I told you, La Croix.”

“That’s a seltzer water that tastes like despair. Who are you really, and how did the patch that goes there, wind up in my hand in my apartment?” she demanded, pointing to the empty spot on my cut that still had the glue residue in the shape of my patch.

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