Page 5 of Kellan & Emmett
Kellan
Noise hit me before the door even swung shut—laughter, voices pitched high with beer and old memories. Inside, Timbers & Tallboys looked exactly like the kind of bar small towns clung to: heavy beams overhead, low ceilings stained with years of smoke, wood so dark it almost gleamed.
The smell hit next. Grease and salt, fried pickles and onion rings competing with the sour tang of beer. My stomach turned, though I hadn’t eaten much since the mini canapés back at the school.
A man stood behind the bar, beard thick enough to hide most of his expression, sleeves rolled up like he’d just come from chopping wood instead of pouring drinks. He polished a glass with a kind of grim focus, expression daring anyone to ask for something complicated.
“Don’t even try to order a martini,” a woman passing by whispered, grinning as she noticed my look. “That’s Moses Morey—everyone calls him Mose. He’s the guy who tore down the Paul Bunyan statue ten years ago. People still haven’t forgiven him.”
Small-town grudges. They aged like whiskey.
I ordered nothing. Didn’t look at the beer list written in chalk. Didn’t care about the wings or fried whatever coming out of the kitchen. My focus was already spoken for, though I hadn’t let myself admit it until my gaze drifted across the room.
The object of my focus, my attention, stood across the room, head bent toward someone I didn’t recognize, laugh slipping free, easy and unguarded.
Older now. Broader through the shoulders, chest filling out his shirt in a way the lean boy I remembered never had. His hair was longer than it had been in high school, sun-streaked andbrushing his collar, the kind of messy that took effort. A beard covered his jaw, not too wild, just enough to sharpen him into something more rugged, more grown. Emmett was Charlie Hunnam kind of handsome—though I doubted he knew it.
My throat went tight. Twenty years ago, he’d been all wiry limbs and restless energy. Now he looked… anchored. Strong. Solid. And damn if it didn’t hit me harder than I wanted. Where the hell had he gotten that body?
I’d blocked him on social media twenty years back. Blocked everyone, really. A clean break, I’d told myself. Easier than watching lives unfold without me in them. I didn’t want glimpses of Emmett smiling with friends, living the kind of life I couldn’t live, couldn’t face. It was easier to pretend none of it existed.
And yet here he was, twenty feet away, real as the scuffed floor under my shoes.
I’d thought I wanted distance. Thought leaving Gomillion behind would erase him, erase us. But the second my eyes landed on him tonight, every mile I’d put between us collapsed.
I barely had time to catch my breath, to drag my eyes off him, before a voice boomed my name.
Derrick Barnes cornered me near the bar, a hand clap to my shoulder like we were old friends. He’d filled out since high school—sharper jaw, more confident in the way he carried himself—but the grin was the same.
“Man, it’s been forever,” he said. “I heard you were in California? I’ve been in Atlanta. Real estate. It’s crazy out there—condos going for half a million and folks are fighting to outbid each other. Nuts.”
“California’s its own kind of crazy,” I said, managing a half-smile. “Traffic and rent’ll bleed you dry.” The words came easy, automatic, while my eyes kept flicking past his shoulder, to the only person in the room who mattered.
Another guy drifted over, tall with a close-cropped fade and a quick laugh I recognized a beat too late. Jamal Jackson. We’d had history class together junior year. He leaned in, clinking Derrick’s glass with his own. “Don’t let him fool you, Kellan,” he said, handing me a beer. “He’s famous in Atlanta. Billboard ads and everything.”
Derrick rolled his eyes at Jamal’s brag and turned back to me. “Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, you’re over here looking like your mind’s three tables away. You even listening?”
Jamal grinned. “Don’t sweat it, Kell. Reunions do that. Half the room’s catching up, the other half’s chasing ghosts.”
They bantered, filling the space between us with stories of clients and cities I knew nothing about. I offered polite answers, a nod here, a chuckle there. My body stood with them, but my focus was across the room.
Emmett.
Leaning against a high-top, head bent toward someone else. Laugh sliding out easily, shoulders relaxed in a way I couldn’t remember ever seeing when we were teenagers. His hand brushed his glass, his other shoved into his pocket, and it shouldn’t have been magnetic.
But it was.
“Market’s all about location, location, location,” Derrick was saying, raising his glass.
“Right,” I murmured, though my eyes had already slid back to Emmett. Always knowing where he was, even without looking.
Temptation pressed hard. Twenty feet of scuffed floor between us. All I had to do was cross it. Say something. Anything more than the clipped words from that stupid Find Your Match game. But my feet stayed planted. My throat felt tight.
Jamal chuckled at something Derrick said. I sipped the beer he’d handed me earlier, the flavor muted, nothing that lingered. Easier to swallow than words I didn’t trust myself to say.
Movement near the door caught my eye. A tall guy, broad through the shoulders, beard trimmed sharp. I didn’t remember seeing him at the gym earlier. Took me a second, then it clicked—Leif Lawson. A year ahead of us in high school.
Why the hell was he even here? This was the twenty-year reunion for my class, not his.
