She’s not mad at me. Thank God. “We can come back to this as often as you want.” Any time. Any place.

She darts away from me, and I tug on her fingers to hold her back. She pulls back from me slowly and I ache with wanting to jerk her back into my arms. But she turns and runs away.

She hops back up on the stage and I follow her. The lead singer turns to her, scowling. “You and Logan, huh?” he asks. I can read his lips from where I’m standing.

She grins and nods her head.

He says something that looks like, “Figures,” before he scowls and turns toward me. I point to her and point to my chest and mouth the word “mine” at him. He gets it. He totally gets it. He might not want it to be true. But he knows she’s not in his future. She’s my future.

I go see Abby and get Kit a root beer. She’s been sweating up there for an hour, and they have another set to do. I point to the root beer lever on the fountain and raise my brows. “For you?” Abby asks, with a pointed finger as she fills a glass. I point to Kit. She nods and drops two cherries into it. I turn to take it to Kit and Abby tugs on my sleeve. “Where did she learn to play like that?” Abby asks.

I shrug. I have no idea where she learned to play. All I know is that she’s good. I can tell by the way the crowd is reacting to her. My heart is filled with pride for her. And it’s filled with a lot more. A lot more that she’s probably not ready to address yet.

I take her root beer to her and stand by the side of the stage to wait until she’s done with the song. But she marches down the steps, her fingers flying over the strings, and she leans over, taking the straw into her mouth. She sucks it greedily, and there’s not a man in the room who’s not envious of me right that moment. She never stops playing, but she drains the glass. Then she smiles at me, kisses me quickly and struts back up the steps and onto the stage. Great. Now I have a hard on and so does every man within a twenty foot radius. Suddenly, she runs back down the steps. She nods toward a cherry in the glass and I lift it to her lips. She takes it against the tip of her tongue and closes her lips around it. She pops it off the string with a gentle tug. She nods to the other, and looks at my lips. She taunts me with her grin, and I lift it to my lips and open my mouth for it. I tongue it from the stem, taking my time with it, playing with her, until she leans over, opens her mouth over mine, and takes it back from me.

I pretend to look offended, but I’m so f**king turned on that all I can do is look like an idiot.

Emily

I crash onto the stool at the end of the bar I’d vacated when I took over the band’s guitar, and lean my elbows on the table. A grin I can’t suppress tugs at my lips. Abby clinks a root beer down in front of me. “That was amazing!” she says as she tosses in two cherries.

I nod. It was pretty damn amazing. I’m still trying to catch my breath. I lift my wet hair off my neck and roll it into a lump, then let it go.

“You been playing for a long time?” Abby asks. She wipes the bar down with a rag.

“I think I was playing before I could walk,” I admit. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a guitar. “My grandfather gave me my first guitar.” My dad was all for it, until it became the only thing I was good at.

“Well, you can tell.” She raises a hand to give me a high five. “That was fantastic.” She clenches my hand for a second and meets my eyes, smiling. I don’t quite know what to do with that. Yet.

I look around the bar. The place is finally quiet and Logan is stacking chairs on tables for the cleaning crew. He raises the tail of his t-shirt and mops his brow with it. His abs ripple as he bends and a whistle escapes my lips. “Goodness gracious,” I breathe.

“That boy is one fine piece of man candy,” she says, stopping to lick her lips.

“Makes me want to lick him from top to bottom,” I reply softly, more to myself than to her. My face floods with heat when I see that she heard me.

She laughs and keeps cleaning. “What’s stopping you?”

I point to Logan. “He is.”

Her brows shoot up toward her hairline. “Logan won’t scratch your itch?” She points a finger toward him. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give her mouth to mouth, she looks that shocked.

I shake my head. “He scratched my itch. But he won’t let me scratch his,” I whisper fiercely. I have no idea why I’m talking to this girl. Probably because she’s a bartender. They have a natural way of making people open up and spill their guts. Consider me eviscerated.

Abby steps back, her chin dropping toward her chest. She regards me like I just grew two heads. Then she smiles. “It’s about damn time,” she says, throwing her head back with a laugh.

“It’s not funny,” I pout. “And don’t say anything to Ford, ok?” I add.

She holds up a hand like she’s raising it to God and says, “I promise not to say a word.” She laughs again. “Even though it’s the news of the century, I’ll keep it to myself.”

I look up as Pete walks out of the back, but he’s deep in conversation with Bone and another man. I watch them closely. Pete reaches over and shakes hands with Bone. What in the world is that about? You never, ever shake hands with Bone. Ever. That would imply that you made a deal with him. And Bone’s deals never turn out well for anyone but Bone.

Logan smacks his hands together to get Pete’s attention. He signs something really quickly, but Pete brushes him off with a wave. Logan sets down the mop he was wielding, and steps toward the pair of them. Bone squeezes Pete’s shoulder and then Bone walks away from him and straight toward me.