Page 29 of After All This Time

"Boyfriend?"

"Not today."

Tate's smirk widens, satisfaction glimmering in his dark eyes. "Good to know. I'll see you around." Without another word, he pushes off the bar and walks away, disappearing into the sea of leather and beards.

"Uh-oh," Harper says, her voice tinged with amusement as she bites down on the end of her straw, laughing through her teeth.

"Uh-oh, what?"

"You've caught the attention of Tate Dawson."

"And that's a bad thing?" I tilt my head, more curious than anything else now.

"It depends how you look at it," she says, and I hear Logan's laugh echo across the bar as he walks over to us. "He's harmless, but he's a human wrecking ball in a hoodie."

"You'll be fine. I'll tell him to rein it in if he gets to be too much."

"How is he your cousin? You two couldn't look more different."

Logan looks like he walked off a yacht with a whiskey glass in hand, while Tate looks like someone you'd find leaning against a motorcycle with blood on his knuckles and a grin that says he enjoyed it. They look like they belong to two entirely different worlds, not the same bloodline.

"My dad is a twin, and even though I'm practically identical to him and my uncle, Tate's the image of his mom," Logan says, leaning his back against the bar and folding his arms across his chest. "He got all the dark and mysterious genes, while the rest of us look like we just walked out of some prep school yearbook."

With only twenty minutes of my shift left, Logan slides back to the customer side of the bar, taking a seat next to Harper, who's sipping another glass of wine and scrolling through her phone.

I'm trying to clean, though it's more of an attempt to distract myself from the throbbing ache in my feet, which is ironic considering how much time I spend on them every day. You'd think they'd be used to it by now, but nope.

Just as I'm imagining how good it'll feel when I finally sit down, the door swings open, and six foot two of inked-up muscle and confidence walks in. Tobias moves through the bar like he's been here a million times before, casually shoving his phone into the back pocket of his black jeans when his blue eyes meet mine.

"Hey, you're early," I say as he approaches the bar.

"I know," he replies, flashing that beautiful smile, and fuck me running, that smile—that stupid, knocks-the-breath-right-out-of-your-lungs smile—has me rolling my eyes while my heart backflips in my chest.

Tobias stands next to Logan, but it's Harper who catches my attention first. She's doing that thing most women do when they first see him—mouth slightly parted, pupils dilated, wine glass forgotten mid-lift to her lips. I can't blame the girl. Tobias has that effect on people—he walks into a room, and everyone else becomes a little less noticeable.

"Harper, Logan, this is my… Tobias. We live together. We're roommates."

Yeah, I just made this weird.

Tobias shoots me a look—one dark eyebrow arched like he's questioning my sanity.

"I'm her stepbrother," he says, looking between Logan and Harper. "It's nice to meet you both."

And just like that, I'm put in my place.

"You good?" Tobias turns his attention back to me, pressing his hands flat against the bar.

"Yeah, I won't be too much longer. You want a drink?"

"Just water, please."

"Water? Really?"

"I'm driving, Firefly, and I already had a beer at home." His nickname for me slips out so easily, softening both of us in the process.

He's called me Firefly since day one, and I never asked why. I just accepted it like I accepted everything else about him. But the night he told me, it changed everything.

He stumbled in from some party, drunk but not sloppy—just that perfect kind of buzzed where everything feels magical and your walls come crashing down. Instead of passing out in his room, he appeared in my doorway, grinning at me.

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