Page 50 of Tell Me You Love Me

“So that kinda implies she’s not a kid. Which bodes well for me since I don’t like the idea of sleeping in a cell for the night.”

Finishing, she sets my beer by my elbow. “Means you’re taking her home?”

“No. But I’m glad to know she’s of age, simply because I was standing near her. Busy in here tonight, huh?”

She looks around with a maternal affection glowing in her eyes. This bar is her baby, just as surely as the three humans she birthed are her babies.

“Saturday night tends to do that, especially after a long, hot day in the sun. Folks get thirsty, and word gets around that the Watkins boys are spritzing on a bit of cologne.”

“Jesus.” I grab my beer. “The fact I know you aren’t even lying is just…” I take a long sip and shake my head. “It’s exhausting. People around here need to get a life.”

“Why, when you provide better entertainment than whatever’s on the television?”

“You’re a pain in my ass.”

“Mmhm. You here for a big night where I gotta call Pete to help me keep things under control? Or is mellow the new yellow, and you’re gonna behave?” She grabs another glass and begins pouring someone else’s beer, but before I can answer, her smile drops away, and her eyes shoot over my shoulder in panic. “You in a good mood, Tommy Watkins? If not, give me twenty seconds to make some phone calls.”

“I… what?” I glance over my shoulder and feel that kick, like every other fucking time we’re in the same space. Because Alana Page stops in the doorway, long blonde cascading hair tickling her shoulders and bright blue eyes burning with anxiety and scanning the crowd that stares back at her.

It shouldn’t be like this, where a whole fucking bar silences just because someone walks in, where bodies stop moving, and the awkward cough of someone who can’t help themselves bounces across a packed room.

But this is Plainview, where no one minds their own business, and she’s Alana Page. The one who got away.

I don’t even mean she’smyone who got away.

She left us all, and her departure was, for the first few weeks, as though a serial killer had swept through town and ravaged our small community.Questions went unanswered and understanding, to this day, remains unreachable.

She wanted to disappear and be forgotten. When really, she created the biggest fucking mystery Plainview has known since before prohibition.

I turn to go to her, but Caroline grabs my arm, setting her hand on my bicep. “Tommy…”

“I won’t make a mess.” I brush her off and take my beer, and since the whole fucking town needs to watch anyway, I cross the bar and hold Alana’s terrified stare. She’s gonna be scared no matter what. May as well face the devil she knows.

“I can leave.” So quickly, she steps back and draws my focus down to her dress. Her body wrapped in white, and the tan she collected from half a summer in the middle of nowhere. “I didn’t realize you’d be out, so I can?—”

“Stop freakin’ out every time we run into each other.”

I offer my beer—not sure why, except it’s the only thing I have in my hand, and I want to give her things.

Always have. Always will.

But she shakes her head, drawing her lip between her teeth and ruining the lipstick she applied before coming out.

Fuck me. Lipstick is a grown woman’s decision. It’s not something she even considered back when we were teens.

“You’re in Plainview now, Lana. Chances are, we’re gonna run into each other at least every other day. You’re gonna develop an autoimmune problem if you panic every time we’re within a hundred yards of each other.”

“This is your space.” She looks past me. Around me. Scouring those who watch us, and finding absolutely no pleasure in it. “You were here first, so I’ll head out and?—”

“You’ll stay.” I bring my beer up and take a sip. Anything to wet my desert-dry throat. “We never really got to do this when we were younger.”

“Drink?” She smiles, though I’m not sure she means it in a friendly way. “That’s not true. We drank plenty.”

“No, I mean, in a bar. In front of the adults. In fact, I’m still consistently surprised to remember wearethe adults now. Feels weird.”

She exhales—I think it’s a laugh—and looks down at her feet.

So, of course, I do the gentlemanly thing and follow her gaze along her long, trim legs and down to cute painted toenails.

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