Page 5 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Three

“Scotty! What can I get for ya tonight?”

The familiar bartender smiles, round face and shaved head seemingly widening with his mouth.

“Hey, Ben,” I say lightly. He wipes the bar as I slip into my usual stool at Liberty Tap. “The usual.”

He winks, smile not fading. “You got it.”

I peruse the menu for as long as it takes for him to pour my drink—whiskey neat—closing it and handing it to him after he sets the glass down.

I take a sip, warmth coating my throat as it slides to my belly. “Good as ever.” I grin. “And I’ll have the trout.”

“You got it.” He doesn’t move to leave, eyes lingering over me. “It’s good to see you tonight. You look nice.” His cheeks redden just slightly as he looks at me for something he absolutely won’t find .

It’s awkward; I’m not sure what to say. I could flirt, but it would be cruel.

Almost as cruel as what happened a few months ago after too many whiskeys.

There’s no need for me to respond because he reads me for what I am—an emotional black hole—and taps the bottom corner of the menu on the bar before giving me a tight smile and leaving to enter the order into the computer.

I blow out a breath and take another sip.

The afternoon was busy, but Archie’s house sat like an intrusive triangular thought through it all, poking at me.

Even though it’s only a quick five-mile drive from the crematorium, I couldn’t bring myself to go look at it.

Like I needed to mentally prepare for what it means to walk into a house—on a lake—that is technically mine. A house that will set me free.

“This seat taken?” a man’s voice asks.

I answer without looking, rolling my eyes as I unroll my silverware from the napkin. “Don’t see a sign on it.”

He slides the stool out from under the bar and his smell overpowers me—a masculine scent I can’t name—before I glance his way.

I groan at the sight of Ford Callahan’s stupid face. “Explains the smell.”

He doesn’t react, merely drops into the seat like it’s no big deal looking way happier than I am.

Like I haven’t been avoiding him for the nine months he’s been back.

Like every time I see him patrolling in his cop car or cruising in his truck, I don’t consider ramming him off the road .

Like he didn’t make me believe in something better for myself before taking off with it like a thief in the night.

“Scotty,” he says, blue eyes twinkling before he directs his attention down the bar and lifts his chin toward Ben. “Hey, man.”

Ben smiles and pulls a rocks glass off a shelf.

“Ford, good to see ya. Where’s the boss?”

Boss?

Ford grins. “Mom’s.”

Without prompt, Ben fills the glass with ice, club soda, and .

. . nothing else? He tosses a cocktail napkin down and sets the drink on it in front of Ford before busying himself with another order.

Ford’s eyes latch on to mine like bloodthirsty leeches.

He picks the glass up, swirls it around, and takes a slow sip before sucking a piece of ice into his mouth and then crunching it between his teeth.

That baby-faced, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered, life-destroying sonofabitch.

He smirks; I roll my eyes.

My hand wraps around my fork and I squeeze it so tightly my knuckles go white.

“Good to see you, Scotty.”

I drop the fork in my hand and exchange it for my whiskey, taking a long sip. When he adds, “You look good,” I finish it.

My eyes cut to his. “Your boss know you’re out trolling for women?”

He raises his eyebrows, amused. “You jealous?”

I drop my forearms on the bar and straighten my spine, looking him square in the eyes that always seem to be smiling. “Fucktose intolerant, actually.” Before he can respond: “Are you following me? I see you everywhere.”

“It’s a small town, Scotty,” he argues through a laugh. “Of course you see me everywhere. I’m a cop. It’s part of the job. You want me to give you my schedule so you can avoid me forever?”

I force a too-big smile. “Actually, yes. Thanks for offering.”

He fixes his gaze on me, expression teetering between solemn and hopeful. “Would it fix what I did?”

At the absurdity of his question, I laugh, loud. Like there’s any way to fix what he’s done or change his lifetime role as a silent star in the Scotty Armstrong shitshow. “Unless you plan on getting hit by a bus, Ford, there’s not a shitsicle’s chance in hell to fix what you did.”

A laugh-like pah! puffs out of him. “So you’re going to hate me forever?”

Our history hangs between us like a thick fog in a mountain valley.

“That’s the plan,” I tell him as he takes a swig of his club soda, his eyebrows raising as he watches me watch him. Pissing me off. “Why are you here?”

“To eat.” He crunches on another piece of ice.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

“I mean in Ledger,” I huff. “Why are you back? You were gone for over twenty years. Why don’t you crawl back to whatever hole you came from and go back to sucking souls like a good little dementor?”

He snorts. “Still got the tongue of a viper, I see. And there weren’t enough birds.” He looks at me, sizing me up, before adding, “And the company wasn’t nearly as good.”

Even though his lips aren’t smiling, one of the many annoying qualities about Ford Callahan and his now slightly bearded baby face is that his eyes always are. His mouth always curving just enough to make you wonder if he just finished laughing. Like he can’t not be happy.

If I were a cat, I’d claw his pretty face.

“And, what, you get clean and become a cop?” His smug look is replaced by a slack jaw. Ha! “Guilty conscience, Officer Callahan ?”

“What?” He slowly sets his drink down. “The hell you talking about, Scotty?”

I snort a non-humorous laugh. When I first ran into Ford a few months ago, it was fortunate for me it was at a boxing ring where I hit him until my arms hurt.

After that, I always imagined we would unload all this on each other, but Liberty Tap was not where I pictured it.

Actually, the fiery pits of hell seemed more fitting, but as I’m not one to shy away from any battle, the most popular restaurant in Ledger will do just fine.

I fold my hands on the bar, looking at him with steely determination.

“As I recall, you and my brother decided to burglarize a house—for drug money—and when the cops showed up, you let him take the blame while you blasted out of this town and never looked back. Meanwhile, he died—along with my dad—and you were nowhere to be found.”

The hurt on his face would hurt me if I harbored a heart or shred of sympathy.

“That’s not what happened.”

Liar.

“Oh, really?” I say, raising my glass toward Ben who grabs the bottle and pours a refill, eyes pinging between me and Ford. “Spin me a tale, Golden Boy. Tell me how it all went down.”

Our gazes clash and hold like lightning to an electric rod in a storm.

All he says: “Not that.” After a weighted pause he mutters, “And I hate when you call me that.”

It’s true, he always had. Once the Ledger Times wrote an article about him after a high school football game and called him Ledger’s Golden Boy, I never let him live it down.

“Well,” I say, holding my glass toward him in a mock toast, “I hate that your dad found the need to inseminate your mom, so I guess we’re even.”

He shakes his head, lips twitching just slightly as we study each other, the silence broken up by Ben sliding my food in front of me and refilling Ford’s club soda.

“You on the clock or something?” I ask between bites, eyeing his drink.

He crunches another piece of ice. “On the wagon.” My chin jerks back and he chuckles. “Nothing like whatever you’re imagining. Between the job and . . . some other things . . .” He shrugs. “Just seemed like it wasn’t helping matters.”

I nod and chew slowly, studying him as he takes another sip. He has the nerve to look comfortable. His arms in a T-shirt have the nerve to be muscular. He just . . . has the nerve.

“Heard Archie left you his place on the lake. He a little sweet on you?” he asks with a tease.

There are no secrets in this damn town.

“He didn’t care that I was born to rot, if that’s what you mean.”

“That what you think?” His eyebrows raise. “That you were born to rot?”

“I think everyone I love is either dead, didn’t show up, or doesn’t belong to me.” I let those words sink in. “Not so different than a rot.”

He stares at me for what feels like the same twenty years he’s been gone with an intensity too big for any one moment.

“You moving into it?”

A pressure starts to build in me with the question.

Not just the question, at Ford asking it.

At the shade of blue of his eyes and the foreign yet familiar look of hope swimming in them.

At him being in this town after so long of not.

I think of what Lydia said. June. Even Mel.

Chase something that excites you. And like clouds parting in the middle of a Cat 5 hurricane, my path forward becomes crystal clear: “I’m selling it,” I hear myself say. “And leaving Ledger.”

He slowly lowers his glass, a line forming between his eyebrows. “Leaving? ”

“Yes.” My body tingles with the promise of freedom. I’m excited—it feels good, right even. Like it’s what I’ve needed to do all along. “Leaving.”

“Why?”

Before I can answer, a woman—blonde, mid-thirties, and wearing a navy-blue dress—sits on the stool on the opposite side of him. I don’t recognize her, but it’s not too surprising since I prefer the company of my lifeless clients over those with an actual pulse.

“Hey,” she says to Ford, breathless quality to her voice as she rubs a palm across the spot between his shoulder blades and pecks him on the cheek.

“Anna,” he says in a velvety smooth voice that makes her smile a swoony shape that nearly makes me vomit on the bar.

When she notices me, I raise my glass and her smile falters slightly. She gives a curt, “Hey.”

I blink to Ford. “A boss and a bitch, how fitting.” My eyes flick to Anna . “And I see you’ve moved on to blondes. Aren’t you full of surprises, Golden Boy.”

Ford pins me with a look as Anna’s chin pulls back slightly.

“Don’t mind her,” he says, licking his lips, looking at me sideways before giving her all his attention. “Bark’s worse than the bite.”

I resist the urge to snap my teeth.

“How do you know each other?” Anna presses, leaning into him territorially .

“We—”

“Please, Ford. Let me,” I interrupt with a too-perky tone and tilt of my lips. “It’s the darndest story.” I shift my voice to a stage whisper. “When we were young, he couldn’t keep his fingers out of my—”

“Scotty,” Ford snaps, hard edge to his voice. “Enough.”

I give him an innocent look and he turns his entire body, making his back form a wall separating me from them.

Chickenshit.

They fall into conversation, and I push my plate across the bar, appetite gone. I take my wallet out of my purse and wave a credit card to Ben who takes it.

At the back of Ford’s neck the familiar star-shaped birthmark just behind his right ear catches my eye. When Anna laughs, for a split second I wonder if he kisses her thumbnail like he used to kiss mine.

Then I remember: I don’t care if he does. I hope he does. I hope she shoves her whole damn finger down his whole damn throat.

As they keep talking and laughing, my annoyance is replaced by peace.

Maybe even glee. I don’t have to deal with this, I’m leaving.

I didn’t know it before but I sure as hell do now: I can’t breathe in this town because I can’t stay in this town.

I’ve served my time. When Lydia offered me the house, my mind went to the desert, so that’s where I’ll go.

Start over. Be excited. Live in the land of eternal sand, sunshine, and sexy cowboys.

I stand and slide my stool under the bar.

“Good catching up, Scotty,” Ford says .

I sign my bill, flicking my gaze to Ford as Anna wraps her hand around his bicep; there’s a challenging look in her eyes as she stakes her claim. All yours.

“Sure.”

“Friends?” he asks, eyes searching mine. A shade of blue still so distinctly and catastrophically him.

“Ha!” I shout too loudly as I sling my purse over my shoulder and throw back the rest of my drink, slamming the empty glass down harder than necessary.

“I’ll make you a deal, Ford. You change the fact you ran off to live your best life while I spent years—” Nope .

Not giving him more than he deserves. “You change that you left, without so much as a goodbye, and we can be best friends. Hell, you change that, and I’ll get your pretty little face tattooed on me.

” He says nothing, but his eyes stay locked on mine.

“And, sweetheart?” I look at Anna, leaning slightly over Ford so she knows two can play this game.

“As the woman he fucked first, you won’t do it for him. ”

She gawks; I give her a pouty smile.

I start to leave but stop, leaning in so close to Ford my mouth brushes against his ear as I lower my voice to a whisper. “Go fuck yourself, Golden Boy.”

His jaw pops; I grin.

I hate that man.