Deconstructed(27)

“Shouldn’t we go around?” I asked, not wanting to go through the rear of the bar.

“Nah, Dak don’t care.” Juke pushed into the freshly painted back door, nearly mowing someone over. “Hey, Shirl.”

“Dak said he’s not serving you, Juke, so turn back around and get on up to your place,” the woman said, pulling something from the fryer and jerking her head toward a guy wearing a cook’s cap. Like she might need backup.

“Just coffee. I swear. This is my cousin Ruby. She’s in charge of sobering me up.” Juke jerked a thumb back at me. I gave a weak smile and wave.

Shirley narrowed her eyes. “Okay. But I’m watching you.”

Juke made a face and headed for the swinging metal door. “Bring us two coffees when you gotta minute, Shirl. I’ll tip you good.”

Shirley looked at me like she expected me to say something. I had nothing. So I just followed my cousin into the bar, praying that Dak wasn’t there.

But he was.

Right behind the bar to our left, wearing a soft T-shirt, a bar towel slung over his shoulder, and jeans that clung to his muscled thighs.

Damn it. Why hadn’t he lost his hair and gained thirty pounds?

And to rub salt in the wound was the fact that he was still gorgeous. His adorable dimples were doing their thing as he laughed with a group of guys nursing beers at the bar. Two televisions behind him showed baseball games. And the variety of liquor reflected in the mirror gave any upscale bar a run for its money. Dak caught Juke out of the corner of his eye, his gaze narrowing slightly, telling me that my ex had had enough of my cousin.

But then his gaze found me.

He stilled, holding a glass in one hand, a bottle of Captain Morgan in the other.

“Hey-ya, Dak,” Juke called, bellying up to the bar.

“No happy hour for you, J-man,” Dak said, jerking his eyes back to the task at hand. But I knew him. He wasn’t as unaffected as he pretended, and something about that caused a tiny frisson of pleasure to click its heels. Which was dangerous. Because even though I had caused our breakup, my heart still ached for Dak.

“Just coffee.” Juke pulled out a stool for me, then took the one beside it. “You remember my baby cousin Ruby? Y’all may have been in school together.”

Dak turned away from us, setting the rum on the shelf. “Sure I do.”

Somehow I managed to slide onto the stool without losing my composure. It had been almost nine years since he’d left me at the Carters’ barn, tears in his eyes. I had broken his heart when I had stayed to party with kids I had no business being around. But that was the year my dad had taken off, my mom had lost her shit, and I had embarked on a death wish, smoking too much pot, drinking too much Crown, and daring anyone to tell me what to do. Even my boyfriend.

Dak had had a future—LSU baseball had been knocking at his door, along with dozens of other top programs in the nation. And I’d had nothing. I had felt like a Balthazar, destined to amount to shit, so I had self-sabotaged. By the end of that year, Dak had taken off for Baton Rouge, and I had dropped out of North Caddo, picking up my first arrest for possession and resisting arrest. My second had come six months later when I had stupidly gone with some guys who broke into cars to steal guns. I had been a dumbass in more than one way.

But Dak hadn’t.

He’d done what he’d set out to do and graduated from LSU with a degree in finance before entering the draft and playing for a year in the minors. He’d moved up to the big show but blew out his knee when someone took him out at the plate. The injury had been too much to overcome, so he’d come back home, bought a house on the lake, and opened a bar. Deep down I was so proud of him. No one had the laser focus and work ethic of Dak. He never quit.

Except on me.

But I couldn’t hold that against him. I’d done that to myself.

“Coffee for you, too, Ruby?” Dak asked almost too politely.

“Um, sure.”

The guys at the bar buzzed over a home run on the screen, and Dak backed up to take a peek. Then he resumed making a fresh pot of coffee as Juke turned to me. “So tell me about this boss of yours. What’s the story?”

“Not much to tell. Same song and dance. He’s cheating. She found out.”

Juke raised his eyebrows and snagged a toothpick from his pocket. Chewing on it, he eyed the liquor behind the bar with a hunger I wished a man would direct toward me. “I’m assuming he ain’t got a clue she knows?”

“Pretty much. She and I did a stakeout, and that’s where she saw him. At the tennis pro’s place,” I said, trying not to watch Dak as he smoothly measured grounds and flipped buttons on an industrial coffee maker at the end of the bar. Dak wasn’t short, but he was so muscular that he looked stocky. But there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He’d been the perfect catcher—strong, agile, and smart. He could read the field and anticipate the play, and with his arm, he could throw out even the speediest of runners. I had loved watching him play.

The phone I’d set on the bar jittered like the wake-up call I needed.

Ty Walker.

The future dragging me from the past.

“You going to get that?” Juke asked, looking annoyed that I hadn’t already snatched it up.

I clicked the ANSWER button. “Hello.”

“Hey, gorgeous, I just got back in town, and some chick at the shop said that you left early. And that just made that long trip seem even longer.” Ty sounded like he was in the car.