Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Mick

I came back from Australia not long ago.

The conversation with my father was not something I had prepared for.

When he called and told me to come home, I thought it would be something ordinary. A family matter, maybe. Something about the company. The kind of thing that could be handled in a single afternoon and forgotten by evening.

But the moment we sat down across from each other, I knew I had been wrong.

Very wrong.

Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't that. His words landed somewhere deep in my chest and stayed there, heavy and stubborn, refusing to settle. By the time I left his house, my head was full of noise,a storm of thoughts circling each other without ever arriving at anything calm or clear.

I couldn't go straight home after that.

I needed somewhere familiar. Somewhere that didn't ask anything from me. Somewhere I could sit down, hold a glass, and let the world blur at the edges for a little while.

The bar.

Before I left for Australia, this was the place I came to whenever things got too loud inside my own head. Out of every bar in this city, this one had always been my favorite. Something about the music, the way the lights moved, the low hum of noise from strangers who weren't paying attention to me,it all had a way of pushing everything else out. Or at least making it quieter.

I didn't know if it would still work.

But I came anyway.

I found a seat on the couch in the corner, away from the main crowd, and wrapped my fingers around a glass of whiskey.

A small group of girls sat nearby — heels, short dresses, loud laughter. They kept glancing over at me and whispering to each other. I noticed but didn't react. This kind of attention was nothing new. I had learned a long time ago that reacting only encouraged it.

One of them kept catching my eye on purpose. Winking.

I looked away.

That should have been enough. In most places, it was.

But bars had their own rules.

A minute later, she stood up and walked over with the kind of confidence that told me she had done this before and it had always worked. She sat down beside me like the space had been saved for her, like my disinterest was just a door she hadn't tried opening yet.

I sighed quietly.

"I'm not interested," I said. My voice was calm. No anger in it.

She leaned closer anyway. Her perfume filled the air around me,thick, heavy, the kind that stays in your clothes for hours.

"I'm really sorry," I said again, shifting back slightly to put some space between us.

I wasn't paying attention to her anymore.

Because something near the entrance had caught my eye.

My whole body went still.

My fingers tightened around the glass without me telling them to.

Standing near the entrance of the bar, looking around like someone who had just stepped into a place from another world…

Lina.

I said her name quietly under my breath, almost like a question. Like I needed to check if what I was seeing was real.

For one slow second, I thought I was imagining her. It wouldn't have been the first time. But no,she was really there, stepping carefully past the door, her eyes moving around the room with that cautious, uncertain look she always had in new places.

Lina never came to bars.

Not once, in all the years I had known her, had I ever pictured her in a place like this. She was never the type. She was the kind of person who was happiest somewhere quiet — curled up somewhere comfortable, far from loud music and flashing lights.

Seeing her here, in the middle of all this noise, made something tighten in my chest.

Something was wrong.

I watched her move through the crowd on the dance floor, pushing past dancing bodies with her shoulders drawn in, clearly uncomfortable. She looked completely out of place. Like a small, careful thing that had wandered somewhere it didn't belong.

But somehow, and I knew how ridiculous this sounded, even in my own head,that made her more beautiful.

She had always done that. Made ordinary moments feel like something worth paying attention to.

When she finally reached the bar counter and sat down, she let out a long, loud sigh of relief that I could almost hear from across the room.

I laughed quietly to myself.

Still exactly the same.

My heart picked up its pace without permission.

She wasn't dressed like anyone else here. No short skirt, no low neckline, no jewelry catching the light. Just a simple dress. Clean and soft and entirely Lina. While everyone around her was dressed to be noticed, she looked like she hadn't even considered it.

It made me smile in a way I couldn't stop.

Who comes to a bar dressed like that?

Only her.

Then the bartender said something to her and she smiled back at him, warm and easy, the way she always smiled at people.

Something shifted in my chest. Quick and uncomfortable. A feeling I didn't want to look at too closely.

I was already standing up before I had finished deciding to.

My feet moved toward the counter.

Toward her.

I told myself it was just to say hello. It had been a year, after all. It was natural to go over and say something.

But I knew, somewhere underneath that, that wasn't all it was.

I didn't like the way the bartender was looking at her. That simple, uncomplicated truth was already pulling me across the room before my brain had caught up.

As I got closer, I watched her take a sip of her drink. Her face twisted immediately, brows pulling together, lips pressing into a thin line, like the glass had personally offended her. Then she muttered something under her breath that I couldn't hear.

The laugh that rose in my throat surprised me.

God. She hasn't changed at all.

"Very strong, huh?"

The words left my mouth before I thought about them., I quickly regained my balance. telling my face to stay calm. Relaxed. Normal. I was very aware of the warmth creeping up the back of my neck and I prayed, sincerely, that none of it reached my face.

Lina turned slowly.

Her eyes found mine.

They went wide immediately.

Confusion. Shock. Something softer underneath both of those, something I caught only for a second before she had time to rearrange her expression.

Her eyes.

I had forgotten, somehow, how bright they were. Or maybe I had just gotten used to remembering them in dreams, where everything is a little faded at the edges. Seeing them right in front of me, dark and sharp and full of questions felt like something I hadn't been ready for.

She was more beautiful than I remembered.

Not in a way that hit you all at once. In the quiet, steady way that kept surprising you every time you looked.

"Wh — what are you doing here?" she asked.

Her voice cracked slightly on the first word.

That small crack in her voice did something to me that I wasn't prepared for. Something warm moved through my chest, slow and aching, like feeling blood return to a numb hand.

I had missed her voice.

I hadn't let myself think about how much until right now.

For a moment I genuinely didn't know what to say. My mind, which had been full of noise all evening, went completely quiet.

So I did the first thing that came naturally.

I opened my arms.

"Really? Not even a hug?"

I smiled, hoping it looked easier than it felt. Because the truth,the one I wasn't going to say out loud was that the moment I saw her walk through that door, I had wanted to pull her close and not let go. Not the way you hold a childhood friend you haven't seen in a year. Something more than that. Something I had no clean, simple name for.

But I couldn't do that.

So I smiled instead.

She walked toward me slowly. Each step steady but cautious, like she was still deciding something. And with every step, my heart beat a little harder, a little louder, until she was close enough that I stopped thinking entirely and just pulled her in.

My arms wrapped around her waist.

Too tight. I knew it was too tight, the kind of hold that gives things away. But I couldn't make myself loosen it. Not yet. Not when she was right here and real and warm in a way that no dream had ever gotten right.

For a few seconds, the bar went silent.

Not actually silent. The music was still there, the voices were still there. But all of it fell away, and there was only this,the warmth of her, the quiet weight of her in my arms, and the completely unwelcome thought that I never wanted to be the one to let go.

She pulled back slowly.

Her eyes moved away from my face, to the counter, to her hands, to anywhere that wasn't me. The faintest bit of color was rising in her cheeks.

And in that same moment, a thought crossed my mind that I had no business entertaining.

I wanted to kiss her.

Not gently. Not carefully. The way I had imagined it too many times in Australia, late at night, when I was too tired to keep my thoughts in order and she would appear without warning, in my mind, in my sleep, in the quiet space between waking and dreaming. Always Lina. No matter what I did.

I cleared my throat.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

Her eyes came back to mine.

Something in her face changed — the soft look tightening into something more guarded. Her eyes held a worry she wasn't ready to share.

"I should be asking you that," she said quietly, with a small shrug, before turning back toward her seat.

The words pressed against a bruise I hadn't told her about.

Because she was right.

But I couldn't answer that question. Not tonight. Not when my father's words were still sitting in my chest like something I hadn't found a place to put down yet.

So I changed the subject.

"Since when did you start going to bars?" I asked.

She didn't answer right away. I watched her face carefully, the way I always did when I was trying to read her, because Lina was never easy to read, not fully, not unless she wanted you to.

I just knew one thing clearly.

Something had brought her here tonight.

And whatever it was, I couldn't stand the thought of being the reason it had made her sad.