3

He continued to stare at me, his eyes narrowing in interest. “I could ask what prompted you to run, but I think I already know the answer.” He shook the glass and took another drink. “Men say women are complicated, but they aren’t. Just text back, and don’t stick your dick in other people. Pretty straightforward.”

I abandoned my cleanup at the bar because I’d become engrossed in this deep conversation with a stranger, feeling a connection to someone I didn’t know. “Are you in a relationship?”

“No.” He looked at me head on, having so much confidence it was nearly toxic. “I don’t text back, and I like to stick my dick in a lot of places.” He drank from his glass without breaking the connection with our eyes.

I felt no disappointment because that was exactly what I’d expected from him. If he was trying to pick me up, he wasn’t doing it in a sleazy way. He was brutally honest, that if we left the bar together, I wouldn’t hear from him again. He would probably be gone before I woke up in the morning. But honesty was a trait that I valued the instant I realized my marriage lacked it. “He wasn’t the one to tell me. I had to hear it from her.”

He didn’t cast judgment or voice an opinion. Just stared at me and listened.

“He’s been trying to get me back. Tightens his grip when he feels me slip further away.”

“How long have you been married?”

“A couple years.”

He gave a slight nod. “That’s not a good sign. Who was the woman?”

“Someone he works with. Said it didn’t mean anything.”

Both of his elbows went to the bar as he leaned forward, cupping his knuckles in the other hand, the muscles and cords visible up and down his arms.

“I asked if there were others… He said no.”

“You believe him?”

“I—I don’t know.” Every time I thought about what he’d done, I felt so shitty that I wanted to curl into a ball in the corner. It disgusted me, thinking about where his dick had been before it pounded inside me like there had never been any treason.

He continued to watch me, rubbing his knuckles like they were sore from a recent brawl.

“Have any advice?”

He lowered his hands to the counter, taller than me even when he sat down because he had a foot and a half of height on me. “I don’t give advice—just opinion.”

“Okay, then. What’s your opinion?”

A subtle smile moved on to his lips as his eyes flicked away for the first time. “You don’t want my opinion, sweetheart.”

I hated it when men called me that, when they tried to get my attention from across the bar with the endearment, but Bastien pulled it off like it was my actual name. “I want honesty, and that’s something I haven’t gotten in a while.”

His eyes came back to me and stayed there for a long time, studying my face like he could see words in bold ink across my skin. He tilted his head slightly before he released a sigh. “Trust is like glass. It takes time to heat and temper, to make it transparent for both parties to see through. But once it’s shattered, there are so many broken pieces on the floor that it’s impossible to put back together. A year may pass, and you’ll step into the kitchen barefoot for a glass of water and get a shard in your heel. And you’ll remember how it got there.”

A pain settled on my heart, an anchor lowered from a ship, a disappointment so heavy it dropped to the bottom of the ocean.

“Power and wealth can be taken away—and all that’s left is your word. If you don’t have that, then you don’t have anything. He betrayed his word when he betrayed you, so he betrayed himself. There was a chance of redemption by being honest with you, but he chose cowardice instead.”

I hadn’t expected this beautiful man at the bar to have so much depth, to be more than a pretty face with a stiff drink in his hand.

“He tells you there was no one else, but because his word is invalid, you don’t know if you can believe him. A man should treat a woman with the same respect he treats his boys. If anything, she should be his number one guy.”

“You make it sound like you’ve been in a relationship before.”

“No.” His hand rested on the top of his glass. “And that’s why I haven’t been in one. I know what it takes—and I haven’t found a woman worth the effort. Probably never will. Not that I’m looking anyway.” He stared at me as he took a drink from his glass. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure if I have much of a choice.” Adrien would never stop, constantly blocking any motion to legally separate, showing up at my work and my apartment, as if I would find his persistence charming when fidelity was far more romantic.

“You always have a choice.”

“You don’t know my husband.”

“But I know men.” He gave me a hard stare. “And I know how to get rid of yours.”

“How?”

He shifted his position on the stool, his shirt gripping his muscles with the movement, cords visible up his neck despite the ink that covered his skin. He had a skull right at the center of his throat, a dagger up the right side of his neck, the edge of the blade right at his jawline. “Fuck someone.”

Heat from a roaring fire burst inside me, picturing him as the one doing all the fucking. Buck naked and deep inside me, his fat dick making me come with minimal effort. I knew he had a big dick because of the big dick energy he’d brought into the bar when he’d first walked in.

“No man can see past his ego, and he seems no different to me.”

“What about you? Do you have a big ego?”

He smirked. “I wouldn’t be a man if I didn’t.” He took another drink, making the glass empty with the exception of the ice cubes that hadn’t melted yet. “I’ll take the tab, sweetheart.”

It was the time for him to make his move, but I suspected the offer would never come. He was the magnet that drew everyone in. He didn’t need to chase anyone. Just sit there and wait for all the pretty girls to come to him.

I moved down the bar to the computer and generated his tab, putting in all the drinks that would have put a normal man flat on the floor. But before I could print the tab, I glanced to the other side of the room and instinctively knew something wasn’t right.

Three men entered the bar, moving far too fast if all they wanted was a drink. And they had handkerchiefs tied over the bottom half of their faces to hide their identities from the cameras in all the corners.

Frozen to the spot, all I could do was stand there and watch one of them come at me—with a fucking machete.

He held up the machete at eye level. “Cash in the bag.” He tossed a burlap sack on the counter. The other two men also had their machetes out, watching everyone else in the bar to make sure no one came to my rescue.

I stilled on the spot, struggling to breathe through the sheer panic.

“Bitch, fill the bag.”

I didn’t gasp or scream, but I was frozen to the spot in sheer terror.

“You picked the wrong bar, man.”

My eyes glanced at Bastien, who remained on the stool. Everyone else at the bar had scurried to the wall. The other people in the seating area had tried to crawl under their tables or put their shaking arms in the air. Bastien was the only one who regarded the situation with an insane level of calm.