"Nash." Will's voice shifts, goes harder. Not angry, but authoritative. "You were supposed to be here an hour ago."
"Traffic." The man, Nash, shrugs with a grin that says he doesn't expect anyone to believe him. "You know how it is."
"I know you live ten minutes away." Will sets down the bottle he's holding and fixes Nash with a look that makes my breath catch. It's not threatening. It's just absolute. Complete certainty that he will be obeyed. "We talked about this. You commit to a shift, you show up on time. If that's too hard for you, we need to have a different conversation."
Nash's grin fades. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry, Will. Won't happen again."
"Make sure it doesn't." The hardness in Will's voice disappears as quickly as it came, replaced by easy warmth. "Now get behind the bar. Happy hour starts in thirty minutes and I need to check on the kitchen."
Heat builds low in my stomach. My pulse picks up. I'm leaning toward him before I catch myself, pulled toward him without meaning to be.
Then the shame hits, and I jerk back so hard I almost knock over my water glass.
I know this feeling. I know exactly what it is and where it leads.
The therapist I saw briefly in college had a name for it. A whole explanation about attachment patterns and the search for safety through surrender. I'd nodded along and then gone right back to dating men who wanted to tell me what to do.
But I'd also seen what it could look like when it was right. Will and Sarah. The way he'd looked at her at Brotherhood cookouts, like she was the axis his whole world turned on. The way she'd leaned into him, not diminished but amplified. Two people who'd figured out how to give and take without anyone getting destroyed.
I'd wanted that. Watched them and wanted it so badly I could taste it.
Craig was supposed to be that. Craig said all the right things about consent and communication and trust. He made submission feel like a gift I was choosing to give rather than something being taken from me.
Until it wasn't a gift anymore. Until it was an expectation. Until saying no stopped being an option.
And now here I am, barely out of that nightmare, and my body is already responding to another man with that same terrible pull.
Not just any man. Will. Sarah's husband. The one who showed me what it could be, right before I went out and found the opposite.
What the hell is wrong with me?
"I need to..." I don't finish the sentence. Just set down my glass and walk toward the back hallway, moving fast enough that no one will try to stop me.
The bathroom is small and dim, a single stall with a lock that actually works. I close myself inside and lean against the door, pressing my palms flat against the cool wood.
My reflection stares back at me from the mirror above the sink. Pale skin, dark circles, hair that needs washing. The woman in the glass doesn't look like someone who should be trusted to make decisions about anything, let alone her own desires.
"Get it together." My voice sounds strange in the empty room. "You saw him with his wife. You went to her funeral. You have no right to feel anything about him."
She doesn't answer. Just watches me with tired eyes that have seen too much and learned too little.
I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face, washing away the flush in my cheeks and the evidence of everything I'm feeling. When I straighten up, the woman in the mirror looks slightly more composed. Slightly more in control.
It's a lie, but it's a lie I need right now.
I unlock the door, take a breath, and walk back out into the bar.
Will is gone, probably in the kitchen like he said. Nash is behind the bar, setting up for happy hour. Everything looks normal. Everything looks safe.
But I can still feel the echo of that pull in my chest, and I know myself well enough to know it isn't going anywhere.
My desires have always been the enemy. The thing that leads me toward men who promise safety and deliver cages.
The only question is whether I'm strong enough to walk away this time.
I head back to the office and close the door. The filing waits, blessedly straightforward. Problems I can solve. Order I can create.
My hands don't stop shaking until somewhere around the 2019 tax receipts.
