His torso twisted and he looked to the hotel. My eyes didn’t leave him. He was tall. He was lean. His shoulders were broad and they were that even without the leather jacket. Very long legs. Power in them. Power in his shoulders. Power in his veined hands. Power in his wide chest. I’d seen it all across the bar. Even at his age, he was not a man you messed with. This was half to do with the way he held himself, the way he moved. The other half had to do with how he was built. He had a beautiful frame, silhouetted now in the streetlamps. But it was unmistakable that he knew what he could do with it. I figured he was fast. I figured he was strong. I figured he was smart.
And I was never wrong so what I figured I knew to be true.
Only a stupid man would underestimate this man, regardless of his age.
He turned back to me and asked, “Reason you can’t get in?”
“My uh…friend is enjoying himself. I gave him fifteen minutes. Reckon he’s got about five left.”
He made no response and his silence lasted awhile. Then he lifted his chin and made to move back.
“Have a good night,” he muttered, turned and walked back through the park.
I shouldn’t have watched, I shouldn’t have.
But I did.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
I liked the way he moved. Just walking. I liked it.
A lot.
Too much.
So I watched him move, round the hood of his beat up, light blue, rusted out pickup. And I watched him swing in. And I watched him start it up. Then I watched him rattle away.
Then I closed my eyes tight, sucked in a breath and wished, not for the first time, but with a burn I’d never felt before that hurt and it hurt badly, that I didn’t have to play it safe.
Then I opened my eyes, looked at my watch, pushed off the swing and headed to the hotel.
Chapter Two
I Would Love That
Thirty-four hours later…
I looked out the window of the diner trying not to see what I saw.
But I saw it.
I’d been to a lot of towns in a lot of states and I’d even seen this.
County seat but the county seat of a sleepy county. Courthouse square. A red brick and ivory mortar and stone courthouse-slash-police department smack in the middle. Attractive. Sweeping staircases up two sides with big urns at the bottoms of the balustrades that, no doubt, would be filled with flowers if it wasn’t January. Down staircases at the two other sides that didn’t attract attention. This was because lockup was down there. Offices and courtrooms on the upper three floors. Big American flag flying from a flagpole at the top.
The square had large, what would be green patches of undoubtedly well-tended grass in spring and summer but it was now covered in snow. Huge trees that had been there decades, maybe even longer, that were now barren but in fertile months would throw a lot of shade. Benches for folks to sit on. Even bigger but matching urns that were now empty but in summer months would be filled with flowers dotted around. A cross of sidewalks leading to the four sides of the courthouse, criss-crosses too, all now cleared of snow in a way that it almost looked like someone had edged it right up to the turf, the removal was so precise. Curlicue wrought iron, handsome streetlamps that had been cleared of their Christmas decorations.
This town didn’t have Christmas decorations in late January. This town took care of itself. The Christmas decorations went up in a town lighting ceremony that everyone showed up at on the day after Thanksgiving then were quietly taken down and stowed away as soon as possible after New Year’s. I had been there three days, it was late January so I did not know this for a fact but still, I knew it for a fact.
My eyes moved to the buildings around the square. Most of them, like the one the diner was in, were two storied red brick. Some had creamy mortar plates close to the top stamped with dates. One said 1899 which surprised me, that was old especially for here. Another said 1907. Shops, restaurants and sandwich places on the bottom floors, offices with signs in their windows (mostly attorneys and bail bondsmen) on the top.
One whole side, though, was taken up by a large department store. The stamp at the top of that building declared it was built in 1912. How the hell that thing survived, I would never know seeing as it was clearly locally owned and had not been gobbled up by a conglomerate. That said a lot about the town. If they needed whatever that store sold, they didn’t go to some other store where they could probably get it for less. They took care of their own. That department store had probably been there and owned by the same family for four, five generations, maybe all the way back to 1912. And the town wasn’t letting it go anywhere.
Same with the butcher across the square from the diner. No town had a butcher anymore. That meat probably cost twice as much as grocery store meat and even if it was probably better meat than you could buy in any grocery store, twice was always twice and money was always money. Still, it was there and it was bustling.
So were the sidewalks. Folks out and about, smiling, calling greetings.
The whole place might be creepy if the a third of a block of the two story red brick buildings that were across the street behind the courthouse hadn’t been torn down and in their place a modern (for the time, I was guessing at least two decades ago), glass fronted, somewhat glitzy (now tarnished with age, it was dated and not in a good way, it would need at least another decade or two to come back into retro style) restaurant. Someone had sway with the City Council to build that monstrosity. It marked the space, was totally out of place and didn’t look good. Someone thought their shit didn’t stink, thought it was cool then and would be cool forever. They were wrong. Still, its presence said this place wasn’t perfection. This place wasn’t a creepy, weird town lost in time that Casey and I somehow found ourselves in and we’d never get out because we’d eventually either be captured, deprogrammed and reprogrammed as perfect, small town dwellers. Me in my apron, Casey bringing home the bacon in a manly way. Or we’d be eaten by or become zombies.
So that restaurant was good.
To me, the blight of that restaurant made me like this town even more.
To me, that restaurant made the town with the unbelievably cool name of Mustang imperfect perfection.
“Hey.”
At this word said in a man’s deep voice, I blinked at the window and turned my head.
Then I froze.
This was because, opposite me in the booth sat the man from the bar, the man from that night, the man from the playground.
How did my guard go down so much I didn’t sense him even approach must less make it so his behind was sitting in the booth across from me, his eyes on me, his attractive hand unwinding his scarf?