Evelyn
Present Day
I tippedmy glass up and smiled flirtatiously at the blond stranger sitting across from me at the bar.
I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, but I hoped they were blue.
I was a sucker for blue eyes.
The man caught my smile and signaled for the bartender. It wasn’t long before another scotch on the rocks was placed in front of me.
“From the man over there,” the bartender said, winking at me and pointing to my blond stranger.
I smiled and raised my glass, finishing whatever was left of my drink and taking the glass that was placed in front of me. I was going home with him tonight. I was going to let him be my distraction from all the loud thoughts blaring through my mind. I was just not going to think about it or second-guess my decision.
I wasn’t going to think about anything at all.
Especially not about anything that happened six years ago—not about that first year I spent away from my family for the first time, not about the second year when I came home and everything had changed—myself most of all—not about the fact that my baby sister had just put in her resignation at Bowing’s and would be coming home after six long years overseas, and definitely not about…
Him.
I wasn’t going to think about him: Not how he was doing, not about whether he had a good life or whether he was happy…
Dear God, please let him be happy.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him.
I didn’t have the right to be thinking about him.
And that was the worst part of it all. To know that I didn’t deserve that right. That I deserved nothing more than to be distracted by the stranger in the bar for the night.
It would actually be my first one-night stand.
I wasn’t the kind of girl who went to the bar to look for casual hook-ups. Or at least, I wasn’t that girl six years ago.
I was a relationship kind of girl. The one who had her first boyfriend at sixteen and lost her virginity to him a year later. The one who had the same boyfriend all throughout college, only to break up with him when he proposed to her and asked her to move across the country with him. The one who had been living at home until the age of twenty-two…
But I was trying something new tonight.
I didn’t want to be sad anymore.
My stranger said something to his friend, nodding his head toward me. I watched as they shared that secret smile that wasn’t really a secret. That smile that men shared with each other when they knew one of them was about to get lucky.
And then my stranger stood up and walked over to me. I leaned back casually against the bar top and watched him, my expression clear so he didn’t miss what I wanted tonight, only to frown seconds later when the man’s eyes widened and he quickly pivoted, heading back to his friend.
He had been close enough that I could tell he had brown eyes, but I was still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened to make the guy run away so quickly when a large shadow fell over me.
I let out a sigh, knowing who it was before I even turned around to meet my brother’s green eyes. It was still a shock to me, even after all these years, to see my mother in them.
Everyone always said Emilia looked just like our mom, and though she had our mom’s eye color, she didn’t have their shape, expression, or mannerism. I knew that was a weird thing to say about eyes, but that was how it felt when I met Ethan’s. They were exactly identical to our late mother’s and looking at him most days was like a punch to the gut.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, a slight slur to my voice.
“I think the better question is what the hell are you doing here?”
“How did you even know where to find me?”
“The bar is the closest one to your apartment. I figured you wouldn’t want to stray too far away from it, considering how you rarely ever leave the place. Plus, Katie told me I might find you here.”