Other than Josie and Garth though, the only person I’d wanted to hang out with was Rowen. Our lives had been so busy that when we both had a night off, I didn’t want to waste it catching up with a bunch of old friends. I wanted to spend it holding my wife and catching up a lot or a little with her. That would have been the case no matter what, but it had taken on a new significance ever since I’d learned what I could lose and how soon I could lose her.
I wasn’t going to waste a second making small talk with some random acquaintance if I had my choice.
“Hey, Walker! I’m not used to seeing you make repeat trips to the bar. Must be having a rough night or a great one.” Dustin, who ran one of the small bars in town, greeted me as I walked-slash-staggered toward him. Garth and Josie had hired him to bartend the party, and he was a classic bartender: good listener, better talker.
“I’m having a bit of both,” I answered, praying he wouldn’t feel the need to offer another lecture on parenting as he had when I’d swung by for my last beer. Somehow I wasn’t grasping the concept of how good cop/bad cop worked with infants.
“Same thing as before? Beer and a water? Or do you want me to liven up your night a bit more than that water marinated in hops and barley can do?” Dustin made a few clucking sounds as he reached for something I wouldn’t chance inhaling, let alone ingesting.
“Believe me, my life is so livened up, I can barely handle it.” I nodded at the beers and grabbed two waters from one of the giant metal buckets on the table. If for every drink of beer, I took one of water, I could mitigate my getting drunker chances.
Dustin waited a minute, like he was waiting for me to change my mind, before pulling a beer out of the ice and popping off the cap. “You know where to find me when you need something harder than three proof.” He handed the icy bottle to me with another cluck.
I quickly dropped a tip into his jar, collected my drinks, and scooted out of there before he could impart any more wisdom on me. I’d had my fill of bartender parenting wisdom for one millennium.
As I made my way back toward where I’d left Rowen, I noticed she wasn’t there. Assuming my mom or one of my sisters had snatched her the moment I’d left her side, I scanned the general vicinity where I’d last seen my parents and my younger sisters hanging out with a group of girls who were not-so-casually hanging around a group of boys. I’d seen Clementine and Hyacinth, but Lily was still MIA tonight. My mom hadn’t told me directly where she was or who she was coming with—probably because she gave me a hard time for making angry faces when I had a smile like mine—but that didn’t mean I hadn’t figured it out. Lily was coming with Colt. She wasn’t here yet with Colt. So where the hell were they? And what the hell were they doing? And why the hell did I feel like I wanted to hit something really hard?
I broke to a stop and closed my eyes, concentrating on calming down and caging the anger monkeys that had gotten loose. I hardly had enough energy to spend on Rowen and myself—what was I doing wasting any of it contemplating ways to dent Colt Mason’s face?
The whole stop, close, and breathe thing seemed to work. At least until I spotted my wife with another guy. On the dance floor.
Where some guys might have preferred to find their wives dancing to a fast, sharp-beated song with a good amount of distance between her and the guy she was shaking with versus a slow one where space was in short, if any, supply, I felt the opposite. I moved through the crowd with new purpose, and my boots thundered across the dance floor a few moments later.
Neither of them saw me coming. They were both too busy having a good time and hooting, like the rest of the dancers, to notice me. I saw sweat starting to trickle down Rowen’s neck and creep down her back.
“Whose brilliant idea was this?” I said when I jerked to a stop beside them.
Rowen’s body slowed down enough to tell me my frustration wasn’t going unnoticed. Her partner kept moving as he had been since I’d first seen them. They both pointed at the other in answer. I cocked a brow and waited. Their fingers stayed in the air, indicating at the other.
Finally, I knocked Garth’s hat off of his head. “Come on, Black. What were you thinking?”
Garth shot a growl at me as he dived to retrieve his hat. “I was thinking your wife looked lonely and had been staring at this dance floor all night like she couldn’t wait to bust a move.” Garth motioned at Rowen after dropping his hat back on his head. “So . . . she’s busting.”
Actually, she’d stopped dancing almost completely. I knew she liked to dance, and I also knew she’d stopped doing something she liked because she knew I didn’t like it, at least not in her present condition. Another shower of guilt dripped down on me when I realized I’d managed to inadvertently make Rowen’s life smaller in my quest to preserve it. But what was I supposed to do? Stand by and say nothing while my pregnant wife with a life-threatening heart condition danced her tail off and dripped sweat in temperatures that had to be close to one hundred degrees at the center of the dance floor? I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.
Garth grabbed Rowen’s hand and gave her a little spin. She started laughing.
“She’s having a good time, Jess. Let it go. Rowen’s tougher than you and me combined, and you know it.” When Garth gave her another spin, he applied a bit too much force, and she wound up tripping on her own feet.
My arms were just snapping out to catch her or save her or do whatever they needed to do to help, but Garth readjusted her spin enough I wasn’t needed. He’d saved her, and yes, if he hadn’t, I would have been there as a second line of defense, but the incident had been enough to send another surge of frustration into my veins.