Chapter 4 Patterns
Isla noticed him before Denny even said anything, which was new. Usually the booking board told her who was waiting before her own eyes did.
Same booth. Same unhurried posture, one arm along the back of the seat like he owned the particular slice of air around him. A week had passed, long enough that she’d half convinced herself the first night had been a fluke. Clearly he hadn’t read it that way.
“You’re back,” she said, sliding into the seat across from him.
“I am.”
“Most men don’t come back this fast. Makes them look eager.”
“I’m not most men.”
“You said that last time too.”
“It was true last time too.”
She let herself smile more than she meant to. The banter came easier this time, less circling and more something that resembled an actual conversation with the circling still built quietly underneath it. He asked about the club’s early years, listened like carpet choices from six years ago genuinely mattered, and when she told him it was steady, that it was hers in a way most jobs like this weren’t, he said, “It does make sense,” like he meant it.
“Careful,” she said. “That’s twice tonight you’ve sounded almost sincere.”
“Your turn. Tell me something the internet doesn’t say about you.”
Something in his face closed, just slightly. “I don’t like being predictable.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got tonight.” He turned his glass a quarter turn on the table, an idle, unconscious motion, and added, almost to himself, “I used to play piano. Every day, for years. My mother’s idea.”
Isla went very still. “Used to?”
“She died when I was fourteen. My father had the piano moved to storage a month later. Said it was taking up space.” He said it flatly, no drama in it, the kind of flat that came from a fact worn smooth over twenty years of not examining it too closely. Then his jaw tightened, some door closing behind his eyes that had been open half a second ago and clearly wasn’t supposed to be. “Forget I said that.”
“Too late. I already heard it.”
“I’m aware.”
“Do you still play?”
“There’s a piano in my apartment now. Bought it myself, a few years back.” A short, humorless breath, almost a laugh. “I’ve touched it exactly twice.”
“Why buy it if you never play it?”
“I ask myself that every time I walk past it.” He shook his head slightly, like he was surprised at himself for saying even that much. “That’s more than I meant to give you tonight.”
“I’ll take it anyway.”
He didn’t offer anything else, and Isla didn’t push, though she tucked the detail away with more care than she gave most things men told her in this room, turning it over once more before she let it go.
She let it go. When his car came for him, he paused at the curtain the way he had the first time.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“You keep saying that like it’s news.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not anymore.”
He left. Two visits. That wasn’t proof of anything, but it was enough to tell her she’d gotten his attention. Backstage, Jules caught her at the mirror, eyebrows already raised.
“Guys who come back twice usually think that means something,” Jules said.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Uh huh.”
-----
Isla noticed the car on a Thursday.
It wasn’t the same car Rhys sent for himself, nothing that polished, just a dark sedan idling half a block down from her apartment building, parked in a spot that didn’t belong to anyone who lived there. She caught the shape of the man behind the wheel, and her stomach dropped somewhere around her shoes.
Cole didn’t get out. He just sat there, watching her cross the lot to her own car, and Isla made herself walk at a normal pace, unlocked her door like nothing about the moment was unusual, and drove three blocks in the wrong direction before she let herself breathe properly again.
She didn’t tell Jules. Not yet.
At the club two nights later, Jules cornered her at the lockers anyway.
“You’ve been weird all week.”
“I’ve been tired all week.”
“Uh huh.” Jules leaned against the row of lockers, arms crossed. “Is this about the repeat client, or is this about something else?”
“It’s nothing,” Isla said. “Just Cole being Cole.”
Jules’s expression sharpened, all the teasing gone out of it. “He’s still texting you?”
“On and off. I handle it.”
“You handled it by not telling me he showed up outside your apartment building last week.”
Isla hadn’t told her that either, technically, though apparently Denny had, which meant Denny had been watching out for her more than she’d given him credit for.
“He never comes inside,” Isla said. “He just wants to see if I’ll react.”
“And do you?”
“Not where he can see it.”
Jules didn’t look satisfied with that answer, which was fair, because Isla wasn’t either. “Tell Denny to keep an eye out. Properly.”
“I will.”
“You won’t.”
Jules rolled her eyes and let it go, because pushing Isla past a certain point had never once worked for anyone.
Isla’s shift ran long that night. By the time she made it to her car, the lot had mostly emptied out, streetlights buzzing in that tired way they always did toward morning.
The dark sedan was back.
Closer to the exit this time, angled just enough that whoever sat inside had a clean view of the door. Isla’s pulse spiked before her brain caught up with why, and she kept walking, keys gripped tight between her fingers the way her father had taught her to hold them once, years ago, back when he’d still bothered teaching her things at all.
The car didn’t move. By the time she reached her own car and looked back, it was gone.
She hadn’t imagined it. She was almost certain she hadn’t imagined it.
She sat there a long moment, thumb hovering over Cole’s contact, then didn’t call. Calling meant admitting he still had that much space in her head.
Five days later, she walked into her shift and found Denny waiting by the booking board before she’d even clocked in.
“Your regular’s here,” he said, not looking up from the clipboard.
Isla’s stomach did something complicated, something that had nothing to do with Cole at all.
“Already?” she asked. “It hasn’t even been a week.”
“Five days,” Denny said. “Not that anyone’s counting.”
She was counting. She just hadn’t admitted that to herself until he said the number out loud.
This isn’t chance anymore, she thought, heading for the dressing room. Men who came back that fast weren’t testing the water. They already knew they wanted more of it.
Fine. If he was done letting chance decide when they saw each other next, she was done waiting for him to make every move first.
She checked her reflection once on the way to the private room and let the smile settle into place.
She had no idea, yet, that he’d already changed the rules of tonight before she’d even clocked in.
