“Time to go, pal.”
“She hit me!”
“No,” the bouncer said as he escorted him away, “I’m pretty sure you fell.”
Ethan tried to get to his feet and stumbled. His eye throbbed.
“Easy, cowboy.” Naomi knelt down and placed both hands gingerly on his jaw, tilting it to inspect the damage to his face. “Oh yeah. You’re gonna have a gorgeous shiner in about six hours.”
“Did you hit that guy?” It seemed entirely possible that Ethan had imagined the last five minutes.
“Trust me, he needed it.” She released his face, and he registered the loss.
“Are you okay?” He’d seen the way her eyes had gone haunted back in the bar. She looked better now, flushed and alert, but the sight of her shattered wasn’t one he’d soon forget.
She rolled her shoulders and dropped his gaze.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
He didn’t know how to tell her that even now, despite her bravery, her hands were shaking.
“If you want to leave, I’m more than happy to close out with the bar.”
Naomi shook her head and fed him a smile, offering him a hand and pulling him to his feet. “What I want to do is buy you a shot of tequila and get some ice on that eye.”
“Naomi...” He imagined it was hard to look disapproving with only one eye open, but he attempted it.
“Stuff like this happens to me all the time, Ethan,” she said, weariness written across her entire body.
He squeezed her hand gently. “Don’t pretend it’s okay. Not on my account.”
For the first time tonight, he noticed there were dark circles under her eyes. Faint, as if she’d tried to cover them with makeup. He had a stupid urge to run his thumb across the thin skin there, try to smooth them away.
“It sucks.” Her voice hardened from water to ice. “But I’ve got a short recovery time.”
Aggressivewas the last word anyone would use to describe Ethan, but still he’d known a moment when he’d craved nothing more than to knock out that guy’s teeth and hand them to her.
“I tried to reason with him,” he said, half leaning on her as they made their way to the bar.
She reached up again to press two fingers to the tender skin around his eye. The touch was featherlight and bittersweet with the promise of pain.
“No wonder he hit you.”
Ethan wiped his watering eye on the bottom of his T-shirt. “I should have known you didn’t need me to defend your honor.”
She stopped under the neon sign heralding the bar’s name, its pink light dappling her red hair. “I didn’t mind as much as you might think.”
As they walked in, she looked back at the bar, where earlier the sounds of music and laughter had confirmed their success this evening. It was quiet now.
“If you want to talk about it...”
“Tequila first.” Naomi bodily deposited him on a bar stool and then whistled for the bartender. “Two double shots of Herradura and a bag of your finest ice, please.”
Movies never lingered on the aftermath of getting punched. Turned out that was because it sucked.
When the bartender handed over her requests, she took Ethan’s palm in hers and pressed the ice into it. “Keep this on until your face goes numb or the ice melts, whichever comes first.”
Ethan followed her instructions and pressed the ice to his cheek. The bag was at once soothing and awkward. She lined up the shot glasses in front of him.