Even as I stood inside Jimbo’s Bar and Grill the following Monday morning, I couldn’t believe Jason and George had agreed to let me help them and remodel the bar. Old Jim Smith himself hadn’t even touched up the paint in the twenty or so years he’d run the place, so to say it was showing its age—and that its looks were one of the many likely culprits for flagging business—probably would’ve been an understatement.

But I doubted the Smith brothers would be totally on board with all the changes I’d brainstormed with my old friend and interior design guru Brett Nelson. For some reason, probably one not too much different from my own, Brett had moved back to town about a year prior. Maybe he thought it needed as much of a glitzing up as I did? In any case, I was glad I had at least one other person to work with in town who had style.

His clients referred to Brett as the Belle of Beauclaire, which sounded offensive on the surface but was meant as a compliment. After I’d seen some of his work online, I knew he was exactly what I needed to help me get the most out of this admittedly absurd investment. We’d talked design and finances over the weekend, sent blueprints back and forth, and by the end of Sunday evening I was looking at somewhere north of fifty grand to do everything I wanted—on top of the two hundred thousand I’d already handed over to Jason and George to get the bank off their backs.

I’d assumed George would be the person I needed to worry about most, but he’d handed me a key to the bar and disappeared into his office, which I could only assume was because he’d already written the bar off as dead in the water anyway, so we couldn’t possibly make things worse.

Where I’d really gone wrong was with Jason. He seemed to be the one pulling for our deal in the first place, so I’d taken that to mean he was interested in working with me to make the bar into a place worth visiting, but as soon as I’d set foot in the place that morning I saw in his body language that I’d been damn wrong.

I hoped it wasn’t the only thing I was wrong about because from the second I’d laid eyes on him again after two years on the road looking at men in crusty cowboy boots and worn-out jeans, the desire I’d felt for him flared. Jason had always been good-looking, a down-home, meat-and-potatoes kind of southern man, but time and distance had only made him better looking, a fact that occurred to me as I watched him talking to Brett.

“Wait, excuse me? You want to do what?” Jason asked, his hands on his hips, the gray that’d taken root on the sides of his hair shimmering in the overhead light. Brett looked like he was drowning, so I stepped in.

“He’s trying to tell you that we need to close the bar down for a while to do the renovations,” I interrupted and Jason blew a raspberry.

“And how the hell are we supposed to make money in the interim?” he asked, whirling his piercing blue eyes on me with the same intensity he’d had the night I’d decided to throw caution to the wind and kiss him in this very bar. My skin rippled at the memory, but I shook it away. That was another time and another place.

“We aren’t. That’s kind of the point. We’ve gotta get this place looking nice in order to get people to come back in,” I said and he sighed.

“How long are we talking here?”

“I don’t know, it’s hard to say. It depends on how fast we can hire people and get all the stuff done,” I said. “Brett, do we have a timeline?”

“I’d say, based on the things we’ve already talked about doing, we’re looking at about a week, give or take,” Brett said and Jason laughed.

“Is there gonna be anything left when you’re done?” he asked. Though he was being difficult, I kind of admired his flame.

“It’ll be fine, trust me. Once it’s all said and done with, you won’t even recognize the place,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to turn this bar into some trendy California nightclub,” he said. I didn’t blame him for being angry at me for leaving him in this town, but it couldn’t keep bubbling up like this.

“There’s nothing trendy about this town so you don’t have to worry about that, trust me,” I said and Brett laughed.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Brett asked under his breath and I chuckled.

“Trust you? Right, because I haven’t done enough of that already, and because you haven’t given me a world of reasons not to,” he said. He wasn’t wrong.

“Well, tough shit. You signed the contract, this remodel is part of it, and I’m trying to make my money back on this so you’re just gonna have to get over it,” I said and he eyed me. I’d never talked to him like that before, but it felt empowering in a way. Whether he liked it or not, I was running the show, and he needed to get in line, despite whatever feelings he had for or about me.

“Fine. What kind of demolitions did you have in mind?”

“Okay, I’ll be honest, we pretty much are going to gut the place,” I said and though he stared at me blankly for what felt like forever at first, eventually he burst out laughing. My stomach twisted at the sound and my heart flipped when he looked at me with a big smile. I’d forgotten how powerful that sort of look from him could be, and had it not been for Brett’s presence, I might’ve jumped him right then and there to pick up right where we left off two years ago.

“Did I call it or did I call it?” he asked when he’d gathered himself.

“Hey, nobody ever said this starting over business would be easy,” I said and he shrugged.

“Whatever, do what you’ve gotta do I guess, I’m sure you two would know better than I would,” he said, throwing up his hands. As much as he tried to act like he was tough and confident, I knew he was quite the opposite at his core. Part of me wondered if I would ever get to see that vulnerability again, or if I’d ruined any chance of that by leaving things hanging the way I had.

I hadn’t even bothered to tell him I was leaving when I got a contract for three records with Twang Records after winning the show. I just came home, packed my things as quickly as possible, and left.

In any case, I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it, because that was absolutely not in the cards for either of us. Two years ago I’d had nothing to lose when I got the wild idea to kiss him in the stockroom of the bar, but that was two years ago.

As if the expensive clothing I was wearing—and didn’t really even care about—wasn’t enough to remind me, I had a career to think about now, a career that could be stopped dead in its tracks if I gave in to old feelings for a man who wasn’t the same one I’d fallen in love with before. My career was worth more to me than any amount of nostalgia about Beauclaire might’ve been.

“All right. In that case, are there any sacred cows here?” I asked and Jason shook his head.

“Not really, there’s nothing I couldn’t live without,” he said.

“What about those gaudy pictures hanging on the wall of the first few customers to the bar?” I asked, nodding behind him. All the photos were faded and covered in thick layers of dust and dried grease from the deep fryers.

“They can go. I never knew most of those people in the first place, and almost all the ones I do know moved away,” Jason said.

“Good. I was thinking we could install some sort of art, maybe a mural or something like that there. What do you think of putting in maybe a map that shows the passage of time in Beauclaire?” I asked.

“Wait, I thought we were trying to move forward, not backward,” Jason said.

“Well, we don’t want to totally alienate people who’ve been coming here forever. We want to give them some sort of feeling of comfort and recognition,” I said.

“Sure, yeah, whatever,” he said and Brett fixed me with a look that said he’d had enough. I couldn’t say I blamed him, but he didn’t understand the way Jason worked like I did—in a lot of ways, I don’t think anyone would ever understand him in the way that I did.

“Okay, put that on the list then, Brett. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll put there, but it’ll be along those lines,” I said and Brett scribbled something on the pad of paper he was carrying with him.

“What about the bar itself?” Brett asked.

“What about it?” Jason asked, his tone rising.

“It’s kind of in an awkward position. I think it would make more sense to move it up and make it a little larger. After all, that’s what people come here for, so we should make room for them. Besides, a longer bar with more seating looks far less tacky than a bunch of card tables strewn about the place,” Brett said. It was stronger than I would’ve put it, but he wasn’t wrong.

“No. Absolutely not. If we do something like that and turn this place into some sort of modern hospital room with clean lines and neon accents, it won’t fit with the rest of the buildings on the street and no one will want to come in,” Jason asked.

“Seems to me like no one’s coming in now, so what do you have to lose by trying something different?” I asked and Jason narrowed his eyes at me. It was hard to tell, but if I didn’t know any better I would swear his resentment toward me for leaving him here and starting my own life was bleeding through. It wouldn’t be easy, but if this was going to work, we would have to find a way to be in each other’s presence again without there being any problems.

“Fine,” he said before he threw his hands in the air and walked away.

“Diva,” Brett sighed and I stifled a laugh.

“Yeah, what the hell? That’s my job, not his,” I said and left Brett to chase after Jason. To my surprise, he didn’t go to the office, and he didn’t go to the bar to make himself a drink. Instead, he walked to the storeroom where they kept all the supplies. It couldn’t have been by accident.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, but he kept his back turned to me.

“I could ask you the same thing. What the hell are we doing?” he asked.

“I’m here trying to rebuild a bar, but I don’t have a clue about you. You don’t seem to want to make any changes at all.”

“I’m sorry, I know I’m being difficult, but… this isn’t easy for me,” he said and turned around. The vulnerability I wondered if I would ever see again flashed across his face, just for a moment, and in that moment I wrestled with the urge to go to him, wrap my arms around him, and tell him how sorry I was for everything.

But I couldn’t do that, for both of our sakes, so instead, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“This isn’t easy for me either,” I said, though that was an understatement.

“This was a terrible idea, wasn’t it? Is it too late to cancel out the contract?” he asked and I chuckled.

“We haven’t broken ground on anything yet, so technically it’s not too late, but are you sure you really want to do that?” I asked. “Isn’t a few awkward moments with me better than the alternative?”

“Is it? I’m not really sure,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Jason. It’s been two years, haven’t you moved on even a little bit?” I asked and he scoffed, shaking his head. “What?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

“No, honestly, I don’t,” I said, though my heart hammering in my chest told a very different story. He stared at me silently and I could almost see the cogs turning in his head as he worked up the courage to say whatever it was he needed to say.

“I never stopped, you know, having feelings for you,” Jason said and my stomach dropped, leaving my head woozy and spinning. I fought the urge to break into one of the nearby whiskey bottles and drink half of it in one gulp.

“I was so screwed up after you kissed me, not two feet from where we’re standing now, and then everything with Dad happened and I couldn’t even work up the guts to step in and tell him to fuck off and leave you alone and then you were just gone, never to be seen again, and now you’re back in town and screwing me up all over again and I don’t know what the hell is going on with me anymore,” Jason blurted and when he opened his mouth to speak again I held up my hand. I couldn’t hear anymore.

“Jason, stop. We can’t do this,” I said, my eyes closed because if I dared to look at him my willpower would’ve evaporated like rain on asphalt after a summer storm.

“We couldn’t do it back then either but we did,” he said.

“Jason, stop—” I started, but then his hands were on my wrists and my eyes flung open to find him mere inches away from me, his breath hot on my cheeks and neck as he took a series of ragged breaths.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice strained and hoarse.

“Shut up,” he said and then he kissed me. My entire body went rigid and I stood frozen to the spot, even as his hands worked their way to my face and held my cheeks while he continued to kiss me.

Finally, he let me go and stepped backward, his eyes never breaking contact with mine.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Consider it my way of saying sorry,” he said and charged out of the storeroom.