The bar lights were dim—just the way the regulars liked it. Old rock hummed from the jukebox in the corner, glass clinks and quiet laughter filling the space. You wiped down the counter for the third time in ten minutes, not because it needed cleaning, but because it kept your hands busy, your mind quiet.

Fridays in the city were always like this—loud but lonely. Crowded but cold. You’d gotten used to it. The noise. The routine. The empty glances from strangers who never knew the girl you used to be.

The bell above the front door jingled and you barely glanced up—probably another tired soul looking to drown their week in whiskey. You greeted them on autopilot, voice soft, distant.

But then you looked up.

And every part of you froze.

Rafe Cameron.

Still tall. Still infuriatingly gorgeous. The kind of good-looking that made your stomach flip even when your brain screamed don’t. His hair was a little longer now, beard scruffy like he forgot to shave for a few days—or maybe just didn’t care. He wore a black jacket over a white t-shirt, his hands shoved into his pockets like he didn’t know what the hell to do with them.

He looked older. But the worst part?

He still looked like yours.

Your heart thudded so hard you swore the bottles behind you rattled. It had been two years. Two entire years since that night you both said things you couldn’t take back. Since the yelling, the crying, the broken promises. Since you walked out of his house and didn’t turn back.

But here he was.

He walked up to the bar slow, like he was afraid you might vanish if he moved too fast.

“Hey,” he said, voice low.

You stared at him for a beat too long, then grabbed a clean glass. “What can I get you?”

That earned the smallest twitch of a smirk on his lips—the one you used to trace with your fingers in the dark. “Whiskey. Whatever’s strong.”

You poured the drink silently, sliding it toward him without a word. Your hands were steady, but everything else inside you was shaking.

He drank slow. He didn’t ask how you were. Didn’t comment on the bar. Didn’t bring up the past. But his eyes—they never left you.

When he finished, he slipped something onto the bar. You thought it was the check, but when you looked down, it was a crisp hundred-dollar bill.

Your brows pinched. “Rafe—”

“Keep it,” he said quietly, standing to leave. His voice wasn’t cocky or smug. It was full of something heavier. Regret. Hope. All tangled up in one breath.

You stared at the bill, shaking your head. “That’s too much.”

He paused just a foot from the bar, then looked back at you, and that’s when he said it.

The same damn words he whispered into your neck one night after a football game, sliding the money into your pocket when you were struggling with money, when you were fifteen and drunk on soda and first love.

“$100 says I marry you one day.”

And just like that, your chest ached.

Not because it was sweet.

But because some stupid, traitorous part of you still wanted him to mean it.