Money For Something

22 - Stan

**Willow**

"Can I trust you not to run back in there and stab him with your shoe if I put you down?" Ace asked, his breath heavy at the back of my neck.

My feet had only touched the ground for the time it had taken him to dig into his pocket and toss a handful of cash at the hostess, before fleeing Paco's, since he'd hauled me out of the booth. I'd at least stopped struggling as he'd walked down the street away from our ruined dinner. Instead of looking like he was forcibly abducting me we simply looked like a couple of weirdos.

As I really wanted to go back and stab Jack with more than a shoe, the best response I could offer was a muffled grunt to indicate I'd do my best not to commit homicide. Apparently, that was acceptable because Ace set me down on my feet. "You want to go get another drink?" he asked. "Somewhere he isn't?"

Earlier the idea of a night out with Ace had me buzzing with excitement. Now I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed, and not in the sexy way that Ace had been trying to engineer as we ate dinner. The confrontation with Jack had left me feeling drained and sad.

"Can we just go home, please?"

"If that's what you want," he replied with a searching look. I was too exhausted to even start to wonder what Ace thought about the scene that had just gone down. I seriously doubted I'd ever want to set foot in Paco's again.

I sat silently in the back of the car for the entire ride home. Luckily for me the Uber driver recognised Ace and chattered relentlessly at him about bands and music. I'm not sure how lucky Ace felt, but he humoured the guy and didn't shut him down. When we finally walked through the front door, I sighed with relief at being home.

And wasn't that a shock. When had I started to think of the Palace of Tasteful Overindulgence as home?

"Come on," Ace grabbed my hand, "let's get a drink."

"I just want to go to bed Ace," I said with a sigh. Now that my anger at Jack had burned away, I just wanted to go hide under the covers and pretend that I'd never seen him.

"Nope, not yet, I think you at least owe me a conversation," he said tugging on my hand.

His grip didn't hurt, but it was firm enough to let me know he had no intention of letting go. I let him lead me deeper into the house, through the great room and over to the bar. The twinkling lights in the garden reflected off the window. He pulled out a bar stool, patted it and said, "Sit." He nudged me toward it before releasing my hand and circling around behind the bar.

It didn't seem worth it to argue so I hopped up onto the stool and rested my elbows on the marble bar top as I waited for him to speak. He took his time, examining bottles on the glass shelves before he shrugged his shoulders and reached for a bottle of Fireball. It didn't strike me as a good sign.

"You want to do shots?"

He shrugged again. "It feels appropriate."

Fucking hell, who was going to need shots to deal with the conversation we were about to have? Him or me?

"Hmmm. How about we do one shot and then move onto something that's not quite so zero to sixty, huh? Maybe even just a cup of tea." It had taken a surprisingly short amount of time for me to develop a taste for what he liked to describe as a 'proper cup of tea'.

He shrugged again, I wanted to grab his shoulders and drag them down from around his ears the way Deb did to my cousins when they were being revolting teenage boys. "How about we do shots, plural, but between each shot we hydrate?"

I thought about it for a second and then nodded. That sounded even better. Look at us being all adult and negotiating a compromise. What could go wrong, right?