Chapter 9: Pool Shark

I didn't turn around.

"Mara," Hyunjin called. "Please. Wait."

I kept walking, because my hands were shaking and I didn't want them to see.

Gravel crunched, and then they were on either side of me, one tall and one short, matching my pace.

"I shouldn't have said it like that," Chan said.

"You shouldn't have said it at all."

"I was frightened."

"I know you were. I was there. I was frightened too."

We walked another twenty steps in silence, with the fog closing in behind us.

"He cried," Chan said. "On the deck steps, before we came after you. He doesn't cry in front of people. It scared me."

"Hyung," Hyunjin said.

"I'm sorry, Mara. I'll do better."

"Do better than what? You said stay home."

"I did."

"I'm not staying home. I live here.

"If you want to live here too, you do it as my guests. You don't tell me when to go to my own bar."

Chan took a slow breath through his nose.

"Understood," he said, and it was the most reluctant word I had ever heard.

"The photographer posted nothing about the bar," Hyunjin said. "Chan checked on the way. There's no town name on any of them."

"Rory's fog," I said. "It's good for something."

"It won't last," Chan said.

"Nothing does. Walk."

Hyunjin put his hand on my sleeve, and I let it stay.

"I'm sorry I made it hard," he said.

"You didn't. A man with a lens did. Walk."

We walked, and the lights of the cabin came out of the fog.

On Sunday afternoon, the Rusty Buoy was shut.

Rory kept a ring of keys on a hook inside his kitchen door, and he put them in my hand without asking.

"Pool room," he said. "Till five. Then I want my table back."

"Thanks, Rory."

"I never saw you," he said. "Be careful what you do with that cue."

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Hid Them in Her Lighthouse Cove Cabin, They Asked Her to Stay from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.