“So,” Leith said to Jen. “What do you say? A pint at the Stone?”

Despite telling himself not to—despite the fact that he’d been going to the Stone since birth and knew exactly what to look out for—Leith still clonked his forehead on the ceiling crossbeam dividing the dining room from the bar.

“Mother—” He pressed the heel of one hand to the smarting place, and ducked even farther down to make it into the bar without losing his head at the neck. Had the Stone shrunk since he’d last been in here? Maybe. He hadn’t come in since, what, before Memorial Day? As he made his way through the crowded, chunky-legged tables to the bar at the back of the room, he wondered why he hadn’t dropped by. He wondered if, subconsciously, he’d slowly been severing all his ties to the valley.

Da had never brought him back to Scotland—too expensive—but the old man had loved the Stone as much as he loved anything in Gleann. Cozy, cramped, warm. Not a TV in sight. People you knew, always a conversation at hand. The whole place had maintained a remarkably authentic feel without succumbing to the kitsch DeeDee had embraced for the games. The menu remained basic and hearty, the beers pulled from great brass taps lined up on the bar, the nook by the cold fireplace prepared for folk musicians that used to play every Sunday afternoon, but had since stopped when half the band had died from old age. It was another world in here—a world Leith already missed.

He lowered himself onto a stool, his back to the bar, and waited for Jen to arrive.

She’d had to finish up her promotion stuff over in Westbury, and then had to do a bunch of other things she was wonderfully cagey in mentioning. He loved how excited she was getting, how she was planning this big to-do right under all their noses, and it was starting to make him feel guilty for not being able to be there, when he hadn’t felt anything of the sort since Da’s death.

Meanwhile, he’d gone back to Mildred’s, showered and changed, and ate an appetizer of a frozen pizza. It was full-size but one of those thin-crust ones, so it didn’t completely fill his appetite.

When Jen walked in, the incongruous digital clock sitting on top of the cash register glowed 8:05. She wore tight jeans with perfect hems, a tank top with straining seams, and flip-flops. The outfit itself was far from flashy, but she drew the eye of everyone in the Stone.

And Leith himself, of course, who was virtually knocked over by the way her hips glided side to side as she skirted around the tables. It was that sway that had smacked him upside the head that one night in this very same room, ten years ago. The movement that had changed everything.

Now, tonight, it struck him dumb and motionless, so when she finally reached him and said something or other in greeting, he said, “Great. And you?”

She wrinkled her nose in a way that reminded him of a particular nine-year-old girl who lived here in town. “I asked how long you’d been here.”

The constricted barroom suddenly shrank even more. “Oh. Uh, ten or so minutes.” As she threw him a sly, knowing look, his hands felt empty. “I need a beer.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Where’s Rafe?”

Leith pointed to the round table in the darkest corner, where Rafe, the Stone’s aging owner, and the farmer Loughlin sat hunched over pints. Leith raised an arm to catch Rafe’s attention. “Two red ales. Two fish and chips,” Leith said when the old guy caught sight of him and gave him a nod of acknowledgement.

“Two fish and chips,” called a hoarse Rafe in the general direction of the kitchen.

“Two fish and chips!” came the shouted, unseen response from beyond the swinging doors.

Then, to Leith, Rafe waved toward the bar. “Get ’em yerself. You know where they’re at.”

Leith slid off the stool under Jen’s amusement. “Wow,” she said. “They just open up the whole town for you, don’t they?”

“I pay for it.” Stopping shoulder to shoulder with her, he added. “And I’ll pay for yours, too.”

In the corner, Rafe was talking with his gnarled hands. Loughlin was listening, but staring at Jen as though he really did think she’d burned down his barn. It didn’t help when Jen’s phone went off and, by the sound of the one-sided conversation, it was the Hemmertex landowners, settling the new location bid.

Leith went behind the bar and pulled down two thick glasses, then filled them with his favorite ale.

“You know,” Jen said to him, pocketing her phone. “The last time the two of us were in here together, we weren’t even old enough to drink.”

He glanced up at her, but her eyes were sweeping through the dim interior.

“We’ve never had drinks together. Isn’t that weird? It’s so . . . adult.” She sighed deeply. “I love it here. It’s like another world.”

Those words, echoing the exact same thought he’d had earlier, caused him to massively overflow one glass. The cold beer poured over his hand and he shook it off.

“Hurry up with those beers,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the dartboard.”

He looked up in surprise, but she was already moving toward the black, white, and red circle mounted between the brick fireplace and a giant Scottish flag. An old white line had been drawn on the floor, but a few tables stood between that and the board, and she began to shove the tables to the side.

“Is it okay if we play, Rafe?” she called over to their old boss.

The owner gave her the same do-whatever-you-like-I’m-busy wave he’d given Leith, and in return she gifted him a brilliant smile.

When Jen was done clearing the area, Leith handed her the beer. “Darts, huh?”

She shrugged. “Are you scared?”

“Should I be? You look very serious.”

“Oh, I am. You can throw around the big stuff. Let me handle the little things.”

She opened the wood flaps on the scoreboard and took out the small piece of chalk resting inside. Some kid had scribbled a pair of dragons on the scoreboard—after he’d had his mac and cheese, by the looks of the orange handprint on the side—and Jen used a towel to wipe the slate clean. She wrote Dougall on the left and Haverhurst on the right.

Removing a handful of darts from a small basket nailed to the wall, she inspected the tips, handed him three, and kept three for herself.

“You know how to score without electronic bells and whistles?” he asked.

She threw him a look somewhere between pissed off and exasperated. “Please.” She pointed to the white line. “Get over there, big boy. You’re about to go down.”

“Do I hear a challenge, Haverhurst?”

She flicked the flights of her darts. “Yep.”

“Stakes?”

She said, “Loser has to do anything the winner wants. Until midnight tonight.”

The grin that spread slowly across her face said that she’d walked into the Stone with the stakes already in mind. Why was he surprised? She never did anything without a plan. Only this time he was her plan, and it unhinged something in him. Solidified something else. He was scared, but that good kind of scared, the kind that made him all excited and tended to get him hard when he least expected it.

Immediately he zeroed in on her mouth. Anything? “You already know what you want me to do, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Absolutely.”

He stepped closer, because if there was one thing he never backed down from, it was a challenge he was sure and desperate to win. As expected, she didn’t back away, didn’t even have the decency to appear off balance. He had to get to her, to move inside her brain, throw her off.

“Good.” Leaning down, he whispered in her ear. “Because I know what I want from you, too.”

Abruptly, he stepped back, turned toward the board and aimed. “Closest to bull’s-eye starts off. Three-oh-one?”

She drew a breath that sounded beautifully ragged. “I prefer cricket.”

He bobbled his head side to side, pretending to consider. “All right.”