Chapter 6: Pool Table Confrontation
The eight-ball sat in the center of the table, a stupid, shiny black eye watching her. Bunny leaned over the felt, the cue stick slippery in her damp palms.She’d missed the last three shots. The colored stripes mocked her from their scattered positions. Everything felt too loud: the thump of a boot on the floorboards, the clack of another pool game from the corner, the low thrum of conversation that seemed to press in from all sides. It was too much space, too much air, after the sealed tomb of Kellan’s apartment.
“Your turn, Bun,” Sennia said, not unkindly, from where she was perched on a rickety stool. “Just sink the seven, corner pocket.Easy.”
Bunny nodded, her throat tight. She took a breath that didn’t reach her lungs and lined up the shot. Her focus fragmented—the grain of the cue, the distant smell of whiskey and old wood, the overwhelming, prickling awareness of him standing at the bar.She’d felt him the moment he walked in.A change in pressure. A shift in the noise.She hadn’t needed to look.She jerked the cue forward. The white ball clipped the seven, sending it spinning harmlessly into the rail with a dull thud.
“Aw, tough one,” Sennia said, hopping down.“My go.Then drinks. You look like you need one.”
As Sennia weaved toward the bar, Bunny forced herself to straighten up. She busied herself with chalk, grinding the blue cube against the tip until it was a mess.The back of her neck burned. She could feel his gaze like a physical touch, a slow scan from her too-fast hands to the tense line of her shoulders. It wasn't the predatory scrutiny she was used to.This was different.Heavier. It felt like being assessed by a storm.The music changed. The whining steel guitar cut out, replaced by a faster, driving beat.The sudden shift made her jump.A shadow fell across the green felt. He was just… there. Leaning a hip against the table, his own cue—she hadn’t even seen him pick one up—casually propped beside him. He was bigger up close, the worn denim jacket stretched across shoulders that seemed to block out half the room. Scars peeked from the collar of his shirt, pale lines against sun-weathered skin. His smell cut through the bar funk: leather, engine oil, and something wild, like pine needles crushed underfoot.
“Mind if I play winner?” His voice was a low rasp, the kind that vibrated in your own chest.
Bunny’s mouth was dry.She managed a shrug that she hoped looked indifferent. “Sennia’s winning.”
He just nodded, his amber eyes flicking to the table, then back to her. He watched as Sennia, returning with two frothing beers, easily sunk two stripes. “Looks like it’s you and me,” he said to Sennia, but his attention never fully left Bunny.Sennia grinned, sliding a beer to Bunny. “Bring it on, stranger.”
Bunny retreated to the stool, clutching the cold glass. She tried to drink, but the beer tasted bitter and alien.She watched him. He moved around the table with a fluid, economical grace.No wasted motion. He didn’t crouch low or squint; he just leaned, took his shot, and the solid balls cracked into pockets with decisive finality. His hands were large, scarred across the knuckles, but they handled the cue with a devastating control that was the opposite of Kellan’s manicured, cruel precision.
Sennia whooped as she made a tricky bank shot.He gave her a short, acknowledging nod. Respectful.Bunny felt a weird pang of something—not jealousy, but a deep, gnawing longing. For that casual respect.For the space he gave Sennia to just exist. She’d never had that.Soon, it was just the eight-ball left, Sennia’s turn. She missed.He lined up the final shot.
“So, Coyle, right?” Sennia asked, sipping her beer. “You new in town?”
“Passing through,” he said, his voice calm.But his eyes lifted and locked onto Bunny’s over the table. The contact was a live wire.Her breath hitched. In that moment, the noise of the bar faded. The scar on his brow, the wary set of his jaw, the intense, animal stillness of him—it screamed a warning her body was too jangled to heed. It also whispered something else, a pull so deep in her gut it felt like vertigo.He took the shot. The eight-ball rolled straight and true, dropping into the corner pocket with a hollow clunk.
“Good game,” he said to Sennia, then turned fully to Bunny.“Your shot was off. You were rushing.”
His directness was a slap. “I was not,” Bunny heard herself say, the words brittle. A spark of the old defiance, the kind she smothered for years, flickered.
“You were.” He took a step closer, not threatening, but enclosing them in a bubble.The wild, pine-and-leather scent intensified.“You flinched. Like you expected the stick to bite you.” He studied her face, his gaze dropping to her throat, where her pulse was surely rabbiting.“Take your time. The table isn’t gonna hurt you.”
Something about the way he said it—hurt you—unlocked a door inside her chest. A memory, sharp and cold: Kellan’s hand, not on a pool cue, but on her wrist, squeezing just shy of a break.Take your time, Brynlee. We have all night.A threat dressed as patience.She set her beer down with a hard click. “You don’t know anything about me.”
For the first time, his stoic expression shifted. Something flickered in his eyes—recognition, not of her, but of the flavor of fear she was radiating. He leaned his cue against the table and slowly, deliberately, raised his empty hands, palms toward her.A gesture of non-threat. But his voice dropped even lower, for her ears only.“I know scared when I see it. Smell it.”
The word smell clicked into place with a terrible, thrilling logic.Her skin flushed hot, then cold. The suppressants.They were wearing off.What was leaking out?
Sennia, sensing the charged atmosphere, swooped in.“Alright, pool shark, you beat me. Prize is you buy the next round.Bunny, bathroom break.”
It was an order wrapped as a suggestion. Bunny slid off the stool, her legs unsteady. She needed the harsh, fluorescent light of the restroom, the lock on the door. She needed a minute where his overwhelming presence wasn’t scrambling every thought.She turned without a word.Coyle watched her go, every line of his body taut. His wolf, usually a brooding, silent shadow in the back of his mind, was awake and pressing forward.It wasn’t just fear he scented on her. It was something buried under the chemical lemon-and-lavender smell she wore, something rich and dark and potent, like old copper and forest floor. It called to the predator in him with a resonance he hadn’t felt in years, not since the Facility.It felt like a key sliding into a forgotten lock.
“She’s off-limits, you know,” Sennia said quietly, her playful smirk gone. “She’s got… complications.”
Coyle finally pulled his eyes from the hallway where Bunny disappeared. He looked at Sennia, really looked.Saw the protectiveness there. He gave a single, slow nod. “Complications I understand.”
He pulled a worn leather wallet from his back pocket and laid bills on the bar for the drinks. His mind was no longer on the game, or the bar, or the burn of cheap whiskey. It was on that scent, and the tremor in her hands, and the electric jolt that had passed between them.Passing through town had just gotten a lot more interesting. And a lot more dangerous.He didn’t wait for the drinks. He just turned and walked out into the night, the door swinging shut behind him with a final thud. The hunt wasn’t here in the stale-aired bar.It was out there, in the dark. And something told him he wasn’t the only one hunting.