Now my hand goes to my throat, not to feel the pain or the filth, but to shield myself. How the hell am I going to hide this at the coffee shop? I’m fucked.
“I don’t get involved with townies, so why the fuck am I even talking to you?”
He sounds pissed off, which ironically I like best of all. It’s the realest of real, because I don’t want to be talking to him either. He’s going to be gone… When? Tomorrow? In a few days? Next week? Maisie didn’t tell me how long the circus would stay, but it won’t be forever.
And then I’ll know what it felt like, to talk to someone interesting. I wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not ever. Not fucking ever.
“I don’t get involved with anyone,” I say. “So why the fuck am I talking to you?”
He leans down and kisses me. It’s a soft kiss, questioning, exploring. I answer without meaning to, stretching onto my toes to meet him. He groans, a soft rumble that makes electric arousal arc through me. The swipe of his tongue across my lips makes me gasp.
Someone rounds the corner.
Logan pulls back, letting hot air rush between us.
A man stands in sharp clothes that contrast with the dust surrounding us. His shirt is crisp white, his slacks black and tailored with a red velvet stripe down the sides. It’s a costume of some sort, but on him it looks more like a bespoke tuxedo.
Handsome features are dark with consternation. Black hair falls over his forehead in perfect disarray. Faint scruff on his jaw lends the slightest air of disrepute to his formality. Dark eyes take us in with a flare of interest. Just as quickly, I’m dismissed.
“It’s Alessandra,” he says.
I don’t know who Alessandra is, but her name charges the energy in the air.
Logan frowns. “Where?”
“Her tent.”
He looks at me, but I’m already backing away. “Time to lose money on the ring toss,” I say. “Or who knows, maybe I’ll be getting a brand new phone tonight.”
This is goodbye, come in a matter of seconds. Though he lingers, unwilling. Unable?
“Logan,” the man says with a sharp tone. He doesn’t like him lingering for me, though he can’t even know the gossip about me. He doesn’t know my heritage. It’s just the existence of me that this stranger finds offensive.
Logan gives him a sharp look of reprimand. Then a resigned nod.
“Sienna.” My name pulses with regret, longing, and finality.
Then he’s gone.
I should have listened to those red flags. Then I wouldn’t know what it feels like to have him kiss me. I wouldn’t be haunted by the memory, destined never to find it again.
The stranger doesn’t immediately trail after him.
Instead he gives me a speculative look that takes me in from my messy dark hair to my paint-chipped toenails. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
I snort. “You’re flirting with me? Really?”
“Admiring a pretty face. Nothing wrong with that.”
It isn’t my face he wants. It’s my body.
I throw a middle finger without looking back, walking down the dirt path toward the lights and the music, the screams and the laughter, pretending like I always do that I don’t give a fuck.
CHAPTER THREE
The town of Forrester has one of everything.
One doctor’s office, one grocery store, one police station. You want anything fancier than that and you have to drive an hour into Bastrop. Or God forbid take the ninety-minute trek into Austin.
We didn’t use to have a coffee shop until Bart Reinard inherited ten thousand bucks from his grandmother and bought the old watchmaking storefront. He made the logo a green circle with a fish, even though we don’t actually serve Starbucks coffee.
I have the morning shift, which means I flip over the Open sign at six a.m.
We get a slow but steady drip of customers, from loggers who want to complain about the cost of coffee compared to their Folgers Dark Roast at home to the retired women who host knitting circles over green tea. Then there are the homeschooling moms who use the purchase to teach their kids about counting money—and the perils of getting straight Cs on your report card.
If you don’t study, their smug smiles say, you’ll end up working at The Coffee Bean.
Or maybe that’s just me projecting my own insecurities.
That’s a fancy word I learned on TikTok, projecting. Therapy is another one of those fancy things that’s never made it all the way to Forrester.
“I’ll have a mocha frappuccino.” The woman wearing sunglasses indoors is vaguely familiar. I think she’s married to my third-grade teacher’s ex-husband. Everyone’s related to somebody around here, but she isn’t a regular.
“We don’t have frappuccinos,” I say, only vaguely apologetic. I get these requests about once a week despite the chalkboard menu above me. The rusty bell over the door rings as someone else enters behind her. “But we have an iced latte if you want something cold.”
She sighs and frowns at the menu. “I’ll have a cappuccino.”
My finger hovers over the button. I want to ring it up and push out one of the tiny ceramic cups, but somehow I know that won’t end well. “That’s… pretty different from a frappuccino. It’s hot and small and strong.”
She sniffs. “I know more about coffee than you.”
The way she says you makes it feel more personal than random dumbass barista. As if she knows who my parents are. Or maybe she doesn’t have to know. Maybe it’s written across my face. I’ve looked in the mirror a hundred times in my life, but I can never tell.
“One cappuccino it is.”
“And I don’t appreciate your lip. I’m going to tell Bart about this.” Her sunglasses slip, and for a moment I see the blue-green bruise around her eye, the reason why she’s wearing those large tortoise-shell sunglasses. It makes my heart lurch. Guess there was a good reason why my third-grade teacher left her ex. Then again, there usually is.
“That’ll be three dollars sixty-five cents.”
Her lips part. “For a drink?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She fumbles in her purse, but there doesn’t seem to be any green bills inside—only loose change. There’s a checkbook, but I doubt she wants the bastard seeing that line item. Plus we don’t accept them. Cash only. “This is outrageous.”
“I don’t control the prices, but you can mention it when you talk to Bart.”
An open-mouthed stare.
Then a masculine hand reaches around with a twenty dollar bill. “My treat.”
She glances back and then does a comical double take at the handsome man standing in the small-town knock-off coffee shop like some kind of action hero. He’s jacked like the loggers but missing the beer belly. And the sneer.
Instead he looks calm and capable.
The woman flutters over the money, demurs but only for show, but my savior from the circus insists.
“If you want something refreshing,” he says, “I’d recommend that iced latte. I bet they even have caramel back there to sweeten it up for you”
“Oh,” she says, her cheeks pink. “Well, if you recommend it, then of course I’ll try it.”