“Oh, my gosh.” Elisa’s eyes sparkled with laughter. “Zoey!”
“What? He tried to scrape me off on a door frame.” She chuckled, shoulders bobbing.
“You werechokingme.”
She winced. “I finally realized what he’d meant and apologized.”
“Did your aunt kick Zoey out of the class?” Owen asked.
“Actually, no. She thought it was funny.” It was what happened next that changed things. Linc hesitated. Maybe that was enough of the story…
But Zoey wasn’t done. “A few classes later, Linc’s aunt had to take a phone call. She’d always told us not to use her professional-grade knife set without her permission, but I knew she’d be right back.”
“Uh-oh.” Elisa scrunched her face.
“I tried to hurry and chop the pecans for my brownies and just…missed.” Zoey rubbed her hand, as if remembering the cut. “Blood waseverywhere. Linc came through the kitchen and didn’t even blink an eye, just grabbed the first aid kit and started fixing me up.”
“Oh, man. Did you get busted?” Noah asked.
“No. She still doesn’t know to this day.” He’d been so scared that if his foster mom knew what had happened, that there had been an accident, they’d lose their license. That he’d get sent elsewhere.
That he’d be alone again.
He shook off the memories, that gut-deep sensation of pending loss that never fully left. “Anyway, joke’s on me. Apparently whatever Band-Aid I used on Zoey’s finger stuck her to me permanently.”
She leaned into him, smirked. “Hasn’t been able to get rid of me since.”
“But you moved up north, right? After high school?” Cade frowned. “Did you two keep in touch then?”
“A little.” They didn’t know—or need to know—that Zoey was part of why he came back. “I moved with my aunt and uncle after I graduated, but got a scholarship to a different college and eventually came back to start Boiling Bayou.”
And to be near Zoey, near her light. Her warmth.
Somehow, her annoying, friendship-stalking behavior all through his high school years remained one of the only familiar things he had left, after his foster parents decided their job in raising him was done at eighteen.
After Kirsten and he had started a snowball in motion that turned into an avalanche fourteen years later.
“That’s really cute.” Elisa brushed tart crumbs off her lap. “I can’t believe I never heard that story.”
Good. The more times it got told, the more likely it’d be someone would find out his aunt and uncle weren’t related to him. That he was a foster kid.
Granted, it wasn’t as big a deal as it had been when he’d moved back to Magnolia Bay. The description wasn’t a label he stuck on himself anymore as a grown man with a growing business. It was part of his past—and now, a large part of his motivation in doing whatever it took to keep Amelia out of the system.
He watched the wind toss Zoey’s hair, the way she held it back with one hand while trying to catch the piece of tart Elisa aimed at her mouth. The way she laughed as it bounced off her nose, hit his shoe.
He just didn’t want to get into thewhyof his being a foster kid.
Not even with Zoey.
seventeen
“Fun party.” Elisa stood on the dock holding her woven picnic basket, a slight smirk on her face. The aroma of crawfish pies and salt water drifted over them.
Zoey followed her gaze to the end of the pier, where Linc and Noah secured the boat. Dusk settled over the bay, and she shivered a little in her tank and jeans. Owen, Cade, and Rosalyn had already cleaned up the party trash and left, and now she and Elisa waited under the glow of the security light for the guys. “Itwasfun…but somehow I get the feeling that’s not really what you mean?”
“I’m talking about you and Linc. The PDA, the adorable meet-cute story…”
Oh, that. Zoey winced.
