“Well . . .” Sutton said with a smirk. “That was interesting.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
I grunted. She wasn’t wrong. Something about Lily interested me a whole hell of a lot. But with this homecoming being more explosive than I anticipated, I had other things to worry about. And a soft-spoken barista with doe eyes would surely only be a distraction.
Three
Lily
Ipunched the dough down with both fists and watched the flour puff up around my wrists, snowing over my knuckles and the battered steel table. The bread fought back, elastic and sticky, pulling at my fingers. I pressed harder, my whole body leaning into it, but my brain wouldn't shut up long enough to let my hands work in peace.
Every time I blinked, I saw that man's face again.
Ford Brooks.
His name sounded like a brand of expensive whiskey or a line of boots, but all I could see was blue eyes and messy hair and a haunted kind of smile. I could still feel the pressure of his bicep under my palm. Weird how a ten-second brush with someone could stay on your skin hours after you left them behind on the street.
The bell over the bakery door chimed, and my stomach did a stupid, traitorous flutter. I looked up, half-expecting to see him standing there again, stubble and bruises and all, but it was just one of the regulars—Mrs. Martinson—clutching her knitting bag and an enormous appetite for lemon bars. Relief and disappointment battled it out inside me, and it was hard to tell who won.
"You're gonna break that dough's spirit, Lil," Sutton called from the pastry case, where she was rearranging a pyramid of chocolate chunk cookies for maximum temptation. "Or yours. Either way, we'll have flatbread tomorrow."
I wiped my brow with the back of my wrist and shook off the flour. "Sorry," I said. "Just trying to keep up."
Sutton shot me a sideways glance. "You seem jumpy," she said, like it was a compliment. She slid the cookies closer to the glass, then came over and leaned her hip against my table. "Is it just me or is it extra weird today?"
"Must be something in the water," I said, which was the classic Whittier Falls way of saying mind your business.
"Or someone in the air." Sutton smirked, her eyes sharp as a tack. "Word's already out, you know. About Ford. Damon punched him in broad daylight and three separate people live-streamed it on TikTok. My brother's a Neanderthal."
I tried not to smile, but couldn't help it. "It was a good punch."
Sutton nodded, proud and exasperated all at once. "He's been dying to do that since 2006." She started plucking a sheet of wax paper from the stack and lining it up with the edge of the case, like the world might explode if it didn't match perfectly. "You know, it's kind of wild," she continued. "Ford grew up wrangling cattle on his daddy’s ranch, but he was always a genius with computers. The rumors about him are insane."
"What kind of rumors?"
Sutton looked around the near-empty bakery, then dropped her voice even lower. "That he sold his tech start-up for, like, a billion dollars. An actual self-made billionaire, not just trust-fund bullshit. And that he lives in a glass house in California with an infinity pool and one of those fridges that has a computer screen built in."
I let out a quiet laugh but my mind reeled with the knowledge. A billionaire? There probably wasn’t a single thing we had in common. Not that it mattered—I didn’t know the man, and probably never would. But a flutter in my chest told me I was kidding myself if I wasn’t a little disappointed. I tried to appear indifferent. "People here think anyone who has a fancy fridge is rich.”
"Yeah, well, people here also think Ford is the devil incarnate." Sutton shrugged, then shook her head, as if she didn’t want to elaborate. "Or they did, anyway. I think they mostly forgot about him after all this time. Showing back up here out of the blue will sure do a number on ‘em."
I pressed my fingers into the dough again, feeling the air bubbles pop. "He seemed . . . normal," I said.
"Right?" Sutton lifted her brows. "I mean, he is. Or was. But he never belonged here, not really. My mom used to say he had city eyes—always looking for the next big thing."
"He has nice eyes," I said, and immediately regretted it.
Sutton's mouth twitched up at the corners. "I noticed you lookin’," she said. "You notice a lot, Lily. Even when you don't want to."
I kept kneading, wishing I could press Sutton's teasing down into the lump of dough. "I just . . . don't see the point in judging someone for being different," I said. My voice sounded thin even to me.
"Nobody gets to be different in Whittier Falls," Sutton replied, half a joke and half an apology. “But it’s not just that. The way he left . . . I don’t know. It didn’t seem fair.” I wondered what Sutton meant by that, but she didn’t elaborate and I was too focused on seeming nonchalant.
She reached up to fix her ponytail, then cocked her head at me. "Are you into him?"
"What?" I fumbled the dough, flour billowing up into my face. "No. I mean—no. He’s just . . . interesting."
