Page 4 of The Score We Never Settled

“I don’t need the reminder, Short Stop. I see it every time I run into your boy.”

My nostrils flare, but I refuse to have a yelling match with him in the middle of Georgie’s Groceries and stir up gossip. It’ll be on the streets before I hit them if I do.

So, I hit him back with something that’ll stop him from further commentary because I know exactly what buttons to push when he’s here.

“You gonna go visit yourdad, my love?”

Briggs’s jaw ticks just once, but there’s no other sign of distress or frustration forming on his perfectly set face. “Only if you come with me.”

“I see him every Tuesday. He comes in for the?—”

“Peach cobbler, I know.” Briggs erases some of the space between us, and my skin prickles at the new closeness. “Tell him I said hello.”

“You can do that yourself.”

“Then you’d already know the answer to that.”

I do.

But he needs to let that go and heal.

“I’m not your secretary or your answering service.”

“You’re right,” he agrees, then within my next blink, he’s right there. His chest barely brushing mine when he says in this deep, perilous tone, “You’re mine.”

My cheeks burn at the way he’s looking down at me like he’s going to eat me alive, right here and now, fellow customers and employees be damned.

I feel like I did all those years ago—at his mercy.

The aggressive pull that is always Briggs and I is so forceful that it’s hard to realize things as they are.

The air feels thicker.

My skin feels hotter.

And my pulse bubbles and sprints through my brain, giving me this feeling of being off my feet when I’m still physically grounded to the floor.

“I’m not available anymore,” I return evenly. “You’ve got a life, a career, and I’m sure a handful of women who’ll happily bend over for you?—”

“Just not the one I want,” he deadpans, reaching up with the crook of his finger and brushing it along my jawline. “I may have thousands of women who want me. But there is only one I’d let through security to fuck me silly.” He thumbs my bottom lip, and my breath catches. “There’s only one who has owned me.”

He does this thing with his lips, almost like a cocky smirk, as if he knows he has me in the palm of his hand, and it immediately breaks the spell.

Slapping his hand away, that smirk grows even wider.

“I have enough going on,” I divulge with a sneer. “And thelastthing I’m going to be dealin’ with isyou.”

“Buttercup & Brioche,” he answers for me. “Really committed to pushin’ the French breads in your bakery, aren’t you, Short Stop?”

I wish I had a loaf to shove down your throat so you’d shut up. It’s going to waste away at my bakery.

“When do you want to go on this date?” he asks before I can turn and promptly leave Georgie’s Grocery.

I’ll go to the next town for cornstarch if I have to. I’m not staying here another minute.

“Date?” I repeat with a scoff. “I’m not going on a date with you.”

He shoves his hands into his jeans. “You said you liked those things.”