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cheeks.
    “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she shouts.
    “No. This is my job.”
    She slowly raises a middle finger, her gaze locked on mine.
    “Fuck off. Go back where you came from, Jonathan Ash.”
    Summer walks back inside and I sigh heavily, my breath making clouds of white mist in the air. Even though it’s technically spring, New York hasn’t gotten the message yet. The wind is still cold, the sun setting early. I find myself wishing I could watch Summer from inside the bar, but I’d probably get kicked right out on my ass by two freckled, Irish women. And I’m not quite ready to use firearms inside the premises.  
    I look back at the bar, hoping for another glance at Summer working the tables. But the few customers Bianca still gets will be here soon, and Summer’s about to start working the bar. When I squint, though, I see a glint of something in the fading evening light. It’s a bottle, and it wasn’t there before Summer came outside.
    Against my better judgment, I sprint across the street and pick it up.  
    Jack Daniels, with four or five shots left inside.
    I look inside to see Summer, breasts bouncing as she wipes down the bar. She looks up for a second and nods at me, very slightly, then points back to my bench with a frown.
    I take a swig of whiskey as I walk back across the street.
    This one, she might be conflicted. But she likes a little bit of danger.
    There are ten texts on my phone right now, all from women less complicated than Summer Colington. But something about this woman, both devilish and pure, makes something inside of my chest clench tight.
    No matter what debt my family owes to Cullen, no matter how bound together we are, I know now I won’t do anything to hurt her.
    The realization is primal, like an instinct, something deeper than my ties to Cullen or anyone in the Family.

     

    Present Day

    “Coffee? Beer?” The waitress leans across the bar and places menus in front of us. “Got fried green tomatoes on special. And a peach cobbler for dessert.”
    “Thanks,” Summer says. “I’ll take a coffee. And fried green tomatoes, I guess.”
    “A coffee for me too. And grits for the girl. Fish and grits? Even though that’s totally disgusting—”
    “Shut up, Ash, you’re lucky I came with you at all.” The waitress laughs and saunters off like we’re a normal couple just being playful with each other. Summer puts her head in her hands and leans against the wall, angling her body away from mine. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, her face somehow more angular than it was when I knew her before. She was still delicate back then, but her cheeks were fuller, her eyes more full of spark. I can’t believe I’m the thing she blames for all this growing up she’s done, but it would seem that’s the story she’s sticking to.  
    “Don’t go celebrating too much, Sunshine.”  
    “The only thing I’m celebrating right now is food and coffee. I’m not celebrating the fact that you’ve been in town waiting for me to come back for three years.”  
    I nod at the waitress when she sets down our coffees and a plate of fried green tomatoes. I knew the only way I’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this woman to come with me was to involve food in the equation. If she’s anything like the girl I met back in New York, she probably still uses salty food and a hot, ultra-caffeinated coffee to calm her down when she’s nervous. And by the way she’s acting, I’ve made her as nervous as shit. I should feel guilty. But there’s something in me that takes a perverse pleasure in watching her sullenly shovel fried green tomatoes in her mouth while she cuts her eyes at me again and again. Her blush is getting deeper and deeper, the red blossoming across her cheeks like it always did when I got close to her. She was so closed off in so many ways, but when it came to me, she became an open book.  
    At least, I thought so.
    “Who said I was waiting for