He lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and blew the smoke out slowly—right into my face.
I coughed, exaggerated but honest. “How can you be nice one minute, like a decent human being, and then turn into a total dick the next?”
He didn’t flinch. “We would’ve been on the road five minutes ago if it weren’t for your strange driving preferences.”
“Fine.” My voice cracked like a whip. “If you put that damn cigarette out, I’ll ride with you in the truck.”
He stared at me, unmoving. A beat passed. Then another.
And then he flicked the cigarette to the ground, grinding it out under his boot without a word.
“Good call, princess.” He climbed into the truck like nothing had happened.
I hesitated. Not because I was mad—though I was—but because getting in that truck meant more than just conceding. It meant sharing space with him, letting that quiet tension bloom between us again.
I opened the door and slid into the passenger seat, pressing Loco to my side, holding onto his warmth like armor. The seat smelled like him—leather, smoke, and whatever cologne he barely wore but always lingered.
I told myself it was just a ride.
I told myself I didn’t like it.
Fuck no, I thought as I stared out the window. Not Nick Consele. He was the last thing I wanted to get used to. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
11
NICK
I’d been sitting in this office for what felt like hours, eyes locked on a sea of bills that refused to shrink. My vision blurred, numbers dancing like ghosts across the page, mocking me. I blinked hard, but every time I closed my eyes, those damn figures floated behind my lids—unpaid invoices, red lines, bold totals. My head throbbed, a low, sharp pressure right behind my temples, and my eyes burned like I’d rubbed salt into them.
Sales were tanking. Why the hell were sales down?
Expanding the menu was supposed to help. I thought more options meant more customers, not wasted produce rotting in the dumpster out back. The scent of spoiled vegetables still clung to me from this morning’s trash run—bitter, earthy, sour—and it made me sick to my stomach thinking about how much money I’d literally thrown away.
And then there was Diablo.
The name alone made my throat tighten. I still owed him more than half of what he was demanding. Just hearing his voice over the phone the other night had me gripping the receiver so tight I left an imprint on my palm. He didn’t even have to yell. It was in the way he spoke—slow, casual, like violence was an afterthought he wouldn’t hesitate to act on. The guy was always off, even whenwe were kids, but now? He was something else. Something colder. Something wrong.
I could still hear his voice echoing in my skull:People shouldn’t be scared of guns… They should be scared of people with nothing to lose.
And he had nothing to lose. Not anymore. He’d already done time. He didn’t care if he went back.
And me? I had everything on the line.
The restaurant. My mother. My sister. My f*cking sanity.
I leaned back in my chair and dragged my hands down my face before tugging at my hair hard enough to sting. The thought of replacing my mom in the kitchen twisted something in my chest. She wasn’t old, but her body was betraying her. All those years cleaning houses, raising two kids, worrying every goddamn day whether I’d come back in one piece from deployment… it had worn her down. Her hands ached constantly, stiff and slow now where they used to move gracefully. She looked older than she should. And I hated that. Hated that I couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t rewind time.
Standing, my joints cracked as I stretched—tight from sitting too long, tense from too much stress. I rubbed sanitizer into my hands and forced myself to push open the office door, stepping into the chaotic hum of the restaurant.
It was rush hour. The din of clinking plates, overlapping voices, and sizzling from the kitchen—it all pressed in around me. I moved through it like a man underwater, scanning faces, scanning tables. As I rounded the corner, Alexa caught my eye, leaning against the bar with a shaker in her hand.
“Yo, Consele,” she said, nodding her chin toward one of the tables. “You may want to tell your employee we’re here to work, not socialize. She’s been chatting it up over there for a while now.”
I followed her gaze, and there was Mel, back to me, standing close to a table, her high ponytail bouncing slightly as she tilted her head. Her black pants hugged her hips, making it very hard not to look. But I wasn’t the only one looking.
Colt was sitting there, that red Arizona Cardinals hat of his unmistakable, menu in hand. Abigail was next to him, smiling.But it was the other guy—him—who had Mel’s attention. He was sitting across from them, leaned in, saying something that made her laugh. The sound floated toward me, light and easy. Too easy.
Something twisted deep in my gut. A hot, sharp surge of something I didn’t want to name stabbed through me—possessive, ugly, jealous.
