She flopped down, positioning herself so no part of her touched any part of him, and licked her cone once before speaking. “Let’s not talk. I’m just here to drown my sorrows in lactose, and then I’ll go.”
He grunted and dragged his gaze away from her pink mouth. Every stupid part of him wanted to keep her at his side a little longer even though it killed him to think about how she was swirling her tongue through that ice cream while pointedly not looking at him.
In high school, she’d always ordered a small twist while he’d cycled through pretty much every treat on the menu, sometimes in the same night. He’d been constantly ravenous as a teenager, and the only treats he’d stayed away from were the strawberry flavors because Faith was allergic and he didn’t want his tongue to be the reason her throat swelled up.
The branches of the weeping willow behind them ruffled in the breeze as they sat together in silence. Had she moved back to Beaucoeur after college? The one time he’d looked for her on social media, her privacy was buttoned up tight, so he had no idea what she did now or where she did it. If she lived in Beaucoeur, did she come to the Dairy Bar often? Did she think of him when she did?
The circular pools of illumination from the parking lot lights fell across the table, so he both heard and saw her sigh.
“It’s been so long, Leo.” Her voice was soft, her anger gone. She kept her eyes on her cone.
“I know, Dutch.”
Dutch, short for duchess. The old endearment had slipped out at the restaurant. Now he’d used the nickname that had sprung from it, and the hitch in Faith’s breath told him she’d noticed.
His night wasn’t improving, in other words.
He picked up his bowl, but the ice cream and fudge had melted into a soup, so he set it on the table behind him while he grappled with the burst of elation he felt to be sitting next to her again. Next toFaith. After all this time.
He really ought to get up and leave. For fuck’s sake, she was the cause of the worst humiliation he’d ever suffered. Instead, he did something stupid.
“This is new.” He lifted his hand to point out one of the blue streaks, his fingers a breath away from touching her hair. He wondered if it was as silky as he remembered.
Faith leaned back so her gaze could move across his face. “So is this.” Her expression unreadable, she shifted the cone to her left hand and extended the fingers of her right, ghosting them over his beard. “The last time I saw you, I think you only had to shave once a week.”
Explanations crawled up his throat: How he’d spent his twenties getting dirt under his nails for a tiny nonprofit dedicated to reforestation and environmental education in South America. How he’d traded that life for aFortune100 company that allowed him to move back to his hometown but might not let him make the difference he wanted to make in the world. How he was terrified that they’d discover he was a fraud and chase him back to the poor side of town where he came from. Where he maybe never should’ve left.
But he’d learned his lesson about showing his vulnerable underbelly to Faith, so he just ran a palm over the mass of hair on his jaw, silently vowing to shave at the first possible opportunity. The movement pushed his cuffed shirtsleeve up, and Faith’s eyes focused on his inner forearm. She inhaled softly, and they both looked down at the tattoo sketched in minimal black strokes of a fox sitting alert on its haunches, head tilted slightly to the side. Faith moved her hand, and this time her fingers made contact with his skin, stroking down and then up the fox’s body.
“You never added any color,” she said. Then in a thicker voice, “You never covered it up.”
Leo forced himself to pull his arm away from the electricity of her touch. “Never thought about it much either way,” he lied, keeping his expression flat while his brain helpfully dredged up every miserable day he’d plodded through after their breakup.
She seemed to sense his shifting mood and looked down at the ice cream that now dripped down her hand. She picked up his bowl, dropped the remnants of her cone into it, and swiped her fingers down the front of her expensive skirt.
And that was the reminder Leo needed. Never again with this girl. People like the Foxes used couture as napkins. They used people like him as napkins. The mystery of what Faith Fox was doing with a tweed suit and flip flops and wild blue hair? He wasn’t going to solve it. He didn’twantto solve it. He just needed to make damn sure they both remembered that.
So he did something unforgivable.
Letting his eyes drift shut, he leaned toward her and inhaled against her neck. She tensed but didn’t pull back, and every drop of his blood thrummed from being this close to her again.
“You smell the same.” His voice was husky and dark, far darker than he intended. How could it not be with her skin warm against his?
She huffed out a shaky breath. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He cupped her cheek, turning her head so her lips were a breath away from his. Then he hardened his heart and struck. “Money. You still smell like daddy’s money.”
She was off the table before he was able to clear her achingly familiar scent from his nostrils, the harsh shadows of the pole light turning her eyes into twin black holes. Her chest rose on a sharp inhale, but when she spoke, her voice was steady and flat.
“Go fuck yourself, Leo.” Then she walked away with an unhurried stride, leaving self-loathing to curdle in his gut alongside the ice cream.
THREE
“Come on, come on, come on.” Faith glared at the pinwheel of death as it spun and spun on her six-year-old MacBook. “You can do it, baby.”
“That the last of it?”
Her head snapped up to see Aiden, her best friend’s boyfriend, standing in the doorway, easily hefting a huge box that she knew damn well was packed full of books.
