Agnes scoffs. “Luca has been raisin’ that child since he was a few months old. She ran out quicker than a church potluck casserole.”
“And she knows better than to show her face around here, too.”
“They’re in the middle of a custody battle?” I ask, because why not? I’m just feeding into Maebelle and Agnes’s need for gossip and I already knew that. But they’ll spill everything I need to know as Heath’steacher, right?
“Big one,” Maebelle responds.
“Dirty one,” Agnes adds. “Whole town has been feedin’ him.”
That’s good.
“Didn’t expect to see him with Zoe Ridgeway, though.”
My stupid brain doesn’t compute tonotlook for a Zoe Ridgeway and Micah in the same sentence, but I still turn to look.
It’s what I get.
I locate Micah Wolfe in three point five seconds with black jeans and a red button-up shirt with a beautiful blonde on his arm.
She’s in a form-fitting pink dress that’s still modest, and her hair is wavy, cascading down her shoulders as she laughs on Micah’s arm at something the group around her said.
And, as if on cue, Micah’s blue eyes flick and latch onto me like he knew I was standing here all along.
My skin prickles in excited goosebumps, but my heart…she slows because he’s here with a female whom he can openly parade around town without any consequence.
“I did,” Agnes says through the silence. “It’s an ego play.” Both Maebelle and I glance at Agnes at the same time for information and input on that comment. And like any other small-town gossip, she doesn’t disappoint. “Luca hates Tad.”
“Still?” Maebelle wrinkles her nose. “That was decades ago.”
“They still live in the same town, Maebelle,” Agnes scolds, bringing her punch glass to her ruby lips. “Rivals never die here.”
“Does make it more interesting.”
“Why rivals?”
Sienna, shut up, will you?
Agnes steals a look behind me, where Thaddeus is, and must be in the clear because she says under her breath, “Immature boy stuff, really. Luca and Tad never liked each other before, but I remember—well, it was rumored that Luca drove Tad’s car into Bellewood Pond. That boy just got it a week before for his birthday.”
“Then he stole his girlfriend.”
My eyes bulge. “What?”
Maebelle nods toward where I was just looking at Micah. “Zoe Ridgeway.”
“It’s not confirmed,” Agnes retorts. “However, the two of them got closer after that.”
“And they’re still close.”
“We’re hopin’ for a friends-to-lovers kinda deal, but it’s been a long time.”
“But maybe it’s blossomin’.”
“Could be. Zoe doesn’t stir up drama. She’d be good for Luca. But that rivalry with hers and the Hales. Luca is friends with the Hale boy.”
“They haven’t done anything to each other in a while, so I think it died down. Besides, Luca needs a woman.”
“She’s pretty enough.”
