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She grins, sniffling. “I love you too. Now help me finish that strawberry custard you stole last night thinking I wouldn’t notice.”
I raise a brow. “You always notice. It’s like you’ve got sugar radar.”
She nudges me with her elbow. “That’s because if I didn’t, you’d eat the whole damn batch and leave me with an empty bowl and your bullshit excuses.”
I laugh as we turn back to the counter. “That happened once, and you’ve never let it go.”
“Oh no, ma’am. That happens all the damn time.”
Chapter Eight
WAY TO FUCK UP MY SPANK BANK MATERIAL
LOUISIANA
Later that night, Bangers is alive—buzzing, loud, a heartbeat outside my own. Which means I’m right where I need to be.
There’s something about the chaos of a packed bar that calms me. The bass from the speakers thrumming through the walls, the clatter of glasses, the rise and fall of laughter layered over drunken conversation—it all drowns out the noise inside my head. The ache. The conversation with Sophie. The things she said. The things I didn’t.
She meant well, I know that. But she doesn’t get it.
She wasn’t the one who walked into a clinic for a routine pap smear and walked out shattered. She didn’t get blindsided by words like “sepsis” and “necrosis” and “emergency hysterectomy” before her body was even done growing. She didn’t sign the damn papers at twenty, with trembling hands and a pen that felt too heavy, knowing what it meant. What it would take.
She didn’t wake up with something vital ripped out of her—quietly, permanently.
So, yeah. I shove that grief deep down where it belongs and throw myself into the one place that never demands anything from me except hustle and attitude.
Only three of us work at Bangers: me, and the owners—Crow and Crew Crosby. The bar might carry a Southern name, but it’s run like a tight ship with a twist of chaos. The Crosby brothers bought this place when it was more a cockroach motel than local gem and turned it into the beating heart of Thunder Ridge.
They look like they crawled out of a Viking bloodline—tall, broad-shouldered, with messy, sandy blonde hair and those glacial blue eyes that see everything. Crow’s the older one, inked from jaw to knuckles to ankles, like every scar had to be turned into a story. Crew’s clean-cut, not a single tattoo—just as dangerous, just quieter about it.
They run the bar like pros. Smooth hands, easy grins, and eyes sharp enough to catch any trouble before it sparks.
And me? I own the floor. Table to table, drink to drink, no room to breathe, which is exactly the point. The money’s good, the work is fast, and I don’t have time to think—not really. Crow and Crew handle the show behind the bar, cracking jokes, pouring heavy, keeping the regulars happy. I keep the tables moving. It’s a rhythm. One we don’t mess with.
Honestly? Bangers isn’t just a job. It’s a lifeline. A second home. The one place where I don’t have to be the good sister, the broken woman, the walking wound. I can just be.
I lean across the bar, catching Crew’s attention as he finishes shaking up a whiskey sour. His T-shirt—the same black one we all wear with the flaming Bangers logo stitched over the chest—clings to his back, stretched tight across thick muscle and long days.
“Hey, handsome,” I call out, loud enough to tease but soft enough to slide past the noise. “I need three shots of Jack and a Moscow Mule.”
He doesn’t turn right away, just lifts one finger to let me know he heard. His arms flex as he reaches for the bottles, smooth and practiced, and I take a second too long watching him work. You’d be a damn liar if you said the Crosby brothers weren’t walking sin.
Crow’s the type to kiss you like a threat. Crew’s the kind to do it like a promise.
“See something you like, wildflower?”
Shit.
The asshole to my left just ruined all the images I was hoping to save to my spank bank for later. I force myself to stay cool and don’t bite. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. Just stand there, jaw tight, eyes on Crew, pretending like I don’t feel Henry Wilder’s gaze scorching the side of my face.
But my mind’s already betrayed me, dragging me straight back to that morning at Joe’s.
I was minding my own God damn business, halfway to a food coma over a plate of triple-strawberry French toast, when he walked in—slow, deliberate, full of that cocksure swagger he wears like a badge. Called me Kat, trying to get a rise. When I didn’t bite, he leaned in close, mouth brushing my ear. “Damn, wildflower, I can remember that’s exactly how you licked your lips before wrapping them around my cock.”
I swear I tasted blood from how hard I bit my tongue.
“You’re up, precious.” Crew’s voice pulls me out of the memory, low and teasing as he slides the drinks toward me. He winks, all mischief and muscle, and I feel my cheeks betray me before I can stop it.
