Page 17 of When Sky Breaks

“Are you all right, Son?” Foster beats me to it, arching a brow as Trek slinks in his seat.

“I’m fine, just ignore me. But hurry.”

What a grump. And I thought I was the moody one.

In the spirit of people-watching, I eat my cone and check out how the town has changed. Snaps and the bookstore look the same, but a new coffee place opened where the old barber shop was. Guess Lou finally retired and sold it.

Since it’s afternoon and school’s out, teens walk the sidewalks, earbuds in their ears, faces buried in their phones. The door swings open to Snaps, and a man walks out.

My heart gutters like an overheated engine. I’d recognize him anywhere.

Goosebumps lift on my bare arms and legs as August steps from the store and onto the sidewalk. He adjusts the straps to the bag slung across his chest before pulling down a pair of sunglasses over those soft gray eyes I often stared into. His hand rakes back that dusky brown hair still hanging messily about his head and uses the other to shove his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. He still prefers ripped jeans and black T-shirts, but the form that fills them…is all man. Even his tattoos add to the illustrious hold he always had over me.

I. Can’t. Breathe.

August morphed from a lanky teen into a man built to destroy girls’ hearts. He’s taller and broader, yet his waist is trim and lean, and I remember the feel of those arms around my shoulders, now packed with muscles he didn’t have before.

He’s devastatingly beautiful and I can’t stop my sharp intake of breath nor the shaking of my hands clutching the ice cream cone. Disbelief clings to my burning lungs, my heart turning to ash. I watch as August treads from the sidewalk and walks toward a motorcycle that was at first hidden by another car. He sits astride it and turns on the engine, that familiar purr lancing through my chest.

“Sky?” Trek asks before following where my eyes remain riveted on the man I loved to hate for the last five years. “Shit,” I hear him mutter.

August reverses and speeds off in the other direction, the sound of his muffler echoing across the lot. If he saw me, he didn’t show any signs of recognition.

All I do is swallow the last remnants of my melting ice cream and pray it makes it past the lump in my throat.

Why is he here? Of all times and places, he’s back in town?

Why, why, why?

Trek stares at the side of my head until I look at him. It’s there on his face. The guilt. He knew, and that’s why he was acting weird. When will the lying end?

A raw curiosity grips me in its fierce clutches, and I can’t go back home until I know. “Hey guys, I’ll be right back. This won’t take long.”

Trek groans lightly and Foster shrugs, happy to eat his ice cream with no clue about the internal screaming fest his daughter is having. Nor the profanities I’m sending Trek through my eyes.

One foot in front of me, I stalk down the sidewalk and fling open the door to Snaps.

CHAPTER EIGHT

sky

If there’s one thing you can count on in a small town, it’s the preservation of the old.

Snaps is still Snaps. But with a modern touch. No more ancient printers or computers and no more boring wood-paneled walls. Sleek Macs—two of them—rest on the wooden butcher block-style countertops in front of laser-jet printers. The old-school cameras that used to be on glass shelves are now protected behind the countertops away from any clumsy hands.

I approach the only employee in the store—a girl, maybe college-aged—and tamp down the bite of jealousy at her obviously bubbly attitude.

“Hi, maybe you can help me?” I say as her alluring blue eyes brighten.

“Of course,” she chirps and smiles. Her name tag reads Alex.

“Where’s Colonel?”

It’s hard to believe he’d let this place change without some grumpy dissent. I peek around for any sign of him and his bubble glasses, but the store is empty except for us two and the sounds of pictures printing.

“Oh, um, I didn’t really know him, but he retired a while ago. Mr. Moore owns the place now.”

Alex scrunches her dark brows when my jaw flops open. “Colonel retired? August—er, Mr. Moore owns Snaps?”

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