Page 50 of New Hope, Old Grudges

I chewed my lip. It was so simple for him. Sure, he had plenty of demons that followed him around, plenty of pain in his past, but he hadn’t attached it to the place he grew up like I had. He sounded like New Hope was his sanctuary, and I’d viewed it as a prison all these years.

But I was starting to question that.

My eyes shifted to the window. It was too dark to see the snow that blanketed the trees and surrounding mountains. I’d been spending my days out in the crisp winter, the forge warming me, my mom bringing me warm mugs of coffee. I’d woken up without the sounds of the city, without the smog, the overcrowding, the clogged freeways.

I thought I’d preferred the bustle of the city, thought I’d craved it. But now, in the quiet of my hometown, I wondered whether I’d just been seeking the noise so I didn’t have to listen to the voices in my head. The ones that told me I needed to let go of my past.

Even though you couldn’t say I was letting go of my past when I was currently naked and tangled up with my high school bully.

But I didn’t think about that…

“Now, are we done with story time?” Brody asked. “Because I remember promising to make you fall asleep with my cock inside you.” He turned us to cover my naked body with his, cock poised at my entrance.

His lips brushed mine.

“And I’m a man of my word.”

He was.

I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible, but I fell asleep with Brody’s cock inside me.

ChapterFifteen

BRODY

I droppedWillow off at her place the next morning. I hadn’t wanted her out of my bed. Hadn’t wanted her out of my house. But as much as I wanted to fuck her into oblivion, I had a shift, had responsibilities.

I’d fucked her plenty last night. The vision of her flushed face, the way her back arched as she came, it made my cock hard just thinking about it.

Which I couldn’t do.

I was at work. So I focused. Focused on things that didn’t make my cock hard. Like the future. Like Willow’s future. She didn’t consider this place her home like I did. She was in a state of flux, her life in L.A. ruined. My hand flexed into a fist, thinking about it. Thinking about the asshole ex I wanted to bury.

Willow Watson was not someone to stay down for long. She was already back in the forge, already had a creative fire lighting up her fucking soul. She was already a firecracker that day I’d pulled her over driving into town, but there had also been something tired about her. Something defeated.

That thing was gone now, replaced with a grim determination and a defiant tilt to her chin.

She would get to where she wanted to be. I knew that for a fact. And where she wanted to be was not here.

I was mulling over that disturbing thought when there was a knock at my door.

“Enter,” I muttered.

“Sam Norton came in here, wanting to press charges against the sheriff for assault,” Hannah, my deputy said, leaning against my desk and cradling what I guessed was her third coffee of the morning. Hannah was a good cop, better woman, and a newly single mother to a baby who apparently didn’t like sleeping all that much. I’d given her all the maternity leave it was in my power to give, which was sweet fuck all and should’ve been criminal in my opinion. Luckily, Hannah was born and bred in New Hope, and had family to help, including a mother who took to the grandma role utterly and completely, and watched Maisie—Hannah’s daughter—while she worked.

“Did he now?” I asked, taking a sip of my own coffee.

Hannah nodded. Despite her consistent lack of sleep, it didn’t show on her porcelain skin which was as clear as ever. She had delicate features and a petite frame that fooled plenty of people into thinking she was weak. She was anything but. As the asshole ex of hers who’d tried to lay a hand on her found out.

“He did. I took his statement, of course.”

“Of course,” I hummed. We ran a clean department, and even if I was well liked by my deputies, I would never expect them to look the other way if I ever broke the law. They knew that.

Hannah looked like she was hiding a smile. “And then I went down to Kelly’s to get witness accounts, and wouldn’t you know… I couldn’t find a single person willing to corroborate his story.”

I swallowed a smile of my own. I didn’t expect people to do anything like that, but I wasn’t all that surprised either. We were a close-knit town, looked after each other, and I tried my best to do right by everyone living here. Sam did not. He was not well liked.

“So you and Willow Watson, huh?” Her smile tilted, teasing in her tone. A fond kind of teasing, though.

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