Page 90

Hazel snorts. “Yeah, that’s him. Wild that he thinks he has a chance with Brynn after all this time. I don’t even think they’ve kept in touch since Brynn left town and they broke up. But I guess he’s shooting his shot now that she’s back.”

Shooting his shot is a good way to put it. I don’t have to know this guy to know that he’s definitely talking to Brynn with intent. He has a smarmy smile on his face, and he’s leering down at her like he’s a couple seconds away from trying to touch her.

This close, I can hear most of their conversation.

“Come on,” he’s saying. “You’re not even a little bit glad to see me? I thought you were going to keep in touch.”

Brynn frowns. “Why would I have? It’s not like we left things on a good note, Jordan.”

“That was years ago. I’ve moved on from all that. You clearly have too. So there’s no reason we can’t try again, right?” He reaches out to touch her arm, but Brynn pulls away before he can.

“I’m really not interested. And even if I was, I’m not here to stay. There’s no reason to try to start anything when I’m going to be gone again as soon as the holidays are over.”

“Maybe I can give you a reason to stick around a little longer.”

Brynn snorts. “I don’t think so. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m supposed to be helping out around the festival.”

The pleasant, flirtatious look on Jordan’s face melts away in an instant. He’s left scowling at Brynn, his eyes flashing at the rejection. “You’re doing me a favor honestly,” he sneers. “You were always too fucking uptight for me anyway.”

Knowing Brynn like I do, I can tell what he means by that, and before I think about it, I’m stepping away from the booth and over to Brynn. Tate and Ares are right there too, so they must have been close enough to hear the conversation.

Brynn’s eyes go wide, and Jordan looks at all of us. “Can I fucking help you?” he snaps.

“You can watch your fucking mouth,” I growl back.

“Bold of you to throw insults around like you even deserve a chance to be near her,” Tate adds.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jordan asks, looking between the two of us. “You should mind your own business.”

“And you should learn to take no for an answer. Brynn is better than you’ll ever be, and she’s so far out of your league that you might as well crawl back to whatever rock you came out from under.”

Rage sparks in Jordan’s eyes, and his face turns an ugly shade of red. I can see the punch coming before he even throws it. He telegraphs the whole thing, rearing back and punching me in the face.

It’s not a good punch, and he doesn’t have enough power behind it to do more than make my jaw hurt a little. My head barely even moves from the force of it.

I step forward and grab Jordan by the collar of his coat, dragging him closer to me. “That was a shit punch,” I tell him quietly. “And I’m not going to retaliate. Because if I hit you back as hard as you deserve to be hit, you wouldn’t get back up.”

His eyes go wide, the rage and humiliation replaced by fear.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I say, letting him go.

He runs off immediately, tripping over himself to get away from me and the booth.

Brynn is standing nearby with her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with worry. “Are you okay?” she asks, rushing over once Jordan is gone. “You didn’t have to do that, but… thank you.” She glances at the three of us. “You’re going to bruise a little,” she tells me. “Come on, let me take a look at it.”

Before I can tell her that I’m fine, she’s grabbing my arm and towing me over to the first aid tent set up a few feet away.

She presses me down into one of the chairs and puts her fingers on my face, turning it this way and that to check for more bruising.

“I’m okay,” I tell her. “That was barely a punch.”

“He shouldn’t have done it,” Brynn mutters. She still crosses to a small fridge and pulls out an ice pack, pressing it to the bruise on my jaw.

I’m not going to argue if she wants to take care of me right now. It means I get to be close to her. To breathe in her raspberry and coconut scent and have her hands on me.

“He should have kept his mouth shut,” I mutter. “He doesn’t get to talk shit about you. I don’t care who he is.”

Brynn’s eyes lower, and she seems to be lost in thought for several beats. “He used to say things like that all the time, back when we were together. Nothing outright cruel or about my OCD specifically, but he’d tell me it was annoying that I couldn’t leave the house without checking ‘a million different things’, and he hated it when I talked to him about the things that were bothering me. It made it really easy to get down on myself for having OCD in the first place.”