“Dude! Hale just texted me. He asked for your number. What do I do?” Gail squealed. Jesse’s eyes widened, as did her smile, and I wanted to die a thousand deaths.

You stab him in the face and then hand him over to me to finish the job.

Snowflake punched the blender’s button to buy time. I wanted so badly to kiss her for it. She was flattered, sure, but she wasn’t going to hand over her number so fast. Hell, she’d barely given it to me, and I’d courted her ass for weeks. But that didn’t change the fact that there would be more Hales. More good-looking, smooth-talking assholes that would try to hit on her ass, now that she was in plain sight, looking delicious and alive.

Snow White had woken up, and a prince was on his way, probably riding in a white Tesla.

There was always a fucking prince to rain on the villain’s parade.

The blender stopped. Jesse plucked it out of its hub and slapped the bottom as she poured the pink smoothie into a tall cup.

“Jesse? Should I give him your number?” Gail’s thumbs were already moving on her screen, and I wondered how much she would hate me if I broke them.

Say no.

“Sure.”

Fuck.

At the risk of becoming the douchiest dipshit to ever set foot in Todos Santos—a goddamn mission, considering the average income per household and number of entitled teenagers in this place—I decided to stay the fuck out of this conversation and actually found it in me to allow Jesse the time to give Gail her number. Not only did I successfully manage not to detonate with anger while Gail repeated it aloud while typing it back to Hale, but I also chose the moment after Gail tucked her phone into her jeans to make myself known.

By the way, did I mention that Hale was a dead man? No? Because that was the case.

“How are my favorite ladies?” I flashed my come-hither smirk. See? Casual. What’s that tick in my eyelid? Not a stroke, that’s for sure.

“Good question. That’s roughly eighty-five percent of the female population of SoCal, so you better start an online questionnaire to save time,” Jesse said sweetly, sliding the smoothie to the girl in the wetsuit. I’d walked right into that one, so I permitted her the moment to bask in Gail’s giggles.

One point to the girl with the Pushkin tattoo, zero to the asshole who is pissing all over her hard-earned trust.

The surfer chick rolled two dollars into the tip jar, then winked at me, sucking hard on her straw. Jesse followed that silent exchange, and that made me feel better about shit. Kind of.

“Work’s good so far?” I ignored Jesse’s spunk. She placed her elbows on the counter from the other side, and it didn’t escape me that she looked confident, and radiant, and fucking edible. I zoned in on her again, realizing she wasn’t wearing her usual black hoodie. She must’ve pulled that shit from the depth of her closet, because she looked…fresh. Colorful, even, with plaid red leggings that were tight everywhere, her trademark Keds, and a long yellow T-shirt with two skeleton hands giving you the finger. She looked delicious and alive, and I suddenly felt both possessive and protective of her.

“Great. Thank you. Did you surf today?”

“Did you breathe today?” I challenged.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Yeah, I surfed today.” I grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from behind the counter and unscrewed the cap, taking a swig. “You should learn how to surf. You’ll love it. It’s a lonely sport. A lot of shutting up involved.”

The thought occurred to me out of nowhere. It meant more time with Jesse, and even more importantly—more time with her while she was wearing either a bikini or a wetsuit. A huge win for my libido, a terrible loss for my balls. It only took one look at her to know that plan had flushed down the drain. She looked like I’d offered her a threesome with Shadow.

“No, thanks.”

“’Cause?” I snapped my gum in faked boredom.

She looked down at her shoes, clutched her stomach through the yellow fabric of her shirt, and then shook her head. “It really doesn’t matter, Bane.”

“Call me Roman.”

“Why?”

Because no one else does, and I need something about us to feel different.

Of course, I didn’t actually entertain myself with the idea of saying something quite so Kate Hudson film-ish. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just sounds weird coming from your mouth. You didn’t know me in high school.”

Bull, meet shit.

I stuck around for the remainder of her shift. I tried to tell myself that I needed to supervise my own coffee shop, but the truth of the matter was, I didn’t want any more Hales to show up and hit on her ass. I didn’t actually think for a second that she was going to go out with him. But Hale, like his hair, was a red flag. Another guy would come, soon. He would look wholesome, and she would take a chance. Why wouldn’t she?