Page 7 of Small Town, Big Storm

And just like that, seven years disappear.

I feel the breeze on my skin, the sticky drip of melting popsicles on my fingers, the sand between my toes.Wet kisses, eager hands, and pleasure.So much pleasure?—

For such a short amount of time.

And after that…it was pain.

So much pain.

Storm’s shoulders go stiff, but he ignores the many pairs of eyes on him as he approaches the bar and sits on a stool in front of me.“Hey,” he murmurs.

My hands are mixing a drink for him before I process what I’m doing, even though I’ve never made him anything before, even though we were too young to drink anything except for cheap beer and shitty tequila that fell out of someone’s parents’ liquor cabinet before he left.

I add bourbon and gin to a copper mug.Lemon juice.A dash of bitters.Ice.Ginger beer.Stir gently.

And suddenly, I’ve made…a Storm Warning.

Created by my uncle Sully, the man who raised me, the man who owned this bar back when he was alive, who willed it to me in death, and who…

Apparently, had the powers of foresight.

I slide the drink over to Storm, know instantly that it’s a fitting namesake.

Bold and bitter and impossible to ignore.

“What’s this?”he asks, his trademark scowl in place.

A flicker of anger blooms in my belly, those seven years flashing through my brain on warp speed, and I open my mouth?—

“Yo!Pop!”

I jerk, nearly upending a stack of glasses, then exhale slowly, tamping down my rage.“On it!”I call to Tommy without looking, instinctually knowing that his glass is empty, that Roger’s will be as well.

I make the rounds, feeling steadier by the normalcy of mixing drinks and schlepping empties and conversations taking place all around me.

By the time I make it back behind the bar, Storm’s glass is empty.

“Another?”I ask.

He nods.

I make him his drink, slide it in front of him, and then I pause, a hundred thoughts whirling through my mind.Anger and hurt aside, there are so many things I need to tell him…and so many more I don’t knowhowto say.

So, I just stand there like an idiot, clocking all the ways he’s changed.

Gone are the lean muscles he’d had as a teenager, the spotty mustache he’d been desperate to grow in, and there’s definitely no sign of the smile that used to grace his face on the regular.

In its place is…

Anger.

No.Rage.

I can feel it battering at me.

And it calls to my own.

Especially when I set a third drink in front of him and he’s finally unfrozen enough to smile at me.