Gripping her biceps, I helped steady her. She barely hung on to the loaf of bread in her hands as she looked up at me, and her brown eyes widened as she realized who she bumped into.

“Well, hello there, cricket. Happy to see me?”

Chapter Three – Aspen

Damn, why did he have to look so good? Even better than the last time I came face-to-face with him. I’d given up hope that he peaked in high school. No, Owen Ramsey only got better with age.

I was almost—almost—happy to see him. Because, let’s be honest, most people who left town rarely returned. Just like with my eldest sister, the townspeople of Ashfield never expected him to step foot back in our town, especially once rumors began swirling about his father. His mother, Beverly, shouldered enough embarrassment for the both of them.

The use of the atrocious nickname quickly exterminated that twinge of happiness for me though. One I hadn’t heard since I crossed the auditorium stage and received my high school diploma. I’d hoped to never hear it again, but lo and behold, Owen couldn’t let that childish nickname drop.

“Don’t call me that,” I snarled as I twisted out of his hold.

I tried to brush past him but made the mistake of looking up into those gray eyes that captivated everyone he laid them on. It was like he dipped his irises in liquid mercury. They were the most startling shade.

“Aw, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he explained, as I moved toward the register, rolling my eyes as he followed like a lost puppy.

“Doubtful,” I said over my shoulder, snagging one last glimpse of him. My entire goal while he was here was to avoid him as much as possible. But even I knew that was going to be hard, knowing exactly where he was going to be staying.

Just as I had that passing thought, Owen asked, “Know where I can find my mom?”

He set the box in his hand behind my bread on the conveyor belt.

“I don’t,” I lied. I knew exactly where she was.

“Shame. Though I can’t say I’m unhappy with the company I’ve run into.”

Turning around fully, I squint in his direction, my eyes searching his. “Since when have you ever been happy to see me, Owen?”

Instead of answering, Owen chuckled and threw a candy bar next to his cookies. A Butterfinger, which happened to be the one I always picked. “For you.”

“How’d you know that’s my favorite?” I asked him suspiciously as the teenager at the register scanned my lone item.

With the kind of grin that brought girls to their knees—other girls, not me—he replied, “I didn’t.”

The worker interrupted our back-and-forth with my total, and I handed him the two dollars for the bread, quickly gathered my bag, and made my way to the automatic doors.

I hurried out of the store toward my barely drivable sedan, leaving Owen without a backward glance. Just knowing he returned to Ashfield was enough to keep me from wanting to travel into town until I knew full well that he was gone. I could only hope his stay wasn’t prolonged. Though, I had a feeling that once he knew what was going on with his family’s property, he would be here until he absolutely had to return to his baseball team.

But none of that mattered to me. What Owen Ramsey did with his life was none of my business. I had enough on my plate with the farm and my fledgling social life.

As I got in my car, I looked up and watched as he strolled casually through the exit, heading in my direction. Panicked, I fumbled with my keys, jamming the right one into the side of the ignition repeatedly until I finally rung the hole and it slipped in. I turned the key quickly, praying the car started on the first go. Unfortunately, as Owen got closer, it refused to turn over.

“Come on. Come on. Come on,” I pleaded with the vehicle.

A knock on my window sounded, and I sighed before I begrudgingly manually rolled down the window. My car was so old enough it didn’t have power windows, so I actually understood the rolling the window down gesture most people my age didn’t get.

“Yes?” I asked, annoyed.

He leaned one of his muscular arms on the side of my car, all sexy-like. I couldn’t help but think he must’ve done this move hundreds of times with how effortless he appeared. Owen tilted his head down so he could peer through my open window, piercing me with those eyes.

“Having trouble?”

“No,” I growled, again trying to start the car to no avail.

“You sure?”

“Is there something you need?”

“No, just thought I’d offer to help you out or give you a ride home, since you’re on my way.”

“You want to help me?” I asked cynically.

“Yeah. I mean, sure, why not?”

Leaning toward the window, I searched around the parking lot, looking for anything suspicious, but all I saw were a few of my mom’s friends and a couple of women I went to high school with. They were all looking at Owen as if he simultaneously hung the moon and committed a crime.

“Am I being pranked right now? Is someone going to jump out from behind a vehicle and tell me this is all a joke?” I questioned, returning to the task of starting my car, which seemed as unwilling as ever.

“No prank, cricket.”

Immediately, I sneered in his direction, my eyes narrowing as if I were formulating his slow and painful death.

“Come on, Aspen. I’m just trying to help. I also have your candy bar.”

Sighing loudly, I squinted even more at him, like he’d grown two heads. “I realize you may have forgotten everything about our rivalry when you left town, but the last time I was in any moving vehicle with you, my jeans ended up super-glued to the vinyl seats of our school bus.”

That day had been awful. Thankfully, my angel of a mother came to get me off the bus—once the driver returned to school at the end of the route—with an extra pair of pants, because I refused to try to stand up again while there were other passengers.

“We were kids. It was funny.”

“Funny for you, maybe.”

“Pretty sure you got your payback. Even though I think, in the long run, those sheer baseball pants you swapped in my bag before the championship game probably helped me land that underwear campaign I starred in last year.”

Ignoring his chuckles, I attempted to turn on the car for the third time, and the answering click let me know my car wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Suddenly, the door swung open, and Owen stood there with one of those sexy trademark smirks of his. He stayed on the other side of it, probably to protect himself, waiting patiently for me to exit.

Eyes downcast, because I didn’t have any other choice besides call one of my family members, I grabbed the loaf of bread and my bag before stepping out of the car. Without looking up at him, I shoved my keys into my bag, then rolled up the window, giving him my own smirk when he barely moved his fingers in time to not be pinched. With as much haughtiness as I could muster, I yanked the door from his hold, then shut and locked it.

Before submitting to his offer, I looked across the way, noticing our old science teacher from high school. Ms. Glenvar had the unfortunate luck of having both me and Owen in her eleventh-grade chemistry class during the same period. After one disastrous lab session, where Owen and I had to partner up, and our assignment caught the table on fire, Ms. Glenvar took a leave of absence for the rest of the year.

I still didn’t believe it was our fault. It wasn’t us who placed ourselves in a class together, and everyone in Ashfield knew the chaos we tended to cause when we were in close proximity. So whose bright idea was it to put us together in, of all things, Chemistry? They were just asking for it.

Ms. Glenvar must have felt my stare. Her beady eyes met mine, and her steps faltered as she took in the large body behind my much, much smaller one. As if witnessing a crime in action, she took a slow step backward, then another, until she was running to her car parked at the far end of the lot.

“What was that about?” Owen asked as he opened the door of a plain-looking sedan parked directly beside mine. I would have expected to see him driving an exotic car like one of my brothers-in-law owned, since the news made it well known how much Owen’s recently signed contract was for.