Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
WAY TO FUCK UP MY SPANK BANK MATERIAL
LOUISIANA
Later that night, Bangers is alive—buzzing, loud, a heartbeat outside my own. Which means I’m right where I need to be.
There’s something about the chaos of a packed bar that calms me.
The bass from the speakers thrumming through the walls, the clatter of glasses, the rise and fall of laughter layered over drunken conversation—it all drowns out the noise inside my head.
The ache. The conversation with Sophie. The things she said. The things I didn’t.
She meant well, I know that. But she doesn’t get it.
She wasn’t the one who walked into a clinic for a routine pap smear and walked out shattered.
She didn’t get blindsided by words like “sepsis” and “necrosis” and “emergency hysterectomy” before her body was even done growing.
She didn’t sign the damn papers at twenty, with trembling hands and a pen that felt too heavy, knowing what it meant. What it would take.
She didn’t wake up with something vital ripped out of her—quietly, permanently.
So, yeah. I shove that grief deep down where it belongs and throw myself into the one place that never demands anything from me except hustle and attitude.
Only three of us work at Bangers: me, and the owners—Crow and Crew Crosby.
The bar might carry a Southern name, but it’s run like a tight ship with a twist of chaos.
The Crosby brothers bought this place when it was more a cockroach motel than local gem and turned it into the beating heart of Thunder Ridge.
They look like they crawled out of a Viking bloodline—tall, broad-shouldered, with messy, sandy blonde hair and those glacial blue eyes that see everything.
Crow’s the older one, inked from jaw to knuckles to ankles, like every scar had to be turned into a story.
Crew’s clean-cut, not a single tattoo—just as dangerous, just quieter about it.
They run the bar like pros. Smooth hands, easy grins, and eyes sharp enough to catch any trouble before it sparks.
And me? I own the floor. Table to table, drink to drink, no room to breathe, which is exactly the point.
The money’s good, the work is fast, and I don’t have time to think—not really.
Crow and Crew handle the show behind the bar, cracking jokes, pouring heavy, keeping the regulars happy.
I keep the tables moving. It’s a rhythm. One we don’t mess with.
Honestly? Bangers isn’t just a job. It’s a lifeline. A second home. The one place where I don’t have to be the good sister, the broken woman, the walking wound. I can just be.
I lean across the bar, catching Crew’s attention as he finishes shaking up a whiskey sour. His T-shirt—the same black one we all wear with the flaming Bangers logo stitched over the chest—clings to his back, stretched tight across thick muscle and long days.
“Hey, handsome,” I call out, loud enough to tease but soft enough to slide past the noise. “I need three shots of Jack and a Moscow Mule.”
He doesn’t turn right away, just lifts one finger to let me know he heard. His arms flex as he reaches for the bottles, smooth and practiced, and I take a second too long watching him work. You’d be a damn liar if you said the Crosby brothers weren’t walking sin.
Crow’s the type to kiss you like a threat. Crew’s the kind to do it like a promise.
“See something you like, wildflower?”
Shit.
The asshole to my left just ruined all the images I was hoping to save to my spank bank for later.
I force myself to stay cool and don’t bite.
I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
Just stand there, jaw tight, eyes on Crew, pretending like I don’t feel Henry Wilder’s gaze scorching the side of my face.
But my mind’s already betrayed me, dragging me straight back to that morning at Joe’s.
I was minding my own God damn business, halfway to a food coma over a plate of triple-strawberry French toast, when he walked in—slow, deliberate, full of that cocksure swagger he wears like a badge.
Called me Kat, trying to get a rise. When I didn’t bite, he leaned in close, mouth brushing my ear.
“Damn, wildflower, I can remember that’s exactly how you licked your lips before wrapping them around my cock. ”
I swear I tasted blood from how hard I bit my tongue.
“You’re up, precious.” Crew’s voice pulls me out of the memory, low and teasing as he slides the drinks toward me. He winks, all mischief and muscle, and I feel my cheeks betray me before I can stop it.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, grabbing the tray, trying to act unaffected. But I know I’m flushed. Hot and bothered in the worst way.
I drop the drinks at table seven, dodge a grabby regular, and circle back to the bar to help restock. Anything to keep my hands busy. Anything to ignore him.
That proves to be fucking impossible. Perched at the bar like some sin-wrapped nightmare, wearing that khaki sheriff uniform like it is tailored to his body. Power wrapped in temptation. He doesn’t even have to try—he just is.
Whiskey in one hand. Lazy sprawl like he’s got nowhere else to be but in my orbit.
I grab a bottle off the shelf just to do something.
“So what brings you out, Sheriff?” I call, not looking at him. “You patrolling the local wildlife or just waiting to hand out a DWI to the next unlucky bastard?”
His voice cuts through the low hum of music and laughter. Quiet. Intentional. Like he knows I’ll hear him no matter how far away he is. "No," he says, voice low and steady. "I just needed a glimpse of you, Lou."
I freeze mid-reach for a bottle, caught off guard by the weight of his words.
For a heartbeat, his eyes lock with mine—steady, searching—and I swear there’s more there than casual conversation.
I force myself to look away, grabbing the bottle like it’ll anchor me, but the flutter in my chest betrays me anyway.
“Is that so?” I manage, voice tight, trying to sound like I don’t care. The heat creeping up my cheeks says otherwise.
“No,” Henry says, leaning back on the stool with slow, deliberate ease. His fingers undo the top two buttons of his khaki sheriff’s shirt, exposing the smooth inked column of his throat. The tough-guy armor softens, a rare, raw sincerity flickering beneath.
“I need so much more. But for now…this will do.”
His honesty hits me like a fist—not surprising, but no less brutal. His words from Evie and Maddox’s wedding echo in my mind, pulling at something I’d buried.
“You fight me so damn hard because you love me, wildflower. And that hurts like hell because you know it’s real. You know me better than anyone, and the fact that you can’t see past all this bullshit to just see me standing right here, loving you—it breaks my damn heart.”
That voice. That ache.
I remember how it clung to the night like smoke, how it tangled in my hair and lodged deep behind my ribs.
Now, here in the dim, crowded haze of the bar, he leans against the bar’s edge, owning the space between us like he’s never been burned by it. His gaze doesn’t waver.
“So,” he says, slow and deliberate, eyes locked on mine, “are you planning on pretending to hate me for another ten years, wildflower?”
The nickname lands like it always does—sharp, familiar, unwanted. I blink once, then twice, steadying myself like I’ve been pushed too close to the edge.
“Who said I was pretending?”
It comes out like a blade wrapped in silk—smooth, sharp, and soaked in everything I never said out loud. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. The venom is in the stillness, in the way I don’t even blink when it lands.
Henry grins, but there’s no joy in it. Just that crooked thing he does when he’s seconds away from saying something that’ll leave a mark. He leans in just enough for me to feel the heat of him, the scent of whiskey on his breath and the gravity he always seems to carry.
“You don’t hate me, baby.” His voice drops lower. Intimate. Lethal. “You hate that you’ve spent all this time and effort trying to—and still can’t.”
God, I hate that he’s right.
I hate that I can’t shut off these God damn feelings for the rugged bastard.
Henry Wilder looks at me like I’m his forever—like I’m the one he’s been waiting for—and the unbearable truth slams into me every time those eyes find mine.
I can’t give him a family. I can’t give him the future he’s imagining when he looks at me.
Every time I have to swallow that truth, it cracks something inside me—something tender, something hollow, and it fucking hurts in a way I can’t undo.
“There you go again…” His voice trails off.
“Again?”
“Looking at me with that wild desperation that makes it fucking impossible to breathe.” The rich timber of his voice makes me feel exposed and raw.
“No, Sheriff, the only thing I’m desperate for is you to leave, that uniform is fucking up the atmosphere.
” I say it hotly, the words cutting the air like a challenge, as I flip my long hair over my shoulder—an act that’s more for my own benefit than his.
A shield, a barrier, a reminder that I won’t let him get too close.
As the words leave my mouth, the silence hangs heavier between us, and it hits me—this act I’ve been putting on isn’t fooling anyone. Especially not him. The harder I try to hide behind it, the more of me slips through the cracks.
Henry tracks my every move over the rim of his glass, his eyes locked on me with an intensity that makes my skin hum.
His corded forearms flex, the muscles straining as he swirls the amber liquid around, his gaze never leaving mine.
It’s a calculated move—slow, deliberate, like he’s savoring every inch of me as I do the same with him.
“And I’m desperate for you to come take it off with your fucking teeth,” he growls, fingers slow and deliberate as they trace the edge of that smug, sin-stained mustache—the same one I want grinding against me, soaked in everything I give him.
His words hang heavy between us—a dare, a promise, an ignition.
I lean across the bar, breath hitching as I close the distance, feeling the heat pulsing off him. My pulse thunders in my ears, and I don’t know what’s worse—the way my body betrays me, or the way his eyes darken, tracking every inch of me with wicked knowing.
Slow and deliberate, I dip my finger into his glass and drag it across his lips, feeling the warmth of him beneath my touch. His eyes narrow, dark and dangerous, but he doesn’t flinch—just watches, waiting for me to break the silence.
I bring my finger to my own mouth, sucking the bitter whiskey off, never once breaking our locked gaze. Every muscle in me screams to cross the line, but I hold back, the tension coiling tighter, electric.
“Keep fucking dreaming, Sheriff.”
The words come out like a dare, but the silence that follows is deafening. There’s no denying it now—neither of us is pretending this is just a game anymore. The air crackles with something too raw, too real. Neither of us is backing down.
He’s not backing down.
The man who has played by my rules for the last ten years was throwing out my rulebook and setting that bitch on fire.
That look on his face said one thing loud and clear—he was done. No more waiting on me to make the first move. No more sitting back, hoping I’d break. Henry wasn’t playing by my rules anymore. He wasn’t waiting for me to change my mind.
Fuck, if that didn’t terrify me.
Henry chuckles low, the sound rough and knowing, as he tosses back the last of his whiskey. His gaze never leaves mine as he says, “I don’t know how to do anything else, wildflower.”
Without another word, he pushes back off the stool. His presence lingers like a weight in the air—heavy, undeniable. No grand goodbye, just a quiet goodnight, loaded with everything he’d been holding back.
I watch those broad shoulders disappear into the crowd, telling myself the tremble in me has nothing to do with him.
Not a fucking thing.