The Score We Never Settled (Magnolia Ridge #2)

1. Layla

LAYLA

Blue bracelets.

Powder blue, actually, if we’re being technical.

And, technically, I made bracelets just like them, specifically for someone…someone I can’t seem to fully get away from.

They’re currently wrapped around a tan wrist attached to fingers wrapped around my dropped cornstarch.

My heart skips several beats before crashing down to the pit of my stomach. I almost had a similar feeling today when my missing truckload of supplies didn’t show up as planned and won’t be arriving for another three to four days, but this is so much worse.

I would’ve preferred the latter any day of the week.

Because the previous option—the one now holding my cornstarch and being meticulously still—is dangerous, smothered in bad boy, and served with a dish of me doing dirty things with him…on some days.

Others, I’ve fantasized about.

“When you gonna look up at me, Layla Jean? I know you know it’s me.”

I don’t breathe for several seconds because my mind and body are flooded with memories.

Good.

Hopeless.

Lustful and heated memories.

A soft brush along the underside of my chin has my focus fumbling for clarity. I fall upon a black sweatshirt that says Tennessee Tornadoes in burgundy, and that’s all the confirmation I need.

It’s him before I connect with a chiseled jaw adorned in dark stubble and hair, the faint scar on his left cheek from his daddy’s tractor when the fan belt snapped one summer and got him.

Perfect lips, straight nose—that I have no idea how he kept straight because all he did and does is fight—and those green eyes.

Pine green.

My favorite-colored eyes in the whole world.

Briggs Kerrigan.

My only childhood crush.

I wasn’t boy crazy like a lot of the girls I went to school with. They would trade crushes left and right, change their mind on a whim or a word, but Briggs Kerrigan was a constant in my diary.

In my life.

So much so that everyone in town sensed my little infatuation, but thankfully, they were merciful enough to keep it to themselves because of my so-called boyfriend at the time.

“Briggs…”

And that’s all I’ve got in a nutshell.

I can not believe he’s hunched down in front of me at the moment. That he’s staring back at me, amused, not in shock, and here.

In Magnolia Ridge.

A place he has not entered for years.

“Hello, Mrs. Kerrigan. It’s been a while.”

That nickname has me quickly rising to my feet, taking a well-needed step back because, well, I’m not ready to remember those memories, and I definitely came in here just for cornstarch.

“What are you doin’ here?” I ask quickly, needing a reasonable answer fast. “It’s baseball season. You should be playin’—”

“Got suspended.”

My brows furrow at the way-too-easy answer that’s more complicated than just that. “Briggs…what the hell did you do now?”

“Nothing I wouldn’t do again.” He lifts his shoulders dismissively as if he couldn’t get in more trouble, or it’s just another day in the office.

But this is his dream. He left me for it, and I fully expect him to see it through.

“I’m tired of hearin’ your name linked with his, Short Stop.

I told you before this was going to be a problem before you even pulled the trigger. ”

Shaking my head, I can’t do all this right now.

I have a million and one things to do at the bakery and barely anything marked off my to-do list for today.

He wasn’t on it.

And I’m not putting him on it.

“You need to check yourself into anger management or get into some sort of therapy.”

“Why? The only thing that pisses me off is the fact that Cruz Weston still thinks your relationship was real. That you guys were serious.” He cocks his head to the side.

“But you weren’t serious, right? He didn’t make out with you but that one time.

He didn’t slide his hand between your thighs and make you come like I used to.

And he definitely didn’t fuck you raw…did he, Layla Jean? ”

No.

But the fact that his puny brain believes any of those things means he’s either been hit in the head too many times or he’s having a psychotic break.

And I’m not a therapist.

Nor do I even know what to say anymore to get it through his thick skull that Cruz and I fake-dated.

Fake.

Not real.

Not factual.

Bogus.

“Briggs, get a life,” I drawl, proud of myself for getting a hold of my emotions and what I used to feel for this man. Maybe still do. “That’s ancient history.”

“Seems like yesterday to me.”

“Then you really do need therapy. Time is gettin’ away from you, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” he practically sneers with a semi-glower that makes me want to cower back a little in embarrassment. “You and I both know better that I’m much more than that.”

I scoff over that audacious comment. “Are you? Could’ve fooled me with the way you’ve been actin’.”

“Then unblock my phone number, Short Stop, and I’d be more than happy to tell you all the things I’ve thought about over the last two years.”

“Hard pass.”

“Well, I’m definitely not going to carry on with your surprise visits, wanting me to do certain things then.”

“Like you give a damn if I show up in Tennessee, Briggs. Or that you gave a damn that you’ve never tried to treat me as anything but some random girl who does.”

“I do.”

“You never asked me out on a date.”

“I don’t do dates. I do you.”

Oh, I want to slap the crap out of his face.

God sent him to this Earth to test us against the devil, and the devil is him.

Not only is he infuriatingly good-looking, cocky, and confident in himself, but he also believes I should just take those things and use them to resolve our issues.

Again, hard pass.

“And I do dates, Briggs. I like flowers and cute notes. I like being told someone misses me and that they look forward to seeing me—”

“I do miss and look forward to seeing you.”

I scowl and pluck the cornstarch I need from his hand. “Yeah, and when was the last time you’ve seen me, Briggs? When I showed up for you to—”

“The Troy art fair. You were trying to sell country folk brioche bread.”

He looms closer, eating up the space I put between us, and my feet don’t move. They feel like they’re encased in dry cement, and I’m drowning in the smell of nutmeg and cedarwood off his skin.

Yep, I’m going to die.

“All they wanted was your cupcakes, Short Stop,” he utters ever so softly, his voice brushing up my skin and making me break out in an outward shudder.

“Most of the men just wanted to get close to you to see if you’d offer them anything else, I bet.

But what’s cute, Short Stop, is that you thought brioche bread was going to be a big hit.

You know, shit out of the norm scares these people. ”

That was last month.

“How…were you there?”

“Had a free day.”

“You mean you took it to stalk me.”

He hits me with an exasperated look. “I was admiring. See…you like that shit.”

“Not when I don’t know it’s happening.” I mindlessly throw my cornstarch at his chest, and he catches it irritatingly with ease. “You think you’re cute, but you’re not, Briggs Kerrigan. I don’t know what you’re doing here now, but you may as well go back home—”

“This is home.”

“Really?” I spit out because he’s maddening. Everything about him has always driven me insane. “Because you haven’t been at your home since you bought it. It’s just been sittin’ there like an eye sore.”

“You don’t like our house?”

My head rears back because, just as I suspected, he’s had too many baseballs hit him in the head. Sometimes by accident and, I’m sure, sometimes on purpose.

In the league, you either hate Briggs Kerrigan, or you love him. There is no in between. When he was the bad boy in Magnolia Ridge, he carried on with that tradition and brought it with him to the big leagues.

Teams despise him. Reporters love him. And fans are split.

Even Magnolia Ridge is drawn down the middle when it comes to him and his professionalism.

And the ones that don’t like him usually cheer for his rival.

A rival that keeps us split down the middle, as well, and used to live here.

Cruz Weston.

“If you plan on spendin’ your suspension here, Briggs, good luck. You know how this town gets, and honestly, maybe it’ll keep you out. Give you a fresh little reminder of why you left in the first place.”

“I don’t need the reminder, Short Stop. I see it every time I run into your boy.”

My nostrils flare, but I refuse to have a yelling match with him in the middle of Georgie’s Groceries and stir up gossip. It’ll be on the streets before I hit them if I do.

So, I hit him back with something that’ll stop him from further commentary because I know exactly what buttons to push when he’s here.

“You gonna go visit your dad, my love?”

Briggs’s jaw ticks just once, but there’s no other sign of distress or frustration forming on his perfectly set face. “Only if you come with me.”

“I see him every Tuesday. He comes in for the—”

“Peach cobbler, I know.” Briggs erases some of the space between us, and my skin prickles at the new closeness. “Tell him I said hello.”

“You can do that yourself.”

“Then you’d already know the answer to that.”

I do.

But he needs to let that go and heal.

“I’m not your secretary or your answering service.”

“You’re right,” he agrees, then within my next blink, he’s right there. His chest barely brushing mine when he says in this deep, perilous tone, “You’re mine.”

My cheeks burn at the way he’s looking down at me like he’s going to eat me alive, right here and now, fellow customers and employees be damned.

I feel like I did all those years ago—at his mercy.

The aggressive pull that is always Briggs and I is so forceful that it’s hard to realize things as they are.

The air feels thicker.

My skin feels hotter.

And my pulse bubbles and sprints through my brain, giving me this feeling of being off my feet when I’m still physically grounded to the floor.

“I’m not available anymore,” I return evenly. “You’ve got a life, a career, and I’m sure a handful of women who’ll happily bend over for you—”

“Just not the one I want,” he deadpans, reaching up with the crook of his finger and brushing it along my jawline.

“I may have thousands of women who want me. But there is only one I’d let through security to fuck me silly.

” He thumbs my bottom lip, and my breath catches. “There’s only one who has owned me.”

He does this thing with his lips, almost like a cocky smirk, as if he knows he has me in the palm of his hand, and it immediately breaks the spell.

Slapping his hand away, that smirk grows even wider.

“I have enough going on,” I divulge with a sneer. “And the last thing I’m going to be dealin’ with is you.”

“Buttercup & Brioche,” he answers for me. “Really committed to pushin’ the French breads in your bakery, aren’t you, Short Stop?”

I wish I had a loaf to shove down your throat so you’d shut up. It’s going to waste away at my bakery.

“When do you want to go on this date?” he asks before I can turn and promptly leave Georgie’s Grocery.

I’ll go to the next town for cornstarch if I have to. I’m not staying here another minute.

“Date?” I repeat with a scoff. “I’m not going on a date with you.”

He shoves his hands into his jeans. “You said you liked those things.”

“Not with you.”

His expression hardens, but I really don’t care. He shows up, out of nowhere, and expects me to jump for joy and be at his beck and call?

Ha.

“Sensitive subject?” I taunt, giving him an arrogant little smile back.

“Nah,” he answers immediately. “Because, while I’m here, I plan on makin’ you all kinds of sensitive, Short Stop. Getting you alone sounds…like my kind of suspension.”

Right.

Like the last one.

Where he flew me out to Texas and…I mentally shake my head.

No.

Nope.

Never again.

“Keep dreaming,” I emit placidly. “I’m busy.”

“You waitin’ on Cruz?”

My face skews because, for the love of God, I am tired of hearing this man’s name. “Excuse me?”

“He’s comin’ home, ya know? You should read the damn newspaper, Short Stop. I know they still have stands of them.”

I don’t read the damn newspaper.

Don’t need to.

The town gossips about everything anyway, so I get the full scoop twenty-four-seven.

“Good for him,” I respond, even though I hope he’s not right on this one. Cruz didn’t like me, not even as a friend. He just loved getting under Brigg’s skin, and he did. I truly don’t think he ever wanted to help me have some sort of relationship with Briggs, but just to taunt him instead.

Over and over and over again.

It had everything to do with Cruz and Briggs being rivals their whole lives, and I was collateral damage.

I believed there was some good in him. And that only got me into bigger trouble with Briggs.

“Know of any good spots I can bury him?” Briggs prompts, dead-ass serious as he stares down at me. “I think it would be therapeutic, as you put it.”

“Murder would be therapeutic for you? I think they need to lock you up.”

“Would you visit so we can have conjugal visits?” My lips part to tell him absolutely not, but Briggs invades more of my space, and all words fall to the wayside like they never existed at all.

“Do you know that I still dream about you, Layla Jean? That I’ve been away for this long so I can be a better man for you? ”

My heart races excitedly in my chest while my brain swoons but a small part of me pings on how much we can not stand him.

At all.

However, I still grapple with his words because they don’t match reality. It’s confusing and, truthfully, I don’t know how or where to sit with it. I’ve spent so much time just trying to be that Briggs has become one of those things that’s never felt attainable to me.

Like a dream.

“Cornstarch.” I lay out my palm because I’m not going to run away, or am I going to waste any more time grabbing one ingredient to ruin my chores today? I have pies to make for tomorrow’s special and no time to spare.

“Kiss first.”

I rear back because—no.

Absolutely freaking not.

This idiot with his green eyes, that are still locked and loaded on me, stares at me like he’s waited forever for this. But he’s hot one second and cold the other.

I can’t make him out.

And, when I do, I’m still doing something wrong.

“Never mind,” I prompt, plucking another plastic container of it from the shelf. “There’s more where that came from.”

“Fuck, I sure hope so,” Briggs quips as I turn around to leave, burning a hole in my back because I can feel him allowing his gaze to move everywhere as I walk up to the register.

I need to Google how long his suspension is because I don’t trust myself out in the open where he can ambush me again at any point.

No thanks.