“Let him know I say hello,” Dane offers. “And that I still think he’s not fit to lick the tar off Satan’s ass.”

Luka in the bakehouse with a grin and a blush, a candy cane half hanging out of his mouth as he says, “She’s amazing and she doesn’t even know it. She’d give you the sweater off her back.”

“You won’t be able to get rid of me, I promise.” “Even if it goes bad.” “It’s not gonna go bad.” “Luka.” He grins at me. “It’s not gonna go bad,” he says again, voice softer. “I want it notarized.” I sniff and run a shaking hand under my nose. “We can get it notarized. Alex does that, right?” “Yeah.” I nod. “Okay.”

I press my fingers under my eyes, forgetting that one hand is still clutching a piece of zucchini bread. There’s an obvious answer here. It just—it scares me to death. “There it is,” Beckett mutters, and it takes every fiber of my being not to hurl this bread at his face. “It just hit her.” “I don’t know why you’re freaking out. It’s a simple

Luka uses the hand on my neck to tug me backward, positioning his body half in front of me. I peek over his shoulder to see Sheriff Jones sitting on the front porch of the old police station, a shotgun resting casually over his knees. “Those are good instincts, son.” He tips his hat at Luka but keeps one hand firmly on his gun. “That’ll be a point

I’m going to love her in all the quiet ways, the slow ways, the loud and obnoxious ways. My heart has been moving steadily in that direction since she fell down the steps of the hardware store, right into my arms.

“Say we were dating for real.” His gaze softens, hazy in the light of the TV, brown eyes warm and reassuring. A half smile tips up the corner of his mouth, like the thought pleases him. Like he can’t possibly imagine anything better.

She once came over, saw a half-used jar of store-bought marinara in my fridge, and looked me dead in the eye as she threw it in the trash.

There’s this bar in the city that Luka and I like to go to. The beer is cheap, the floors are sticky, and when I kick the jukebox in the bottom right corner, it’ll play Ella Fitzgerald thirteen times in a row exactly. It’s perfect.