Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,357

dying. I’m dead. I’ll never work again. I’ll be the new cart lady in front of Hallowed Grounds that everyone buys coffee for just to pat their own backs as if they’ve truly contributed to the world. I’ll be Hollow Brook’s token psychotic bag lady who screams at the top of her lungs all day long, but little will they know I’ll lucidly be cursing a small majority of the very people under this roof for this collision course my life is on.

Low shakes her head as a single tear glides down her rosy cheek, and it’s all for me. “I’ll help you get a job. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes to get your life back on track. You’re a good person. I’m sure that veteran who lost her ability to hear in a roadside bombing had it coming.” She clamps down on her lips so hard they turn white as paper.

Raven scoffs at her bestie because, obviously, she’s not feeling nearly as hormonal or human this evening. “Where are you possibly going to find her gainful employment in the entire tri-city area? Social media suicide is a contagion in this day and age. She’ll be unemployable for at least a decade. Maybe longer. The Internet has a way of keeping this kind of thing fresh and alive.” She shifts her dead eyes to mine. “You’ll be a meme by morning.”

I suck in a sharp breath at the thought.

“She has a job,” a deep voice strums from behind and I spin on my heels, ready to stab the overgrown frat boy at the other end of those deep vocal cords once he makes a crack about me working on my knees. But it’s not an overgrown frat boy. It’s Axel. “Here. At the bar. You can waitress. Prime hours. Tips are good, I promise.”

My heart thumps once as if it were trying to kick-start back to life. Just hearing him make yet another promise makes me numb on the inside for an entirely different reason.

“The hell she’ll work here.” Low scoffs. “Lex has too much pride to sit under the thumb of her ex.” She does her best to shoo him away like some obnoxiously oversized horsefly, but my eyes remain locked over his. There has always been something unfairly hypnotic about those gray lenses of his. Such a rare, complex color, and that about sums up our entire relationship, complex and rare and in the end very much over.

“I’ll do it.” I hear the words stream from my lips before my brain can process what’s just happened.

“What?” both Raven and Low cry out at once.

“You heard me.” I force the words to eject from my lips as I openly scowl at the budding elation in Axel Collins’ eyes. “I’ll take it.”

Axel

She’ll take it?

My body goes rigid as I try to maintain my composure. Lex is like a cat, a false move and she’ll slash your throat and gouge your eyes out in one slick maneuver.

“You’re kidding, right?” Low whispers to her. “I mean, this is the guy you hate—the ex that sent you running for the hills. You wore an entire spike strip the last time you were in here in the event he even looked at you crooked. You do realize he owns the place, don’t you?”

“I don’t care.” She glares at me as if I were the one who uploaded that demeaning video. “You’ll stay out of my way if you know what’s good for you.”

My lips twitch as I struggle to keep from smiling. “And you’ll be on time and courteous and respectful to the clientele. You can start tomorrow at four. You’ll work till closing and you won’t complain because you’ll be grateful for the chance to keep a steady diet of green infused into your bank account.”

Lex gasps so loud even the band stops the music for a brief second just to assess whether or not she’s having a cardiac episode.

Both Low and Raven whisk her off to the other end of the bar. Brody steps into my line of vision and blocks her from my view. “What the hell? Dude, you weren’t even nice to her. Do you always sweet talk the ladies like that?”

“No, I save all my sourpuss moves for Lex. Sarcasm is her love language.” Actually, it’s something far darker than sarcasm that keeps the cogs in her wheels churning and turning. “She’s had a rough life.”

“Join the club.” Brody folds his arms across his chest as we