Security was preparing to drag a drunk out of Manny’s two days later.

He was kicking and screaming. The cops had just arrived, their blue and red lights circling through the window. Brandon was arguing with the guy, trying to talk sense into him, ignoring the bottle of whiskey he’d brought in. But that wasn’t all.

A couple had started fighting at table three.

We all saw it happening. They came in every Saturday, but even I didn’t know why. The girl was pissed every single time, her arms crossed over her chest. The guy looked beaten down, his shoulders hunched. And though they were the same height, he seemed bent over, permanently.

Tonight, it seemed she’d had enough. She flung her breadstick to her plate, shoving away from the table. As she got up, her chair fell into the back of a child. The kid started crying. His mother got upset, while the woman went storming outside.

And we can’t forget the breadstick, because it didn’t stay on the plate. That woman flung it with such force that it bounced off and landed in a guy’s hand as he walked past her table.

He blinked, shocked to find a breadstick in his hand, and stopped watching where he was going for a second—long enough to walk into one of my servers, who then dumped the tray of food she was carrying onto the back of the angered woman who’d started the entire chain of events.

I saw it all, and without blinking an eye, I grabbed the woman’s arm and urged her in the direction of the bathroom, murmuring, “We’re so sorry about that.”

She was writhing with anger, so I patted her arm and added, “And don’t worry, that kid you hit? I won’t tell his mother you’re back here, or the guy your breadstick hit. Accidents happen, right? I’m sure a gift certificate will smooth it over.”

She tensed. I felt her getting ready to argue.

I hushed her, soothingly. “I’ll talk to the mother on your behalf. I’m sure no damage was done. I’ll make her nice and happy, get her out the door before she can think about a lawsuit.”

Cruz, the night manager, saw us coming. He took in her messy attire and opened the bathroom door. I steered her in, patted her arm, and offered one more reassuring smile.

“I have your back, sweetie. No worries.” A wink, a little click of the tongue, and I watched as the anger began to fade and the corners of her eyes pinched in worry.

I closed the door as she turned on the water.

Cruz shook his head in amusement.

“What?”

He pointed down the hall to the back section of Manny’s. “I saw the whole thing, and you didn’t pause for one second.” As he walked away, he added under his breath, “Legend, Heather. Legend.”

It took a second before it clicked.

I saw it all, stepped in, and handled the customer most likely to cause a problem for Manny’s later. And I did it without thinking.

It was second nature for me.

I was protecting my home, like protecting my family. And almost like it was cosmic timing—or the fact that it’d been two days since I last saw him—Channing walked in the front door.

Family. Channing was it, whether I wanted him or not.

His gaze met mine, and like almost every time I saw him, my body began to react.

Sometimes I felt hatred. Sometimes pain. Sometimes relief. Not this time. This time I wanted him. It might’ve been only two days, but I hungered for him, and knowing Cruz would handle things for me, I headed straight for Channing.

He was standing by the side door.

Seeing the look in my eyes, he began grinning that damn half-smirk, which showed his dimple. Cruz glanced toward me. He’d been speaking to Channing, but Channing wasn’t paying attention.

It was him and me. No one else.

The world had ceased to exist, and the world knew it.

Cruz nodded as I approached and said, “I’ll close tonight.”

I didn’t respond.

Channing kicked open the side door and moved over to let me pass. As I walked by, his hand went to the small of my back and he said for me, “Appreciate it, Cruz.”

Then we were outside.

His hand fell away.

We didn’t speak. We walked past the teenagers lounging in the chairs I’d once used for my smoke breaks. We ignored the people enjoying the picnic tables in the back. I led the way up the porch and into the front of my house.

Channing spoke once we were inside. “Pack a bag.”

I stopped on my stairs. “What?”

He was watching out the door, his lips pressed tight. “Let’s go to my place.” His head swung toward me, his eyes darkened with intent. “I don’t want to hold back. Not tonight.” He didn’t move, but I felt the room shrink. The air left, and he added, “I want to fuck you hard.”

Lust exploded in me.

It’d been a small ember, but his words struck the match. Now it was a bonfire, warming me instantly, and I nodded, swallowing on a dry mouth. “A bag it is.”

As we left the house, I knew he’d wait for me as I locked the door. I knew he’d wait for me to lead the way down the stairs. I knew he’d touch my back, a small touch of support even though both of us knew I didn’t need it.

There was so much I knew he would do, and it was that feeling, knowing another like the back of my hand, that I relished.

I was in sync with him.

When we got to his truck, I got in on the passenger side. He went to the driver’s side and without a word, the engine started. The windows rolled down, because he knew I liked the wind versus air conditioning. And because he knew I liked a certain way, he drove that route out of Fallen Crest.

When he pulled into his driveway, he circled to the back of his house. The front was littered with motorcycles—his and his friends’—but as we went inside, I was glad to hear no one was there. We were alone.

Channing pulled the door closed behind me and went to the kitchen.

I followed after him. “Bren’s not here?”

He snorted, filling a glass of water from the fridge. “She either sneaks in or she’s with her crew. You know how it is.”

That right there.

To crew or not to crew. This was our fight—one of the constants that’d been with us forever. And I knew what I was starting, but I decided to start it anyway. The words were out almost before I realized I was going to say them.

“No, Channing.” I spoke low and quiet. “I don’t know.”

Yes, we were going into the emotional stuff we usually avoided. I had to, but I didn’t know why. It felt right. At that moment, it felt not right to go straight to the sex, though I still hungered for him.

His eyes found mine over the rim of his glass. He lowered it slowly. His throat moved as he swallowed, and I moved to the kitchen island to have something to lean against.

“Come on, Heather.” His statement was a rasp.

I shook my head. “I wasn’t in a crew in high school.”

“Neither was I.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes because there was so much history in the room with us. All the old anger, resentment—it was all rolling around in my stomach, and I struggled to keep it contained. It was right there alongside everything I loved about him too.

I glanced to the floor. “Moose and Congo became your best friends in fifth grade. Your crew started then, and don’t lie to me. You know it as much as I do.” I waited. Tense.

He didn’t say anything, slowly putting his water glass back into the fridge, and then he turned and leaned his back against it. His eyes were smoldering again. His arms crossed over his chest a moment before they fell and slid into his pockets. The movement drew his jeans down an inch, and I could see the muscles there, the ones I knew like the back of my hand.

God.

He was gorgeous.

His eyes were fierce, his cheekbones partially shadowed. His shirt fit perfectly to his chest, showcasing what years of training and fighting had given him. But he wasn’t just looks. And he wasn’t just rakish charm.

He cared for and protected the oldest crew in Roussou, the one he’d formed to help my friend. He did it for me. He didn’t give two shits about them. They were outsiders. They weren’t Roussou, and that’s how it was in Roussou, but he’d given a shit about me. He did it for me.

He formed the first crew, and the crew system was born. It’d been like that ever since.

I understood the reasoning behind them.

Roussou was hard. You had to be tough to survive, but there was another bit I didn’t understand. That was the part of me that wasn’t Roussou, where I was Fallen Crest. The part of me that loved Channing, but wasn’t in his crew. I could never bring myself to join.

And it was that part that was pushing at him now.

“You’re okay with her running around with those guys?”

“No,” he shot back. “But I understand how it is. I was never home either.”

The heat traveled up, warming the back of my neck. “It’s not normal, Channing. She’s a teenager. She needs structure.”

He scoffed. “You’re starting with me about this? You ran your house because the only place your dad left Manny’s for was the horse track. And you know my history. We didn’t have structure.”

“She’s your sister. She’s hurting.”

“I’m aware.” His eyes darkened, and he pushed off the fridge. He stalked toward me. His voice was low and eerily smooth. “I want to yell at her. I want to scream at her. I want to ground her and lock her in her fucking room, but I can’t. Because she’s just like me. I push, and she’ll go. She won’t come home, and what am I supposed to do then?”

A headache formed behind my temples, because this was how we were. We’d switched roles. If I pushed him to be more of a parent to Bren, he reminded me of the consequences. I would fall back and remember this wasn’t my fight. And even though I was in his house, and I was going to sleep in his bed, we were technically not together. Bren was not my business.

And when I remembered that, I felt all the same emotions I always did.

I shouldn’t be here.

Channing was trying to parent a teenager. I had to step back. If I saw Bren, I needed to be the chill girlfriend I’d always been. She didn’t need my input either, because Lord knows she hadn’t been listening to any from Channing. Why would she listen to me?

I didn’t know Bren that well. I should have. I’d been around all of Channing’s life, but it was his life, not hers. He hadn’t been around her for so long either. He’d left their home around the time their mother was getting sick and not long after that she died. I knew his dad had been an asshole to him. Channing would never tell me the details of that, but it’d been bad. Really bad.

After Channing left, he never moved back.

“Maybe I should just go home.”

He sighed, coming over and putting his hands to my shoulders. “No, Heather. Stay.” His voice gentled, and he pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me, his head burying in my neck.

The spark reignited. The sizzle was refreshed, and just like that, it was Heather and Channing again. The separation was gone.

He rocked me a little, tightening his arms, and his lips brushed against my skin. “We fight, then we go to bed. It’s what we do; I don’t want you to leave. Please don’t leave.”

My heart broke a little. I should’ve moved out of the way, but now that I was in his arms, I knew I wouldn’t do that.

I was weak.

Was it weakness? Was that my problem?

Whatever it was, my arms were up and around his neck. I pushed up on my tiptoes.

I whispered against his chest, “I love you.”

He dropped a kiss to my neck and whispered, “I love you too.”

He picked me up. He carried me to his room.

I don’t want to say we fucked. It’s a hard way to say it, but sometimes I was hard. Sometimes he was too. And tonight, that’s how we were. It wasn’t soft, gentle, or beautiful. It was rough. It was demanding.

Channing claimed me. He answered a primal need inside him. I knew it because I saw it as he was deep in me, and I recognized it because it was in me too.

He was mine. That’s just how it was.