Page 26 of The Score We Never Settled

“I’ve told him a hundred times I’m done.”

“You’ve got to sound like you mean it,” Fallon criticizes with this annoying amusement to her tone that I want to snuff out. “You’re just as obsessed as he is.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Zoe agrees. “You never told us what he did. Like…you completely shut down.”

My whole face lifts because, honestly, the nerve. “You mean like you did?”

She scowls at me. “Youknowmy story. I only cried about it for three months.”

“And she wrote several hate letters about it, too,” Fallon quips. “My favorite was?—”

“Shut up,” Zoe and I both chime in at the same time.

“I can’t wait for you to meet a guy that’s as equally as a pain in the ass as you,” Zoe gripes at Fallon. “And,no, dating Dodger doesn’t count. He was nothing but sweet and accommodating?—”

“He wastoonice,” she cuts in. “My God, saying anything bad about anyone in this town made me feel like he was going to arrest me for obstruction of something.”

“You act as though you run a cocaine ring at the farm,” I drawl.

Fallon wiggles her body as if I don’t know her well enough to be confident that she doesn’t. “Maybe I do.”

“You wish,” Zoe mutters. “You get zero excitement out there.”

“Drama-free zone,” she replies almost proudly, but she only fuels gossip in town because she’ll go a few days without it, and it just riles Maebelle and Agnes up. “Besides, you two have enough for all three of us combined. It’s wild.”

“Be happy to give you some,” I say honestly. “We’d be more than willin’ to share.”

“Hard pass.”

“Then I’m going to leave an open bottle of wine in your car and call Dodger to come pick you up so you can be the talk of the town for once.”

“Layla…” I hear Zoe mutter just as Fallon lets out a huge bark of laughter.

“Please do,” Fallon quips. “I’d happily be of service to keep the spotlight off you and Briggs Kerrigan for a while.”

“Stop sayin’ his full name like that,” I grind out. “It’s stupid.”

Zoe nudges my arm, but before I can turn my head to glance over at her, Fallon says, “That’s his name, isn’t it? Or should I start callin’ him by his nickname?”

“Dumbass?”

“I mean, he might be a dumbass,” my soon-to-be ex-best friend mentions. “And I hope, for your sake, of course, that he’s insane in the bedroom. He might be stupid, but that man is a hot piece of ass.”

I don’t even get to respond to that because, first of all, it’s none of her business. And, second, Zoe’s sharp little elbow plows into my ribcage, and I wince in pain.

“Ouch,” I croak out, snapping my neck in her direction to find her staring off somewhere. “What the hell, Zo?”

“Cruz Weston is on his?—”

“Layla Melrose, if you ain’t still the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. My God, woman, just put me out of my misery and marry me already.”

Slowly, I turn my head at that Southern drawl that always sounds like a jab and discover exactly what I didn’t want to run into so early since hearing the news that he was coming home.

Sandy blond hair, hollowed cheeks, and piercing blue eyes, Cruz Weston looks down at me with equal parts amusement and fake awe.

He’s nursing a beer in one hand, but the other is currently in a hard cast with red wrapping around it.