Page 5 of The Fall Back Plan
“Call me Jolie,” I correct Lucas.
“Jolie McGraw,” he says. “It’s been a minute.”
“Twelve years, actually.” That was the last time I’d tutored him in the high school library. The last time he’d tortured me with his scorn while I did a job I couldn’t afford not to take.
“So you’re Karma LLC?”
“I am.”
“Didn’t know you were back. Congrats on the opening.”
WhywouldLucas Cole know I was back? We’d never been friends. I hadn’t bothered to keep up with Lucas once he graduated—or possibly even dropped out of—Harvest High. I hadn’t kept up with anyone from high school. It’s not like I could forget it, but I could—and definitely did—leave it behind.
“Thank you. Can I help you with anything?” It’s a clear invitation to leave.
His forehead furrows. “That’s my line. Let me know if Shane Hardin or any of his thug buddies turns up. We’ll handle them.”
It’s rich to hear him call anyone else a thug. I glance at his badge before meeting his eyes again. “You must have better things to do than handling customers that no one asked for your help with, Sheriff. Mary Louise can show you out. She’ll do any handling around here.”
Ry’s eyebrows shoot up, but he knows how much I hated working with Lucas Cole in high school, and he says nothing.
Lucas freezes for a second, like he’s not sure how he’s supposed to respond to his dismissal. Then he gives me a nod and touches the brim of his hat. “Evenin’, Jolie.”
He gives Mary Louise knuckles on his way out of the bar. She meets my eyes and gives a small smile and a head shake before she resumes her spot.
The rest of the grand opening goes well. Only about a dozen more people wander in by the time we close at midnight, but we’ll have a bigger crowd tomorrow as other locals see pictures from tonight in their feeds. By this weekend, we’ll be full.
After everyone is tipped out and Ry and I wipe everything down, we stumble upstairs to the apartment over the bar. Ry is living there rent free, and I’m crashing on his couch for a few days until I close on the house I bought.
It takes a long time for me to fall asleep. Between the rowdy bar guy and the sheriff who threw him out, it’s the sheriff who’s got me stressed.
How in the world did Lucas Cole ever end up on therightside of the law?
Chapter Four
Lucas
HarvestHollowisthekind of place where your past is always present. You’re always running into people you grew up with. Sometimes I have to arrest former classmates who probably feel like they’re in the Upside Down when it’s Lucas Cole, of all people, slapping cuffs on them. I run into past teachers at the grocery store and old neighbors in restaurants. They knew me when, but most of them are kind enough to forget it.
Clearly, Jolie McGraw isn’t one who’s forgotten, and I don’t blame her. I’ve thought of her over the years, because if ever there was someone who hadn’t deserved my teenage contempt, it was Jolie. I’ve owed her an apology for a long time, but whatever I thought might have happened to the mousy sophomore who’d tried to haul my butt through geometry as a senior, she is thelastperson I would have expected to see in Harvest Hollow looking flat-out beautiful.
She’d put on badly needed weight, fleshing out her scrawny frame with curves a man couldn’t help noticing, her dark hair much longer than the short cut she’d kept it in during high school. Her makeup wasn’t heavy, but she’d applied it well, drawing attention to the long lashes around her dark eyes and to her full mouth.
Good for her. Everyone should get a chance to redefine themselves. A chance as often as they needed one, in fact. I wouldn’t be sheriff if people hadn’t made space for me to grow up and change. Not thateveryonedid, I think as a group spills out into the street from the restaurant ahead. I recognize the mayor’s voice because no one loves to hear himself talk more, so he always does it loudly to make sure everyone else can hear him too.
He’s talking about the high school football season. “Of course, as mayor, I’m impartial and only want to see these young athletes give it their best, but go, Bobcats!” This is met with laughs from the suck-ups he’s with. I recognize a local real estate agent and the restaurant owner in his entourage.
“Evenin’, George,” I say, knowing it will bother him that I don’t use his title. I stop, not because I want to talk but because the mayor will expect me to.
“Good to see you, Sheriff,” Mayor Hinder says. This is where he’ll try to look important by bringing up some point of city business to remind our audience that he has a Very Important Job that means he gets the sheriff’s ear. “On patrol? Thought you got yourself elected out of that grind.”
“Checking on the new bar,” I say. “Some of the old Sullivan’s crowd were trying to start something tonight, but it’s settled.”
“Did you find out who owns it?”
I’d heard through the grapevine that the mayor had been right peeved when he couldn’t find the name of the true owner of Karma LLC.
“Jolie McGraw,” I tell him. He frowns like he’s trying to place the name. “She was a couple of years behind me in high school. Probably Hailey and Holden’s class.” Those were his twins, both of them grown, married, and living elsewhere.
