Page 3 of Broken Reins (Whittier Falls #4)

Three

Lily

I punched the dough down with both fists and watched the flour puff up around my wrists, snowing over my knuckles and the battered steel table.

The bread fought back, elastic and sticky, pulling at my fingers.

I pressed harder, my whole body leaning into it, but my brain wouldn't shut up long enough to let my hands work in peace.

Every time I blinked, I saw that man's face again.

Ford Brooks.

His name sounded like a brand of expensive whiskey or a line of boots, but all I could see was blue eyes and messy hair and a haunted kind of smile.

I could still feel the pressure of his bicep under my palm.

Weird how a ten-second brush with someone could stay on your skin hours after you left them behind on the street.

The bell over the bakery door chimed, and my stomach did a stupid, traitorous flutter.

I looked up, half-expecting to see him standing there again, stubble and bruises and all, but it was just one of the regulars—Mrs. Martinson—clutching her knitting bag and an enormous appetite for lemon bars.

Relief and disappointment battled it out inside me, and it was hard to tell who won.

"You're gonna break that dough's spirit, Lil," Sutton called from the pastry case, where she was rearranging a pyramid of chocolate chunk cookies for maximum temptation. "Or yours. Either way, we'll have flatbread tomorrow."

I wiped my brow with the back of my wrist and shook off the flour. "Sorry," I said. "Just trying to keep up."

Sutton shot me a sideways glance. "You seem jumpy," she said, like it was a compliment. She slid the cookies closer to the glass, then came over and leaned her hip against my table. "Is it just me or is it extra weird today?"

"Must be something in the water," I said, which was the classic Whittier Falls way of saying mind your business.

"Or someone in the air." Sutton smirked, her eyes sharp as a tack. "Word's already out, you know. About Ford. Damon punched him in broad daylight and three separate people live-streamed it on TikTok. My brother's a Neanderthal."

I tried not to smile, but couldn't help it. "It was a good punch."

Sutton nodded, proud and exasperated all at once.

"He's been dying to do that since 2006." She started plucking a sheet of wax paper from the stack and lining it up with the edge of the case, like the world might explode if it didn't match perfectly.

"You know, it's kind of wild," she continued.

"Ford grew up wrangling cattle on his daddy’s ranch, but he was always a genius with computers. The rumors about him are insane."

"What kind of rumors?"

Sutton looked around the near-empty bakery, then dropped her voice even lower.

"That he sold his tech start-up for, like, a billion dollars.

An actual self-made billionaire, not just trust-fund bullshit.

And that he lives in a glass house in California with an infinity pool and one of those fridges that has a computer screen built in. "

I let out a quiet laugh but my mind reeled with the knowledge.

A billionaire? There probably wasn’t a single thing we had in common.

Not that it mattered—I didn’t know the man, and probably never would.

But a flutter in my chest told me I was kidding myself if I wasn’t a little disappointed.

I tried to appear indifferent. "People here think anyone who has a fancy fridge is rich.”

"Yeah, well, people here also think Ford is the devil incarnate." Sutton shrugged, then shook her head, as if she didn’t want to elaborate. "Or they did, anyway. I think they mostly forgot about him after all this time. Showing back up here out of the blue will sure do a number on ‘em."

I pressed my fingers into the dough again, feeling the air bubbles pop. "He seemed . . . normal," I said.

"Right?" Sutton lifted her brows. "I mean, he is. Or was. But he never belonged here, not really. My mom used to say he had city eyes—always looking for the next big thing."

"He has nice eyes," I said, and immediately regretted it.

Sutton's mouth twitched up at the corners. "I noticed you lookin’," she said. "You notice a lot, Lily. Even when you don't want to."

I kept kneading, wishing I could press Sutton's teasing down into the lump of dough. "I just . . . don't see the point in judging someone for being different," I said. My voice sounded thin even to me.

"Nobody gets to be different in Whittier Falls," Sutton replied, half a joke and half an apology. “But it’s not just that. The way he left . . . I don’t know. It didn’t seem fair.” I wondered what Sutton meant by that, but she didn’t elaborate and I was too focused on seeming nonchalant.

She reached up to fix her ponytail, then cocked her head at me. "Are you into him?"

"What?" I fumbled the dough, flour billowing up into my face. "No. I mean—no. He’s just . . . interesting."

Sutton grinned wide, all teeth. "You're allowed to have a crush, Lil. The world won't end."

"I barely know him," I said, a little too loudly. Mrs. Martinson glanced up from her lemon bar in surprise. I lowered my voice. "And anyway, why do you care? Are you into him? Y’all seemed pretty comfortable with each other." I immediately regretted the last words.

Sutton laughed. "No way. He was like another smelly, annoying brother to me growing up. But I do care about him. Always did, even when he left us all for bigger and better things. And I’m curious because you deserve something interesting.

Not just . . ." She trailed off, looking at the dough.

"Well, not just this," she finished softly.

The bell over the door went off again, and we both turned, but it was just a UPS guy with a clipboard. I let out my breath, long and slow, and started shaping the dough into rolls, spacing them out on the baking sheet.

Sutton moved back to the pastry case, but not before throwing one last look over her shoulder. "You know, Ford had his reasons for leaving. I gotta believe he has his reasons for coming back. Maybe you should give him a chance if the opportunity arises.”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't help the heat creeping up my cheeks. "Don't you have a bakery to run?" I called after her.

She stuck out her tongue and went to ring up Mrs. Martinson for a to-go order, her laughter echoing in the air like cinnamon dust.

I shaped the last roll and tucked it into the pan, then stared down at my flour-dusted hands. Sutton was wrong about one thing. I didn't deserve something interesting. I just wanted something safe. And nothing about Ford Brooks seemed safe.

But the memory of his blue eyes still burned under my skin, bright as a warning.

I tried to ignore it. But some things, once you touch them, just won't let go.

By seven, the bakery was empty except for the hush of the old refrigerator and the sweet scent of the day’s work.

I wiped the last streak of icing off the counter and leaned into the clean surface, letting my forehead rest against the cool laminate.

The buzz in my head hadn’t faded; every time I stopped moving, it filled up the silence.

I did my closing routine on autopilot—wrapping trays, sweeping the flour into neat piles, double-checking the ovens.

All the while, my brain replayed the last few hours in obsessive detail: the way Ford’s eyes had found mine, the way his laugh curled around his words, that raw second when he cringed and then tried to smile like nothing hurt.

And under it all, a thread of worry. That look in his eyes, like he’d ran from here for a reason.

I shook it off, flipped the lights to low, and locked the front door.

Whittier Falls at dusk was a watercolor—the sky going deep blue at the edges, a band of fiery orange over the peaks, shadows pooling in the street.

Beauty at its most raw, most natural. I slipped my jacket on and pulled the hood up, even though the mid-September cold hadn’t really bitten yet.

As I walked down Main, my boots tapping a rhythm on the cracked sidewalk, I could feel eyes on me from the inside of every lit window. The entire town was an open-concept living room; everybody watched everybody. And tonight, I was sure, half of them were thinking about Ford Brooks.

I made it two blocks before the voices reached me.

I was passing the Dusty Barrel, its windows fogged over and its sign buzzing like a swarm of hornets.

Three men huddled outside, boots kicking at the curb, their heads bent together.

I tried to cross the street before they noticed me, but their voices carried.

“—never shoulda come back, not after Ty. You remember what his dad said about the trial?”

Another voice, slurred but certain: “There wasn’t no trial. He just skipped town.”

“He skipped town because he was guilty as sin,” the first voice insisted. “They found Ty’s truck burned out in the gorge. Only person saw him last was Brooks.”

A third voice, softer: “Nobody ever proved anything. Boy’s had a shit life.”

The first voice again, loud enough to make my shoulders jump. “Shit life, my ass. Boy’s a billionaire, they say. Anyway, it don’t matter. Once a snake, always a snake.”

I kept walking, eyes locked on the sidewalk. I knew if I looked up, I’d see them staring, daring me to disagree, or maybe daring me to add my own bit to the story. I was nobody to them. As much of a nobody one can be in Whittier.

No, I was just the former battered wife. The single mom. The weird girl who worked for Sutton and never showed up to church picnics.

Still, the words stuck. Ty Higgins. Ford Brooks. The gorge.

I shivered and wrapped my arms tighter around myself. The men’s laughter faded behind me, but the rumor buzzed like a wasp in my ear. I tried to remind myself it didn’t matter—not to me, not to my life. I had enough to worry about without collecting someone else’s history.