Page 11 of Faron (The Golden Team #8)

Faron

Inside, a teenage server with purple hair and combat boots poured scorched coffee into cracked ceramic mugs like she was punishing them for existing. The scent of burnt bacon and fryer oil hit me like a punch to the gut—nostalgic in the worst way.

Blue slid into the booth across from me. She pulled off her hoodie, revealing a black tank top that clung to the kind of shoulders I remembered kissing in the dark, back when all we had was borrowed time.

She caught me staring. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.

“Stop undressing me with your eyes,” she said flatly.

I smirked. “I’d rather do it with my hands.”

She let out a bark of laughter—raw and sudden—drawing a side-eye from Purple Hair, who clearly wasn’t paid enough to care.

“You haven’t changed,” she said, shaking her head.

“Neither have you. Except maybe the bossy doctor thing.”

“I was always bossy.”

“Fair.”

She stirred sugar into her coffee with slow, deliberate motions, eyes fixed on the cup like it held answers to questions she wasn’t ready to ask.

“You still smoke?” I asked.

“Nope. You still drink too much?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“You still gonna pretend you didn’t miss me?” I asked.

She gave a short laugh into her mug. “Faron.”

“Blue.”

We didn’t speak while the server slammed down plates—eggs, bacon, toast blackened at the edges. I didn’t care. I would’ve eaten nails just to sit across from her again.

Halfway through the meal, she spoke.

“Why’d you really come find me?”

I looked up, chewing slowly. “I wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And now I want to see you naked. Again. A lot.”

She choked out a laugh, fork clinking against her plate. “Still subtle as ever.”

I let the silence settle again before I said quietly, “I missed more than just the sex.”

She stopped, fork mid-air.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

She gestured to the chaos around her—the fluorescent buzz, the cheap coffee, the streak of dried blood on her shirt from a patient earlier.

“This is my life, Faron. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s nonstop. I can’t promise anything.”

I nodded. “No promises.”

“But…” Her voice dropped to something quieter. Something private. “If you want to come home with me tonight… I won’t stop you.”

Heat curled low in my gut. Seven years apart, and she still knew how to undo me with ten words.

“You got a bed now, or should I lay you out on that clinic table again?”

She smirked. “Bed. Lock on the door. Big progress.”

I reached across the table, brushed her wrist like I had in the cave. Her pulse jumped.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here, Blue Davis. Before I change my mind and make another speech.”

She threw a twenty on the table and grabbed her keys.

This wasn’t love. Not yet.

But it was a start.

And I’d take it.