She looked to the ceiling and blew out a long breath. “I can’t trust you to do that by yourself.”

“What?” he asked, affronted. “You think I would mess up things for Grace and Charlie? You—”

“You don’t live here anymore. You said it yourself. You’re a different person now. You don’t know what this town needs.” She gave him a petulant look as she grabbed the full coffee carafe and started pouring the coffee into mugs. “Even if you’re trying to be helpful, you’re going to make it into some weird hipster, man-cave bookstore.”

Ash huffed and crossed his arms. “Did you just call me a hipster?”

She set down the carafe and pointed her finger at him, indicating his general person. “Darlin’, your photo could be in Wikipedia describing your hipster species. You just need to grow out the I’m-a-writer-who-stayed-up-too-late-and-forgot-to-shave stubble into a full beard.”

He glanced down at his outfit, a plaid shirt thrown over a T-shirt and jeans. “Hey, I could also be a lumberjack. Or a cowboy.”

“Lumberjacks and cowboys don’t wear skinny jeans and dark-rimmed glasses,” she said, grabbing sweetener packets. “Not that I’m surprised you’ve gone down this road. You were always a little froufrou. Even when you didn’t put egg on those mayo and mustard sandwiches, you’d cut the crusts off.”

He flipped her off, but the gesture didn’t have any ire behind it. It’d been a reflex, something he used to do when they were teens and she’d tease him. He dropped his arm to his side. “Maybe I’m just not as comfortable being a small-town bumpkin, like some people, darlin’.”

“Bumpkin?” She blinked in shock and then threw a packet of Sweet’N Low at him. “You take that back, Ashton Isaacs. I am a lot of things, but I am no bumpkin. Just because I stayed here and didn’t run away like some people doesn’t make me backward. It makes me loyal.”

His jaw flexed. “Stop saying I ran. I was always planning on getting out of this town. You knew that.”

“Yeah, well, you sure did it fast,” she said. “Right after you got what you wanted from me.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “What I wanted? Right, because what I wanted was to lose my virginity to someone who called me by another guy’s name and then kicked me out like I’d taken advantage of her. That was real high on my bucket list, let me tell you.”

She sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide. “Wait, your what now?”

He raked a hand through his hair. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

But Kincaid wasn’t one to let things go. He knew that. He couldn’t believe he’d let the virginity comment slip. She stared at him, coffee forgotten. “That was your first time?” She sounded horrified. “Ash. God. Why would you let that… Why would you…with me?”

He shook his head and stared at a scratch on the counter. “Who knows? We were both so emotionally fucked up that night that I don’t even remember how it happened.” One truth and a lie. “There wasn’t a lot of thinking involved. I think we both just wanted to stop hurting for a few minutes.”