True Ruin

Fall in love like it’s 1997.

When one secret kiss could last twelve years—and second chances had to happen face-to-face.

From USA Today bestselling author Tracy Sumner comes a steamy small-town grumpy/sunshine romance about a battle-scarred journalist, a single mom rebuilding her life, and the hometown neither of them expected to need.

Dallas True has spent the past decade chasing stories through war zones—anywhere but Promise, South Carolina. Now a broken ankle and forced leave have sent him back to the town he escaped, where everyone still remembers the wrong-side-of-the-tracks newspaper geek he used to be.

Especially Gabi Wilder.

Back then, she was the town princess: bright, popular, impossible. Dallas was the younger boy with the secret crush—the one who fell first and never expected her to look his way.

Until one wild kiss behind the high-school bleachers changed everything.

Now Gabi is divorced, raising a son, and fighting to open Wilder Grounds inside the True family’s restored cotton mill. Dallas is supposed to recover, keep his head down, and leave for Cairo before anything in Promise can matter.

Instead, he’s writing Gabi notes, showing up for her son, and falling for her all over again—harder, deeper, and first.

Their rules are simple: no promises, no future, and no getting close enough to matter.

But between handwritten notes, intimate dinners, late-night confessions, and one stolen weekend in the mountains, their no-future arrangement begins to feel dangerously like forever.

Dallas has always known how to leave. Gabi has already survived one man who made her feel small. And if this second chance is going to become a love story, the man who fell first will have to prove he can stay.