Page 17 of True Ruin

Gabi fiddled with a button on her jacket and asked the question she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. “Why did you leave the auditorium? Was it when the light popped? Likeat the festival, when you dropped the beer bottle during the fireworks?”

She was letting him know she’d been watching him that night, just as he’d been watching her. She hoped he understood how rarely she let anyone in these days.

His expression tightened, and he waited a beat, weighing what to do with her, if she had to guess. Then he sighed and swiveled around on the bench, straddling it, thighs flexing. “For years, I’ve been cycling through time zones, jet lag, insomnia, adrenaline rushes. Writing, editing, reporting—then doing it all over again. My system is, quite frankly, fried. After this last skirmish, I was asked, politely but firmly, to take a two-month sabbatical. A fact I haven’t told my family yet, if you don’t mind keeping it between us. Though Justin knows something is up.”

She shook her head. “Why are you telling me?”

Dallas shrugged a broad shoulder, looking as bewildered as she felt. “Before I moved here, I lived in a home where emotional outbursts were common, so I learned that sharing things wasn’t advisable. Honesty only added to the drama, that sort of thing. Then I finally opened up when I got here, and one of my brothers shut me down for it—the one I needed most. Just so you understand why it’s hard for me—” He scrubbed the back of his neck with his fist, another tell. She’d seen him do it before. “I hate to say this because it sounds so California, but my therapist said I read safety as danger, and that’s why getting close to people unnerves me. It’s also why I chose a hazardous career, which makes sense. A bit Sisyphean, though, isn’t it?”

Gabi let the silence settle, giving his confession the space it deserved. She wanted to say something that wouldn’t sound silly, but nothing came. So she offered him something safer. “I wanted to thank you for the book you left in the mailbox for Sam. We started reading it last night.”

“Every boy needs a copy ofThe Hobbit.” He pressed down on one ivory key. “I’m pretty sure that’s a rule.”

He was truly the most fascinating man she’d ever met. Theo had been one sad puzzle piece; this man was a thousand. “Will it unnerve you if I admit I want to sleep with you?”

Dallas covered his shock well, except for the sudden tension in his hand as he struck a hard C-sharp. “I suddenly feel like I’m trapped in a John Hughes plot. Lonely teen infatuated with the prom queen comes home to find she wants him back.”

“Were you infatuated with me?” Gabi whispered, her pulse beating hard in her ears.

Pushing the bench aside, Dallas rose to his feet. “Sparkle, you know I was.”

SIX

All of Me–Billie Holiday

He could have slowedthings down. Asked if she was over Theo. Asked her what, exactly, she wanted from him. But he didn’t.

Dallas didn’t want to end up in somePretty in Pinksequel, if one had ever been made, with him as Duckie, returning ten years later to finally win the girl. But bad idea or not, Gabi Wilder was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She had a stunning smile and a body that made it hard for him to breathe. The fluttery skirt didn’t help, soft and long, skimming her hips. Neither did the newly lightened hair curling around her face, different from the night at the festival in a way he had no business noticing and, as a guy, couldn’t begin to describe.

And then there was everything else. She was kind. A terrific mother, which hit him right in the heart. He genuinelylikedher. Just as he had at sixteen, only this time he had facts to back up the attraction.

Dallas didn’t move fast. He couldn’t, not with the ankle. But he grasped her hand before she could change her mind andpulled her around the piano. Three uneven steps back, his good leg doing the work, until his back hit the wall beneath a poster of the circle of fifths. “Hold me up, Sparkle,” he whispered, already lowering his mouth to hers.

Gabi cupped his jaw and rose to meet him, her lips parting beneath his.

The kiss caught fast, heat and urgency turning reckless, until they were pressed hard together in a classroom that smelled of chalk and floor wax. Not giving a damn where they were, Dallas wrapped an arm around Gabi’s waist and dragged her closer, using the wall for balance.

He only knew he needed to sate twelve years of hunger.

“I’m going to ruin you for anyone else,” she whispered, the dare sounding like a promise.

Then she made good on it, taking his earlobe between her teeth and biting down—and he was lost.

His hand found her waist, partly to steady himself. Any intention of being careful lasted about half a second before his palm slid higher and closed over the plump curve of her breast. She made a sound against his mouth, one hand braced on his hip, the other fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, shaking his precarious balance.

He should have been thinking about how little he really knew her. That he was leaving in two months. That applause was rolling down the hallway, signaling the end of the play. Instead, Dallas thought about the tiny freckle above her lip, her fingers hooked in his belt loop, and the way she pressed her nipple against his palm as if she’d been waiting for him to touch her there.

Gabi’s unleashed passion stole his words, and heneverlost those.

The distant murmur from the auditorium, their increasingly ragged breaths, and the hum of the fluorescent lights gave wayto the current racing between them. Her heeled boots gave her just enough height to tuck into him, and when she rocked closer, grinding slow and deliberate, his body went tight.

It occurred to him as he was about to pop his button-fly that she might not have been with anyone since her divorce. That he might be going too fast. “Have you…since?” he asked against the curve of her neck.

Her head tipped back, and she hummed a reply that tunneled beneath his skin.

He took it for a no.

But then?—