Page 3 of True Ruin

No Surprises–Radiohead

Promise, South Carolina

The air smelledof kettle corn and spun sugar, sweet enough to coax up childhood memories Gabi Wilder knew better than to trust.

She locked the portafilter into the espresso machine and glanced across the square as a gust sent copper-and-gold leaves skittering over the pavement in the sharp October light. Promise had gone all out for the first crisp weekend of fall. Hay bales ringed the courthouse, a bluegrass band tuned up beneath the gazebo, and strings of lights were looped between the old oaks. The Chamber of Commerce had rebranded the Harvest Festival as the Autumn Jubilee because apparently everything sounded better with a new name.

Booths crowded Main Street, including one the town gallery had sponsored for the high school art club. Nearby, a pumpkin-decorating contest was guaranteed to leave the sidewalks slickwith orange guts by nightfall. This year, Gabi was here as a business owner, a fact that left her both thrilled and terrified. She’d spent the past month running her café, Wilder Grounds, out of a leased food truck while the True brothers finished restoring her space in the old cotton mill. All part of her plan to build a life that didn’t include her ex-husband and his bullshit. The café was more than a business. It was hers, built from her passion for baking, the one quiet joy she’d held onto as everything else fell apart.

She wasn’t leaving town just because her marriage to Theo was over. Her son had roots here—his school, his friends, the life they’d built—and a custody agreement tied her to Promise. Gabi had already watched her father leave without a backward glance. She wouldn’t uproot her son because another man had failed her.

Although trusting one was starting to feel like betting against the weather.

Sooner or later, the sky always broke.

Gabi brushed the coffee grounds from her palms, harder than necessary, as Lainey leaned in and murmured, “Tell me I’m wrong, but the QB’s hairline has retreated another inch. Somebody get that man a hat before he commits to a comb-over.”

Laughing, Gabi tamped the grounds and slid the handle into place, fragrant steam curling upward with a hiss. Theodore Donnelly, with his thick, dirty-blond hair, had led the Promise Cardinals to the state championship two years running while she cheered from the sidelines. Most days, she wondered what she’d been thinking marrying him. He’d never been a good guy. Just thefirstguy. Getting pregnant at nineteen had changed everything. Forced the rest.

Lainey, one of her new friends—the old ones having chosen Theo—propped a hip against the truck’s dented metal counter,looping a tattered dishrag around her fist. “I didn’t vote for him for homecoming king, though I guess everyone else did. I never trusted that fake smile.” She bared her teeth in an exaggerated grin. “Too big, like a gopher’s. Car salesman or what?”

“I wish you’d told me,” Gabi murmured, knowing exactly why Lainey hadn’t. The Style Council—named after the band—hadn’t included Lainey or her sister-in-law, Fontana. They were Gabi’s people now. Both had been smarter than she was, marrying into the True family instead of choosing a man who treated fidelity like an optional clause.

“Oh, wow, he came after all,” Lainey whispered, nearly sloshing her cappuccino as she leaned out for a better look. “There’s your main event for the evening.”

Gabi turned, and her world fell silent.

The man sat on the lowered tailgate of a battered Ford, a bottle balanced on his thigh, his body arranged in an unthinking sprawl that snagged her eye before the rest of her caught up. There was an easy grace to him—long, loose lines, the carelessly unhurried sweep of his gaze across Main Street—but something sharper lived beneath it, a flicker of restlessness that didn’t belong to someone simply killing time on a Saturday afternoon. A Soundgarden T-shirt hugged his broad chest above faded jeans split along the seam to fit over the cast on his lower leg. His crutches lay crossed beside him, abandoned as if he’d forgotten they were there.

He shifted, and his aviators caught the fading sun, throwing it back in a bright, hard flash. His dark brown hair had been shorn close, exposing a pink scar at his temple. When it grew back, she suspected it would be thick enough to sink her fingers into—and hold on.

Gabi’s pulse tripped as she ticked off the attraction boxes in her mind.

Broad shoulders. Beautiful mouth. A face sharpened by whatever had left that scar.

God help her, he washot.

The sudden flicker of desire, after months of feeling dead inside, sent a traitorous thrill through her. She’d missed that pulse of need, that raw want. Missed it enough to fear it might be gone forever.

“Dallas True,” Lainey whispered.

Gabi went still.

No. It couldn’t be.

“The prodigal brother returned two nights ago, limped through our door without a word he was coming.” Lainey’s lips curved over the rim of her cup. “Justin’s thrilled, of course, not that they’re really talking. Hardheaded fools. Fontana and I are working on them, but it may take a while. Emotions run deep with those two.”

Dallas True.

Gabi’s mind drifted to the last time she’d seen him, during that restless summer before she left for Chapel Hill. She stared, struggling to reconcile this man with the boy who’d written editorials for the school paper pointed enough to make the principal grind his teeth. A too-thin teen, all elbows and attitude, with a face that had been a killer even then. The town hadn’t known what to make of him, and Dallas hadn’t bothered to make it easier. He’d walked into Promise as if he knew exactly who he was, as if he needed no one.

Now, Gabi wasn’t sure she trusted anything she’d believed back then. Because she’d been wrong about almost everything.

As she watched, he tipped the bottle to his mouth, the movement unhurried, a ghost of a smile curving his lips as he scanned the crowd. His gaze passed over her without a flicker, though there’d always been one before. And Gabi—newlydivorced and interested for the first time in ages—spilled wet coffee grounds down the front of her sweater.

Fontana barked a laugh and reached for a stack of napkins, shoving a handful into Gabi’s grip. “That’s one way to get his attention.”

“Oh, my God. I’m an idiot.” Gabi dabbed at the spreading stain, mortification warming her cheeks. “And I don’t want anyone’s attention. Where would I find the time? I’m practically single-momming it while trying to launch a new business. My biggest thrill is managing to catch an episode ofAlly McBeal.”