Page 41 of True Ruin

Hmm, Dallas realized, getting jelly from the refrigerator, then searching for bread and peanut butter in the cabinet. The kid had set him up.

“Is that your mom’s latest creation?” He nodded to the covered tin that smelled like blueberries and heaven.

Sam made a gurgling sound in the back of his throat. “Mom’s always making me taste test. That’s what she calls it. Last week it was some moldy cake with raisins. Yuck and double yuck! I mostly just wanted a popsicle.”

Dallas wishedhecould be her taste-tester.

And it hurt, on some fresh, foreign level, to hear about their life as a family. Puzzles and pastries, things he wasn’t a part of and never would be. The dog Gabi was planning to surprise her son with, a houndish mutt she’d already made arrangements to adopt from a local rescue group. Sam had promised to name one, if it ever happened, Scooby, which seemed both predictable and impossible to argue with.

Dallas avoided staring at the pictures on the refrigerator, though one of Gabi from high school, in that cheerleading uniform, making a victory pose, tested him badly. Even if he’d said that hadn’t been what attracted him—and it hadn’t—no living, breathing male could argue with theoutfit.

Forget about glancing down the hallway toward her bedroom.

Sam blew out his cheeks, making weird noises and swinging his feet. He had a hole in one sock, a tiny toe poking through. “Did you know my mom before? Like in school?”

Dallas paused, knife in hand as he cut the sandwich in half. “Sure, well, a little. She was two grades ahead of me. I was on the newspaper staff, and she had her cheerleading stuff plus a lot else, so we didn’t cross paths much.”

Sam grimaced. “You’reyounger?”

Dallas thought that was an indictment, probably thanks to the sprinkling of gray in his hair that seemed to multiply by the day. So, he decided not to tackle it. Instead, he opened the refrigerator and searched for a drink. He grabbed a box with an apple on the front, then found a bag of chips in the cabinet. “Wow. Straw and everything in this thing.”

Sam rolled his eyes, taking the drink. “Juice box. They’ve been around, like, forever.”

Dallas made his own sandwich, found anotherjuice box, and sat across from him at the table, nudging puzzle pieces aside with his elbow.

Sam crunched thoughtfully on a chip. “Mom says you have a big job. Important.”

Dallas felt something ridiculous and warm open in his chest. “She said that?”

Sam nodded, munching. He squinted at Dallas, pointing to his glasses. “School newspaper?”

Dallas braced himself.

Sam grinned. “Nerd.”

Dallas couldn’t argue, and bit into the first PB&J he’d had in years.

“My mom likes nerds.”

Dallas perked up despite himself. “Really?”

Sam stuffed a bite into his mouth, then chewed with it open. “She’s reading this book. It has a couple on the front, hugging in these really old-timey clothes. Ick.” Sam made a grotesque kissy face. “She said she likes brains more than muscles, which is, you know, nerds. My dad has a lot of muscles, even in hisneck. Maybe that’s why they don’t live together anymore.” He lifted his arm and poked his nonexistent bicep. “I’ll be a nerdwithmuscles.”

Dallas’s heart clenched, right there in Gabi’s cozy yellow-and-green, still-kind-of-’70s kitchen. He would never understand how Theo didn’t want every second he could get with his son. Sam was incredible. If this were his kid, he’d never miss a minute he didn’t have to.

In addition to cheating on Gabi, being unreachable today and absent every other damn day gave Dallas another solid reason to hate the guy.

After the impromptu snack, after Sam showed him the pen marks on the doorframe proving how much he’d grown, Dallas got conned into turning on the TV, a show about a blue dog and a man who talked to furniture. He wasn’t sure what else to do, but he knew Gabi would be back any minute. She’d never let Sam hang for long.

“What’s the deal with this guy?” Dallas asked, five minutes later, from inside a blanket tent that had begun with architectural promise and barely survived the pillow fight that followed and was now sagging badly on one side. “Why does he talk to the furniture?”

Sam, stretched out beside him with his socked feet crossed, didn’t look away from the TV. Actually, one socked foot. They’d lost the other sock during the fight. “Because they talk back.”

On-screen, the blue dog barked at a mailbox.

Dallas frowned. “And what’s the mailbox’s excuse?”

Sam shrugged. “He lives there.”