Mom’s gone. My career is dead in the water. My arm will never be the same. And now, as if life hasn’t pissed on me enough, I’ve somehow managed to crash into the most infuriating woman on the planet—who, as luck would have it, is the same woman who ghosted me in Italy.
Galeana Monroe.
Her name feels strange on my tongue, too formal, like it doesn’t belong to the memory I have of her: wet skin, flushed cheeks, and the kind of mouth that made me forget every fucking coherent thought.
And now she’s here. In my town. Hating me.
What the hell did I even do?
The sound of tires crunching on the driveway snaps me out of my thoughts. A car door slams, and a moment later, the front door swings open. Malerick strides in, radiating that authoritarian-annoying energy I hate so much. My oldest brother is so much like our father—zero patience for anything and always convinced we’re a bunch of fucking idiots—Dad’s words—destined to screw everything up.
“Great,” I mutter under my breath. “Just who I wanted to see.”
He shrugs off his jacket, tossing it onto the back of a chair, his gaze landing on me with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. “So,” he starts, his voice flat, “how long did it take you to fuck up this time?”
I glare at him. “Nice to see you too, Malerick.”
He arches a brow, his expression dripping with disapproval. “You’ve been in town for what, three minutes? And already you’re the talk of Main Street. Rear-ending the new girl in town? Bold move, little brother. But I’m not surprised, you’ve always been such a fuck-up.”
See, just like our father. Passing judgment without knowing the full story, never missing an opportunity to knock me down, and always acting like he’s some untouchable paragon of virtue.
“It was a fender bender,” I snap, sinking onto the couch. “Barely a scratch. And she’s the one who hit me.”
“Uh-huh.” Mal crosses his arms, leaning against the doorway. “And the part where half the town saw you flirting with her in the middle of the street? Was that part of the plan, or were you just feeling reckless?”
“I wasn’t flirting,” I say, though even I don’t believe it.
Mal smirks, that infuriating twitch of his lips that used to piss me off when we were kids. “You’ve always been a terrible liar, Ledger.”
I let out a sharp breath, running a hand through my hair. “It wasn’t like that. She hit my car, and I?—”
“And you decided to be a dick about it?” Mal interrupts, shaking his head. “She’s the new girl in town, and you’re already sniffing around. You’ll never change.”
“She’s the one who rear-ended me,” I insist. “And if she’s new, maybe she should learn how to fucking drive.”
Mal snorts. “Yeah, because that’s the mature response.”
“Why do you even care?” I snap, standing. “What’s it to you if I piss off the new girl? Which I didn’t do. It’s like she saw me and decided to hate me.”
I of course won’t tell him that I already know her. That we had a very heated one night truth or dare chat . . . and she fucking ditched me.
She.
Fucking.
Ditched.
Me.
And now she’s the one offended. How does that make sense?
Mal’s jaw tightens, his expression shifting to something darker. “Because, Ledger, the last thing we need is you making enemies right now. Somehow people still don’t like the Timberbridge brothers. We fucked up, you know that? By not coming back when the town’s sweetheart—Mom—needed us. Did you know she died because of us? That we killed her?”
His words hit like a gut punch. I stagger under their weight, my fists clenching at my sides.
“We didn’t fucking kill her,” I growl, the words snapping out of me, but they don’t feel as strong as I want them to. My voice cracks, betraying the tightness clawing its way up my throat.
“She died because of fucking cancer. Stage four pancreatic cancer. By the time she found out it was already too late. It was everywhere, Mal. And the stubborn woman refused to tell us until we—all of us—were in the same room.” I stop, unable to force out the rest. The image of her frail body, her tired eyes, and her too-thin hands gripping mine is burned into my mind.
