Hero She Hates

I get along with the entire Gibson family. I've treated their animals for years, and I'm closer to one of their wives than to my own blood.

And then there's Dean, who I've never once managed to be in a room with quietly.

When I lose the career I built my whole life around, the only second chance in reach is a coffee shop in the family's old train depot. There's just one problem: Dean wants it too, for a bar. And I'm certain they'll choose him.

Instead the Gibsons hand down a verdict I never saw coming. Both of us, or neither. His bar by night, my coffee shop by day, one lease, one renovation—shoulder to shoulder with the single person in this town who's ever gotten under my skin and stayed there. The boy who heard the worst thing I ever said at fourteen, and decided who I was without ever asking why.

We can't agree on a floor plan. We definitely can't agree on whose fault it is that we kissed each other senseless on a community theater stage last spring.

It's a deal with the devil. I sign it anyway.

Then we find an orphaned baby raccoon in the walls, and I watch six-plus feet of former Marine melt over a creature the size of my hand, and something I nailed shut a long time ago starts to creak open.

He's not supposed to be gentle. He's not supposed to be grieving. And he is absolutely not supposed to be the first person who ever asked me what really happened.

I can handle hating Dean Gibson. I have no idea what to do with the alternative.

In a town that takes you in, sometimes the one you can't forgive is the one who finally asks what happened.