True Fate (True Men #1)

Chapter 1

chapter one

Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden

A Small Southern Town, the ’90s

LAINEY

Thirteen years, and Promise still looked the same.

Lainey Prescott took a cheerless sip, wishing a good cabernet could turn her hometown into somewhere, anywhere , else. Bathed in the neon glow of the town’s lone bar, the weight of past nights—hauling her father into the back of their Country Squire after yet another drunken escapade—pressed in, dull and familiar.

All she’d wanted then was to be a normal teenager.

But after her mother left, the burden of caregiving had fallen to her, right up until the day her father died. Now she was back. Only this time, she wasn’t walking away from the love of her life without a second glance, because there was no one to leave.

She forced a smile because that’s what she’d been taught to do, but it arrived rough around the edges. One of her father’s scraps of wisdom floated along with it.

A smile can win a thousand bets, darling girl, even if it’s phony.

Once the daughter of a bookie, always the daughter of a bookie, she guessed.

The crowd at Promise’s Azalea Festival swirled around Lainey as she glanced down Main Street, where floral flags fluttered from lampposts in the gentle spring breeze. A pulse of bluegrass from the trio in the square drifted past. Muted, indistinct, like her emotions. If she could take in the town without the weight of bad memories, it might actually be…cute. Quaint, even. Charming in that small-town Southern way that made outsiders sigh—and insiders plot their escape.

“Lainey, are you in there?”

She shook her head and turned, keeping her shaky smile in place. Fontana Quinn—her college roommate—had enough on her plate, raising a teenage sister and trying to get her landscaping business off the ground. Lainey hadn’t done a great job of staying in touch, and unloading her disaster of a life didn’t seem fair to someone who’d become almost a stranger.

Even if she could really use a friend right now.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Fontana asked, reaching into the worn leather purse hanging half-off her shoulder. She pulled out a tissue and pressed it into Lainey’s hand.

Lainey blinked as a tear slid down her cheek. Dammit . “Sorry, Tana, for being like this.” She ducked her head and dabbed at her nose, then her lips. “Being back here…it’s hitting me hard.”

“I could tell something was wrong the moment you stepped off the plane, but I wanted you to talk to me without me having to force you to.” Fontana’s blue eyes softened, her lips quirking into one of the irrepressible smiles Lainey remembered. “I get tired of being the pushy one in every relationship in my life.”

Lainey swiped a knuckle beneath each eye and fought back a laugh. “I think the telling requires more alcohol. And pushy looks good on you. It always did.”

“Perfect, because I have a plan,” Fontana said, her voice lifting with excitement, mischief creeping in at the edges. “We’ve got beer and wine tents open all weekend. There’s even a tasting tomorrow night. Promise has gotten pretty hip, Lainey. With that haircut, you’ll fit right in.”

Lainey stuffed the tissue into the pocket of her threadbare jeans and pressed her lips together until the urge to cry dissolved like smoke in the mist. Her father had taught her something of value after all. “ You belong. I never did, if anyone even remembers me. I only moved here junior year, but it was the longest we stayed anywhere, so this is my adopted hometown.” She ran a hand through her hair, the pixie cut still unfamiliar. “And I chopped off six inches because I needed change of the monumental variety.”

Fontana flicked a piece of straw from her tie-dye shirt. Paired with her flowing gingham skirt, the mismatched outfit perfectly captured her laid-back vibe. “Me, belong? Are you kidding? As usual, I showed up covered in dirt and grass. What can I say? Landscaping isn’t as glamorous as it sounds.”

Lainey drew a breath scented with sunsets and gardenias, air that would turn thick as velvet come summer. As she met Tana’s vivid blue gaze, she realized she needed to tell someone how the pieces of her life had slowly come undone.

Her situation boiled down to six words: cheating ex, derailed career, savings gone.

Which pretty much left her out of options.

Though she couldn’t— wouldn’t —tell a soul that one of those options was returning to the town she’d left behind. She’d even had the passing thought to ask the man who bought her uncle’s mechanic shop for a part-time job. She’d worked her way through high school doing minor repairs and still knew her way around an engine, and then some.

But pride was pride. And she wasn’t that desperate. Yet .

Fontana lifted her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes from the fast-fading sun. “Let’s have some fun this weekend. We’ll gossip, drink, eat crappy fried food, and sleep until noon. You can tell me about the one who got away, because I know someone did. And I’ll tell you about the losers I’ve dated, none of them getting away fast enough .”

Lainey stared into her empty cup. “Actually, there was someone. The summer before college. I never told you about him. He left, and I stayed. End of story. One of us had a future, and it wasn’t me. Though, sometimes, in the dead of night, when the house is creaking and the world stands still, I think of him. And I...I wonder.”

Wonder if I made a big mistake.

Fontana’s lips parted as she spun Lainey to face her. “The summer after high school? Just before we met? Lainey, who was it?”

“No one you’d know. He moved away. He had a scholarship, and I had a dying father to take care of. A community college two towns over to attend.”

Lainey hadn’t thought of Justin True in months.

Scratch that—days.

No, hours .

She’d thought of him on the plane, when she caught the scent of sandalwood. Again on the drive into town, while passing the high school. And last week, in her lawyer’s office, where an abstract painting hung—one that looked like something Justin would’ve created back in the day, in his studio over his parents’ garage.

Lainey sighed and traced a crack in the cement with the toe of her sandal. When she first started dating Alex, thoughts of Justin had surfaced often enough to leave her angry. And confused. Couldn’t she have a relationship without the ghost of one that ended years ago intruding?

Forget the dreams.

That summer haunted her nights more often than she cared to admit.

Although she’d ended the relationship, he’d lit out of town two days before her, cutting off any chance to tell him she’d fucked up, that she hadn’t meant it.

She never meant to hurt him. But two headstrong teenagers from wildly different worlds had always felt like a disaster waiting to happen. Her life had been unraveling, a spiral of instability, just as Justin’s was finally finding its footing. She would’ve dragged him down, kept him stuck in a place filled with nothing but misery.

Back then, chaos ruled.

Her father’s customers stopping by at two in the morning, begging for more time or more credit. Jars of cash hidden in the freezer. Her old Snoopy lunchbox buried beneath the wisteria bush in the backyard, filled with God knows what. When all she’d wanted was a home where she didn’t have to worry about the police showing up.

Hell, by the time she was fifteen, she could post bail as efficiently as a petty thief. A cold jar of cash always enough to get her father out of trouble—at least for a little while.

Justin’s situation had been as bad as hers: an alcoholic father who turned violent after his second drink, and a mother too weak to defend herself or her children.

He’d been lucky to land an art scholarship to Dartmouth, a real chance to escape.

He and his brothers, Ransom and Dallas, along with his cousin, Campbell, had taken off as soon as they had their high school diplomas in hand, eager to leave the turmoil behind.

As far as she knew, none of them had ever come back.

The day Justin offered to stay behind, attend the only school she could afford—while they lay tangled in her twin bed, a milky summer breeze ripping in the open window—she knew she had to let him go.

Back then, she’d convinced herself it was for both of them.

Who found their soulmate at seventeen, anyway?

Still, after another relationship with a man she was fairly sure hadn’t loved her, Lainey wondered if she’d underestimated the strength of her bond with that vulnerable boy. If she’d underestimated her youthful recognition that she’d found someone special.

Grinning, Fontana snapped her fingers in front of Lainey’s face, then spun her toward the wine tent. The line curled around it like a ribbon. “How about we try merlot this time?” she whispered in her ear.

Lainey blinked, emerging from the fog.

A shout from a boisterous group of teenagers gathered in front of a window filled with paintings caught her attention, and she stepped off the curb.

Laughter and music faded as the rosy glow of the night bled into gray.

She stopped cold, staring at the sign above the door:

True Art.

* * *

JUSTIN

Justin raised his glass and glanced at his agent over the rim. He’d forgotten what it was like to host visitors from New York. They couldn’t get over the endless cotton fields or the gorgeous women with honeyed accents. Inevitably, he ended up apologizing for an indiscretion he hadn’t benefited from to keep neighborly peace.

Once, he’d even sent flowers on behalf of a moderately famous poet who’d never given a woman a damn thing in his life aside from an STD. That marked the last time Justin invited a writer to his South Carolina gallery. Painters had been jettisoned from the list the year prior. Sculptors, the year before that.

Agents were looking to make the cut this year.

The gallery door opened, letting in the echo of the bluegrass trio playing outside. Looking back, Justin tilted his head to dodge the glint of fading sunlight cutting through the window.

His heart stuttered as he polished off his gin between two tight breaths.

He didn’t believe in miracles, coincidence, or fate. Work, art, and sex topped his list most days. Sleep smuggled somewhere in-between.

Once, he’d believed in fate and had his guts ripped out for the trouble.

By the woman who’d just walked into his gallery.

Justin tracked Lainey Prescott’s progress as conversation swirled around him. She looked different, older, more refined in a floor-dusting linen sundress that quivered with each step. If he were to sketch her, adding to the thousands he’d already done, he’d add chalky grooves at the corners of her eyes and mouth—signs of experiences he hadn’t shared with her. The cutest goddamn shag cut he’d ever seen tickled her jaw as she turned, her tour carrying her past his cousin Campbell’s photography exhibit and into the row of paintings that were mostly his. Her hair was a shade darker, more burnt caramel than freshly-shorn wheat.

His gaze dropped to her left hand. The absence of a wedding ring struck him with a jolt he feared like hell was relief.

She halted before a painting he’d finished three months after leaving Promise. One of the oldest in the gallery, it was a personal favorite he couldn’t part with.

Would she recognize the scene? Or notice the title on the brass plate?

She tilted her head in contemplation, and it brought to mind the first time he’d seen her, draped over the hood of Alvin Shaw’s Corvette, grime-spattered jeans clinging to her slender legs, that exquisite wealth of hair pulled into a high ponytail, the oil-streaked ends flicking the rounded curve of her breast.

He’d stopped by her uncle’s garage to have an irritating hiccup in his engine checked out, and instead, given his heart to the new girl in town.

From the first moment, he’d been utterly lost.

Fuck, if it hadn’t taken years—and one too many nameless encounters—to forget her. His need for Lainey Prescott had once felt etched into his skin, permanent and inescapable, like the tattoo he’d gotten during a drunken night out after landing his first gallery opening.

Shaking off the blistering memories, Justin nodded to his agent, Brent, though he had no idea what they’d been talking about.

Maybe Lainey wouldn’t even recognize him.

The earring was gone, along with the wallet chain and the messy haircut he cringed to remember. He’d grown three inches his freshman year, and now only wore Chuck Taylors and Doc Martens when he was in Brooklyn. No more black eyes or bruised jaws from unleashing his impulsive temper. The chipped front tooth—courtesy of a punch he hadn’t ducked—smoothed into perfection. The acid-washed jeans were out, though he still had a soft spot for a good flannel now and then. A successful career as an architect, part-time art dealer, and hobbyist painter had brought with it dentistry, tailored clothing, and a personal trainer.

And unlike those troubling high school years, he had all the canvases he desired to slap paint on.

Lainey trailed her finger along a sculpture of Dionysus as she passed it, the god’s arms raised to the heavens. The carefree gesture sent a twist of heat shooting from Justin’s heart to his dick—a surge of lust laced with all the desperation and love, the highs and lows, of the most unforgettable summer of his life.

Misery and absolute fucking pleasure.

Gazing into those pewter eyes of hers would only buy him a ticket to the past.

When he was quite happy in the present.

“Those two by the statue,” Brent murmured behind the event flyer he’d rolled like a scroll. “Introduce me.”

Justin wondered how many gins it would take to get him through the night. “Down, boy. You’re here to sell art, remember?”

“I’m an excellent multitasker, True.”

Justin exhaled slowly. Jealousy didn’t have a place in his life, it simply didn’t. “Just don’t scare off the clientele.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” With a pointed glance toward Lainey, Brent added, “The petite one in the silky black number is the most interesting thing I’ve seen all week. Do you know her?”

Justin swiped Brent’s glass and knocked back the scotch—not his drink of choice, but this night suddenly called for stronger measures. His car would be staying in town, he decided. Good thing he lived close. “I did. Once.”

An arm circled his waist, and Justin glanced down to see a set of midnight-blue nails settle into the crisp folds of his shirt. “Definitely that one, darling,” Samantha murmured, withdrawing her hand when Justin didn’t cover it with his own. “The tall one looks like she’d eat you up and spit you out. Goodness, is that straw in her hair?”

Brent lifted the scrolled flyer in a lazy salute. “Sam, my girl, I’d enjoy being eaten up and spit out.”

Justin thrust Brent’s glass at him, patience thinning. “Sell art. Make money. Please . This festival will cycle more people through here than we’ll see all year. I promised Oliver I’d unload at least one painting. He’s getting desperate.”

Reaching to finger the glittering opal nestled in the hollow of her throat, Samantha gazed around the room, her expression less than enthralled. “Justin, when my editor asked me to do a piece on your South Carolina gallery, I thought it might be fun—like that time in Charleston when we previewed the Spoleto exhibit behind the scenes. A New York Magazine -meets- Southern Living spin. Magnolias and mint juleps.” A lazy breath slipped past her lips. “When this town needs an art gallery about as much as it needs a nuclear spill.”

Justin turned away as the familiar ire circled.

He could make fun of his art-in-the-cotton-fields folly anytime he wanted—and he often did—but he’d be damned if an outsider was going to ridicule what he’d built here. A gallery that was proving successful, with a lease costing one- tenth what he paid for his one-bedroom walk-up in Prospect Park. On days when the subway was shoulder to shoulder, when he stepped in dog shit walking home, when his umbrella blew inside out and the annual winter ritual began—cracking open windows because the radiators cranked 24/7 for months—he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t come back where he belonged.

Where he had roots .

But facing that meant confronting a complicated past, one he wasn’t sure he was ready to face.

He’d grown used to thinking more and feeling less .

Brushing aside Samantha’s hand and her apology, he crossed to the bar his brother Ransom had built last summer for events just like this.

And there she was.

The past, stitched into his present.