“Why don’t you come on over here and warm me up, darlin’?”

I blinked at the giant belly squeezed between the cracked vinyl of the booth and the Formica table that held the remains of a rather large breakfast and winced on the booth’s behalf.

“Sure thing.” I smiled sweetly, but it wasn’t real. I wanted this man’s tip, but if he called me darlin’ one more time I wasn’t sure I could plead innocent at the trial for his untimely murder. I was three seconds from snapping and losing all sense of sanity.

This was a typical day at Rosie’s Diner and Donuts To Go. Locals simply referred to one of the best eating establishments in town as Rosie’s, but I preferred the full title since it was so utterly ridiculous. Donuts to go?

And they were only sold that way at Rosie’s. Donuts were served through a drive-thru window on the side of the small, square building. If you had enough time to sit down, you had enough time for a full breakfast. Or that was Rosie’s philosophy anyway.

This was my place of employment. And had been since I was fourteen and old enough to wash dishes. I’d been promoted to server when I’d managed to grow boobs a few years later. And now, at the not so tender age of twenty-five, I was used to Mick ordering double bacon with a side of double entendres.

I tilted the coffee pot in my hand and filled his mug to the brim. “Can I get you anything else this morning?”

His leer revealed two missing molars and a long history of chewing tobacco. I swirled the coffee around the glass pot in my hand and held my smile steady.

He made a slow perusal of my body, starting at my red Chucks, up and over my bare legs that could stand a good shave, to the stained ruffled, half-apron tied around my waist and settled somewhere between my boobs and my chin.

“That’ll do, honey. Just come back and check on me from time to time.”

“Will do,” I told him before giving him my back. I knew his gaze moved to my ass and let out a slow sigh of surrender. Five more hours of this shift before I could get the hell out of here. I could survive it.

I could.

It wasn’t the pet names, although those could be intensely annoying, but they also came with the territory. Mick was a farmer. He had farmed all his life. He was approximately the same age as the dirt on his old-as-dirt farm. He couldn’t help all the honeys and darlin’s and sweethearts. In his diesel-addled brain, he thought they counted as compliments.

It wasn’t even the ogling. I could handle that easily enough. Not that I enjoyed it, but I was tough enough to be secure in my womanhood without being threatened by an old pervert’s wandering gaze. To be honest, I judged him the same. The difference was, he appreciated what he saw in me. My judgment of him went the other direction.

What bothered me about this place was the general feeling that everything I did or said or thought was on display. In this town nothing went unnoticed, nothing was unseen. But rarely was anything interpreted correctly.

However how I treated Mick and the rest of my customers this morning would be whispered and murmured about and dissected until someone had noticed I gave Shirly Benjamin the evil eye when I delivered her eggs. And then there would be a made-up reason cycled through town why I hated Shirly Benjamin so much. And was it because her son, the high school science teacher, had turned me down for a date? Or did I have a secret thing for Mr. Benjamin?

Over the course of the day, this tiny rumor would spread through town until I was thought the worst of and my reputation for the trailer trash bad girl was reinforced a hundred times over.

Nobody would ever stop to consider that I gave Shirly Benjamin the evil eye because she complained about everything—like how her eggs were cold, even though I’d brought them straight from the kitchen.

I walked around the counter and settled the coffee pot back on the burner. We’d hit that mid-morning lull that occurred between the breakfast rush and lunch time.

Mick hung around because his two sons had taken over his farm five years ago and he didn’t have anything else to do. Glancing over at him, a heart-attack-waiting-to-happen, I felt a twinge of pity. He’d worked hard his whole life. Sun up to sun down days for years—for more years than I had been alive. And yet, now that the work had been taken away from him, he had nothing left to do with his life except sit at the same booth every single day for hours on end, talking county politics with the other old men that wandered through Rosie’s, and sexually harassing any woman that happened by his table.

The bells over the front door jingled. Another good old boy swaggered in, dirty white t-shirt under stained blue jean overalls, muddy work boots on his feet and a straw dangling out of the corner of his mouth. He was half the size of Mick and mean as hell.

He was also my favorite.

His mouth twitched when he saw me leaning on the counter. “Ruby girl,” he murmured as he slid onto the stool across from me. “How you been?”

I smiled gently at him, before reaching over to fill up another mug of coffee. “Oh, same, RJ. How are you?”

He answered my question by ignoring it. “Any good gossip this morning?”

I chuckled at his bold question. Rosie’s was the social hub in the small town of Clark City, Nebraska. Anybody who was anybody stopped by before lunch for a cup of Rosie’s stellar Colombian roast and a heavy dose of gossip. And then stopped by for supper or a piece of pie afterwards for updates and breaking news.

Lord knows what they had to talk about in the span of a few hours. There just wasn’t that much going on in this town of fifteen hundred people.

I mean, to normal people there wasn’t much going on. The crazies that lived here thought otherwise.

“Dolly Farrow was seen leaving Blake Upchurch’s house early this morning.” RJ raised a bushy white eyebrow, so I sweetened the pot. “In the same dress she was wearing last night at Pug’s.”

“My, my, my, Ms. Farrow,” RJ chuckled. “The chief of police.”

I pressed my lips together to hide my smile. Everybody knew that Blake Upchurch was a womanizing manwhore that had been given too much power too soon.

To be clear, any other twenty-eight-year-old man could handle as much power as the local chief of police wielded in a town of this size, but not Blake. He was one of those guys that thought his high school days of playing starting wide receiver on the football team still entitled him to free drinks whenever he was off duty. But Dolly Farrow had been chasing him since high school. So, good for her.

“Anything else?”

Feeling guilty for having spilled Dolly’s secrets, I busied myself with finding him a menu. “Not that I’ve heard. You know nothing exciting ever happens here.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ll have you know, I disagree. I’m exciting,” he argued effectively. “That happens every single day.”

RJ was in his late sixties, still lean and muscled from a lifetime of hard labor and leathery from the same amount of time spent beneath the harsh sun. He was one of those old guys you would assume lived on a fixed income and ate dog food to save money. But I knew for a fact that he was one of the wealthiest farmers in Western Nebraska.

He’d worked as hard as humanly possible to build an agriculture empire out here in the middle of nowhere. And instead of going the way of suits and smarminess, he’d stayed true to his roots and his business.

His dedication to his farm was partly because he knew nobody would ever work as hard as him. He’d told me as much over nine years of coffee at this counter. But I also knew he was an extremely paranoid man. He didn’t trust anybody in this town to run his business.

I thought that made him savvy.

I didn’t trust these people either.

It was only in the last several years, after a stroke, that he’d let his son take the reins. Mark Thrush was as diligent and badass as his dad. RJ didn’t like letting go of the company he’d spent his life turning into a gold mine, but he was proud of his son.

Another fact I knew from countless cups of coffee.

Grinning at him, I pulled out my order pad. “It’s true. You’re the most exciting thing in my day at least.”

He winked at me.

“Okay Mr. Exciting, what are you having today?”

He stared at the menu with hard eyes. “Aw, hell, it’s Monday, let’s get a little wild. I’ll have the Denver omelet, double order of bacon, and hash browns on the side.”

“Slow down there, slugger. Are you sure that’s on the approved list of foods?”

He leaned forward with a steely look glinting in his brown eyes. “I said it’s Monday, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want Mark coming down here to chew my ass.”

Since the stroke, RJ’s kids had been all over him about eating healthier. He was muscled and lean, but the man ate like Garfield the Cat.

And I suspected that Mark had installed a bacon breathalyzer in his car. If I ever gave in and let RJ order what he wanted, Mark and his wife Sherry would haul down here to scold me for spoiling their dad. Then they would pull the, “You don’t want him to have another stroke, do you, Ruby? Or worse?” card and I would crumble.

I played a hard ass, but I was a softy when it came to this old man.

RJ’s teeth ground together, but he relented. “Fine do the omelet with the damn egg whites. Will that make you happy?”

“One order of hash browns,” I countered. “And no bacon.”

His jaw moved back and forth as he worked his teeth against each other. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I hated that sound. But I stayed quiet. “Can I at least have the Canadian variety?”

Nodding curtly, I filled out his order ticket and slid it through the kitchen window to Reggie, one of Rosie’s day-shift chefs.

“How’s that boy of yours, Ruby?” RJ asked as I moved down the counter to swipe the glass of the pie display. When I first started working here eleven years ago, everything was inexplicably sticky. The tables, the vinyl on the booths and stools, the countertops, the floors, the bathrooms. Everything. When I became a full-time waitress, I decided this establishment was better than being sticky. I’d spent the last seven years turning this place around, scrubbing it until it gleamed.

I might be stuck in this nowhere town at this nowhere job, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take pride in my work.

“He’s good,” I answered quietly. I didn’t like to air my business in public anywhere in this town. I didn’t need anything misheard and then repeated all over the place. Hell, I didn’t need anything rightly heard and then spread all over town. I’d been the subject of town gossip my entire life. It wasn’t a spotlight I wanted to willingly walk underneath.

“He being good to you?”

I smiled at the lemon meringue, unable to help myself. “Always,” I agreed readily, despite my dislike of opening up about my personal life.

“Yeah, well if you have any problems, you send him my way. That boy needs a father.”

I spun around on my heel and pointed my dishrag at RJ. “Hey, now. That’s too far.”

RJ held up his hands in surrender, but his words were as sharp as ever. “You know it’s true, Ruby. He’s going to turn wild in that home of yours. Your mama ain’t no help.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” I told him briskly, “I’m going to see if Reg needs help.”

He made a sound of acknowledgment, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. It didn’t matter to me how I’d wounded his sensitive feelings. He was the one coming after me and my parenting. He should know better.

Not that I could even blame him. Nosiness was how this whole damn town worked. Everybody was in everybody else’s business. My thoughts flickered briefly to Dolly Farrow and how I’d aired her business earlier.

“Hey, Reg,” I greeted the gigantic black man that could cook just about anything you asked for. I had no idea why he stuck around this town when he could have gone anywhere with his culinary skills.

He always said something about loving the wide-open space out here. He claimed to get claustrophobic in big cities. But I hardly believed him. This town made me itchy.

Not that I would leave either. I made my choice seven years ago when I’d found out I was pregnant with Max. Freshly graduated from high school, with all my hopes and dreams in a giant dumpster fire, I settled at home with my mom and decided Clark City would have to do. For me and my little guy.

“Mick giving you problems?” he asked intuitively.

Letting out a steady breath I rubbed my temples soothingly. “RJ’s out there,” I explained.

He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Trouble on the best friend front? I hardly believe my ears.”

I glared at him and his faux sense of surprise. I loved RJ like the father I never had, but he also irritated the bejesus out of me. “He’s not my best friend.”

Reggie gave me a look. “Uh, huh.”

“Coco’s my best friend. You know that.”

“Yeah, and she’s also a bad influence. You should stick with the old man.”

I snorted. He was right. My real best friend since kindergarten was a bad influence. But in the best way. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have locked myself away in my mother’s double wide a long time ago and probably starved to death.

No, that’s not true. Meals on Wheels would have found me. But I would at least be a cob-webbed version of myself. And Max didn’t deserve that.

“What’d he say?” Reggie asked with genuine curiosity.

“He’s just trying to give me parenting advice per usual.”

“This whole town tries to give you parenting advice, have you noticed that?” I blinked at him. Was he serious? Had I noticed? He laughed again. “Not too many single moms around here I guess.”

I shrugged. I was raised by a single mom, so it wasn’t strange to me to raise Max by myself. And in the part of town I was from, there were plenty of single-parent homes. They weren’t always moms. Dad’s shared the statistic too. And grandparents doing the worthy work of raising their grandkids when the parents stepped out. There were plenty of statistics available for the trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks.

I wasn’t even the only single mom in my graduating class of twenty-three students. Another girl, Lauren Debrovsky had gotten knocked up at college and moved home her junior year.

The town’s excitement surrounding my surprise pregnancy was more than normal due to the mystery of the father. A secret I would never tell. But a secret every person speculated about no matter how stalwart my silence on the matter.

It made Max and I quite the topic of conversation around here. Again, I was used to the talk. My mom, Maxine Lorraine Dawson was a tank of a woman. She’d managed the local strip club for my entire life after the owner had kicked her off the pole for getting knocked up with me.

Refusing to give me up, she’d happily moved to the office where she’d found her true calling in life—corralling strippers to get “their tight, no-good asses on the fucking stage already.” A phrase I’d heard repeatedly during the hours I spent there with her before I was old enough to stay home by myself.

“I guess not,” I agreed with Reggie, deflecting away from the quiet conjecture he asked about.

The problem was that I’d gotten pregnant so close to graduation night. There was a house full of suspects, but nobody had come forward to claim little Max as their own. And thankfully, he took after me more than his father. After infancy, I was positive I’d be found out.

But Max shared my dark, riotous hair and pale complexion. He had my slender nose and round jawline. And right now, with three missing front teeth, his dark-rimmed glasses and the cutest sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks, he looked more like my grandpa in his old age than anyone in our town. Granted, he was tall for his age and way too fast. He was an exceptional athlete—something nobody would ever say about me. But so far, that hadn’t been enough to give away his paternal genes.

It was only the eyes that were different, that were so obviously his father’s, I was stunned not one person had guessed the right answer.

Or maybe they had, and they were too afraid to say it out loud.

“Order up,” Reg said quietly, sliding RJ’s plate across the stainless steel counter.

“Thanks,” I mumbled gratefully.

Grabbing RJ’s healthy choice, I headed back to the dining room and found him turned around on his stool engaging Mick in reluctant conversation. RJ didn’t have much patience for Mick and his antics, another reason I respected RJ so much.

Usually, anyway.

“I haven’t heard anything about that,” RJ was saying.

“Heard it myself,” Mick insisted, nodding so quickly his double chin trembled with the effort. “Saw Darcy this morning. Said he was coming home by the end of the week.”

I accidentally dropped RJ’s plate, saving it only to have it clatter on the counter. He gave me a raised bushy eyebrow at my uncharacteristic clumsiness but nodded gratefully.

“I thought Levi Cole washed his hands of this town.”

“Rich wants him to take over the farm,” Mick added, a gleam of triumph in his eye for knowing something RJ didn’t. “With Logan gone, the responsibility of the farm goes to Levi.”

RJ tsked at the mention of the late, great Logan Cole, Clark City’s once golden boy.

I sucked in a sharp breath at the pain of listening to both of the brother’s names. Seven years after high school, I hadn’t had to hear about either of them in a good while. Sure, occasionally someone would speak of Logan with the kind of hushed reverence he deserved. And even more often someone would mention Levi. If it was the older generation they were more than likely recounting awful behavior of yesteryear. And if it was someone my age, it was usually with the awed jealousy of never being as cool or as cruel or as rich.

The Cole brothers had once ruled this town. High school superstars and heirs to the largest agricultural conglomerate in all of Nebraska, Cole Family Farms, they were legends in this little town.

Logan, the eldest brother, had once held my heart in his hands. Albeit he didn’t know he did. But he had. I’d loved him once upon a time. Or I had convinced myself I loved him anyway.

And then he’d gone and gotten himself killed in unfriendly fire somewhere in the desert. His death had rocked our town and devastated his family. I had been utterly crushed by the news. Not necessarily because I thought I loved him, although there was some of that. Most of my grief centered around fear though. Fear, and sharp but temporary pain.

The news was hard to swallow. He was a friend of mine once upon a time. He was a great guy. And his death had destroyed his family. I couldn’t help but mourn on their behalf. Yes, I missed him. And yes, his death had a giant impact on my life. But my heart truly broke for the mother that lost her son, for the father that lost his eldest boy… for the younger brother that lost his hero. I mourned most of all for Levi.

Levi was Logan’s younger brother, and at one time, my arch nemesis. While Logan was two years older than me, Levi was almost exactly my age. Our birthdays were only three days apart. A fact I’d had to face every year at school when he was celebrated as the celebrity he was, and I was forgotten about completely only days later.

That wasn’t why I hated him. During high school and after and even now, I preferred my invisibility. But it wasn’t just our birthdays that competed back then. Levi and I found ways to rival each other in absolutely every way. If he said the sky was blue, I argued that it was more light purple. If I said that it was raining outside, he declared that it was only sprinkling and I was being dramatic. When we were in high school, it didn’t matter what it was, we fought over everything.

We were even headed to rivaling colleges once upon a time. I was sure our scholastic contention would have only continued—at least in my own imagination. But the summer after graduation had changed everything.

After finding out I was pregnant, college was no longer an option for me. And Logan had died. Levi’s best friend and only brother had been unfairly taken from him. That fall, Levi left for college and he never returned. And I had never left. I’d stayed exactly where I’d always been.

I didn’t know where he’d gone or why he’d never come back, not even for a family holiday. Rumors floated around town of course. People were always whispering about his absence, the lost son of the town’s foremost family. But I couldn’t stomach listening to them. They were too painful. Too… reminiscent of everything I’d lost. I tuned out or ignored everything about him. I avoided him on all social media. And I banished him from my thoughts. It was as if he’d died with Logan. And for the most part, I’d been okay with his absence—even if the circumstances surrounding him staying away were tragic.

Maybe especially because of the horror that had happened.

It seemed unfair to rival someone who had lost so much.

And in a way, I’d lost enough as well. Maybe not a loved one. But I’d given up my plans, my future… my hopes and dreams and goals. I wasn’t a worthy opponent anymore. I was a shell of the girl I used to be. Just a ghost. Levi and I wouldn’t have anything to fight over anymore even if we happened to be in the same world again.

Not that it mattered now. If Levi Cole was really returning to Clark City, Nebraska, then I was going to go out of my way to make sure we never ever ran into each other.

Our high school competition was in the distant past. There would be no reason to see each other now. Or speak to each other. Or even look at each other.

So that was that.