Page 1 of Until You

chapter

one

Cora

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s this: bad decisions usually start with neon lighting and a man who looks like trouble.

Tonight? I’ve got both.

“Cora,” Jules says, dragging my attention back to our table. “You’ve been staring at that guy for a full thirty seconds. Either go talk to him or stop making it weird.”

“I am not making it weird,” I say, even though I absolutely am.

Jules snorts. “Oh, okay.”

“Who are we staring at?” Hope leans across the table, following my line of sight. “Ohhhh.” Her brows lift. “Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. He’s a problem.”

“Right?”

Across the bar is a man who looks like he walked straight out of a country song about poor life choices and spectacular consequences. He’s leaning with his back against the actual bar, one boot resting on the corrugated metal wrapped around the old scarred wood, a long neck of green-bottle beer dangling loose between two fingers like he was born holding it. Above his head, a neon double-X sign pulses green and slow.

He looks perfectly at home in that light.

He looks like trouble in that light.

Trouble is the last thing I need.

I’ve spent years trying to avoid trouble. Now, true, this is after years of running headfirst into trouble. But I’m reformed now. Mostly.

But today has been a shit day. The kind of day that makes my inner rebellious teenager wake up and snarl at the world, because sometimes, no matter how good you try to be, it’s not good enough.

“He is the best advertisement for ordering one of those green bottles I have ever seen,” I say.

“Agreed,” Hope says. “And I don’t even like beer.”

The man beside him says something that makes him laugh—a real one, not performed—and from across the room I watch the way the crinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. I find myself wishing, stupidly, that I knew what color they were.

Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Worn-in jeans that have never seen the inside of a mall. I can tell his dark hair is overdue for a cut by the way it curls up softly around the brim of his cowboy hat. A real cowboy hat, one that looks like it’s been through weather and work and years.

Yes, folks, I think I have a type I didn’t know about.

“New kink unlocked,” I murmur.

Jules’s brow shoots up. “The hat or the whole situation?”

“The whole situation,” I say. “It’s really doing it for me.”

“Well, why don’t you go find out if the whole situation will literally do it for you? “

“Jules.” Hope cuts her off with a swat on the arm.

“I’m just saying⁠—”

“We know what you’re saying.”

Jules, Hope, and I are sisters in all the ways that matter. The closest thing to family that any of us has. I’m the reason we’re all here in Saddle Creek. I had an interview for a job that I should have gotten. Jules drove, since she’s the only one with a car. And Hope tagged along, because that’s what you do with your ride or dies. But the interview didn’t go well. It wasn’t an outright rejection, but I can feel it in my bones.

Which is why we’re sitting here in a bar in Saddle Creek, contemplating bad decisions.