Page 1 of Falling for Mr. Wrong (The Rules We Break #2)

Chapter One

Lyla

T he first noise is a rattle, like metal on metal, then the low cough of a truck settling into park.

I’m halfway through measuring out coffee when the sound hooks under my skin. The Lawson house hasn’t made a noise in years. That place is just an old shell containing the ghosts of what this neighborhood used to be.

I leave the scooper buried in the grounds and step to the kitchen window. The glass is cold against my forearms. Outside, a white work truck sits crooked at the curb, hazard lights blinking like a heartbeat. The tailgate drops. A ladder claps. Boots hit pavement.

And there he is.

Damien Lawson, in a sun-faded Henley and worn jeans, sleeves shoved to his elbows, and hair just slightly longer than the last time I saw him nearly ten years ago.

He lifts a bundle of two-by-fours like they’re nothing, and I hate how my body so easily remembers him before my brain has had a chance to catch up.

Why is he here?

“Mom?” I call toward the hallway. “You okay?”

A muffled “Mm” answers from her room. Good. She’s still resting. It’s early enough that her still being in bed isn’t weird yet.

I should make the coffee. I should sit, outline the episode I’m recording at noon about “Helpful things to say to somebody who’s grieving.

” But instead, I watch Damien set the wood down on the cracked front path across the street.

He pauses, runs a hand across the back of his neck, and looks at the house like he’s sizing up a fight.

The Lawson place used to be loud. Boys yelling, screen doors slamming, the summer clatter of bikes, and the hiss of sprinklers.

Then Aaron died. And theirs wasn’t the only house that went quiet.

My mother stopped turning the radio on in the mornings. My dad decided this life isn’t what he had signed up for. When my brother died, we learned to live with the silence.

I blink hard and reach for the kettle, anything to break the spell. It shrieks to a boil the second I touch it. I kill the burner, slide mugs to the edge of the counter, but my eyes are already back at the window when the bed of the truck thuds again.

Why are you here, Damien Lawson?

He’s rolling out a compressor, shoulders bunching. He now has a tool belt slung low on his hips, and if he were any other man, I might make a silent comment in my head about how I’d like to break a few things just to have him come fix it.

But then he angles his face toward the street, and I get the shock of his profile. It’s sharper than I remember, jaw shadowed, hair a little too long at the back. His dark brows furrow as he moves the compressor off the bed of his truck.

He’s older. Looks meaner.

Looks… even better than before. And I hate that too.

After all these years, he’s back. And I can’t stop looking.

I brace myself against the counter. He’s across the street. Which means, I need to be ready to run into him at the mailbox, the curb, or my front walk. I take in a deep breath.

It’ll be fine. I’ll park in the garage. I’ll walk fast and wear a big hat. I’ll do just about anything to avoid having to actually talk to him.

Yeah… it’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse.

The phone on the counter buzzes with a calendar reminder.

Sponsor call at 1:30 today.

My stomach twists as my mind lands right back in reality. I need to stay focused.

If I land this deal, it covers two years’ worth of Mom’s caregiver stipend and the new security system the nurse has been nagging me to install. If I don’t… I push the thought away and glance down the hall again. Mom is quiet.

I set up the French press and focus.

Grounds. Water. The bloom rises. I stir, press the lid just to the surface. My hand shakes more than it should, and when I look up, Damien is close enough that if there weren’t two panes of glass and a street between us, I could see that dark ring of color circling his stormy gray eyes.

If he knows I’m watching, he isn’t showing it. Because he drops the compressor hose, straightens slowly, and stretches his arms overhead like he’s shaking off a long drive. The hem of his shirt rides up, exposing a strip of skin and the hard line of his stomach.

I doubt he’d purposely do such a thing, but who am I kidding? This is the guy who teased me for being his best friend’s pesky sister and then made guys squirm if they even looked in my direction.

“Stop it,” I whisper to the coffee like it’s responsible for my hormones. I grab one of the mugs and start pouring out Mom’s second cup, because routine is a life raft around here.

But even routine is a lost cause when the man across the street stands under that stupid, dented light fixture on the Lawson porch. The one that Aaron and Damien broke and swore up and down that they didn’t.

Damien tests the bulb. It flickers on, bleaches his face, then dies. And I’m left to witness something I’ve only seen a handful of times in my life.

He smiles.

It’s brief and just barely a whisper of one, but it lands in my chest like a memory.

Sixteen years old, sweaty July. Damien and Aaron are in our driveway, chain grease on their hands, both of them bare-chested and sun-kissed.

Damien is bent over my bike, forearms corded, asking, “You want this done right or fast, Little Hart?” And me, pretending my tongue hadn’t turned into a traitor in my mouth because anything that came out of my brother’s best friend’s mouth always sounded like something more.

Across the street, a nail gun barks to life. The sound ricochets through the bones of the house, through me. It isn’t until my toes burn that I realize I’ve created the Niagara Falls of coffee.

I should go get the mail before Mom wakes up and asks if I checked it yet.

I should not care that my pajama pants are ancient or that my sweater has one too many snags in it.

I should not change. But I do anyway, swapping the sweater for a clean one, knotting my hair higher.

It’s not for him. It’s for me because I need to feel my best when confronted with my worst nightmare.

I slip on my boots and grab my keys like I do every morning.

The front door sticks, and I have to shove with my hip to get it open, just like every morning.

Cold air rushes over my face. The sky is that flat winter gray that makes me miss the Spring and colors.

I walk down the steps, while my heart does something incredibly rude behind my ribs at the sight of him.

Damien’s back is to me as I cross the yard.

He’s kneeling by the front stoop of his parents’ house, prying up a rotten board.

The muscle in his forearm jumps as he does.

He must feel the air shift because he glances over his shoulder, and—yeah.

There it is. Eye contact that feels more like getting slammed by a professional rugby player.

Storm-gray eyes lock on me, and he goes still.

I don’t stop. I don’t smile. I tip my chin in the kind of nod you give someone you don’t owe anything to and head for the cluster mailboxes that sit on his side of the street.

Gravel crunches under my boots, making the awkward silence between us feel even heavier.

I pull out a fan of envelopes, junk and bills, and one that is hand-addressed to me.

“Hello, Lyla.” His voice scrapes low across the space between us, and I bristle like it found a shortcut to my spine.

I look over, slowly. “Damien.”

Something flickers over his mouth. “Didn’t think you remembered me.”

“I remember a lot of things I don’t like.” I flip the envelopes, glance back down the street like I’m busy, like my pulse isn’t thudding in my throat.

He leans an elbow on his knee, studies me in a way that feels too direct. “So you live here?”

I tuck the mail against my ribs. “Well, I never left.”

His eyes narrow slightly at the jab.

“And what about you? Please tell me you’re not planning on staying long.”

There’s a sl ight amused tug at the corner of his mouth before his gaze drags over the sagging porch of the home behind him. “Renovating. And lucky for you, I’m not planning on staying long.”

“Yes, lucky me,” I mutter.

He rises, and I realize I’d forgotten how tall he is. He wipes his hands on a rag, slow, buying a beat. “You still… doing the show?”

“It’s a podcast,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “And yes.”

“Right.” He nods once, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. “Good.”

Good?! That’s all he has to say about the fact that I’ve turned to talking about living with grief as a way to survive? Good.

It dangles between us. The breeze lifts a strand of hair into my mouth, and I tuck it behind my ear with fingers that refuse to stop shaking. I think it’s time for me to go.

I turn, but before I’m able to walk away, he reaches out to touch my arm, stopping me.

“Tell your mom I said hi,” he adds, softer.

For a second, the air seems to grow thick. “She won’t remember.”

He swallows and then gives a slight nod. “Tell her anyway.”

I make myself turn, make myself move up the walk. The porch boards creak under my weight with the sounds of its familiar complaints. At the door, I glance back without meaning to. He’s already knelt again, prying, focused, jaw tight.

I step inside, and the door snicks shut against the cold. A moment later, a nail gun goes off. My heartbeat answers it, loud in my ears.

Damien is back.

Shit.