Hudson

Give me the smallest reason to make a bad decision, and I’ll jump in with both feet. Case in point: thinking that drunkenly buying an abandoned town with my brothers is a good idea.

As builders, we plan to renovate and flip the town, maybe turn it into something worth seeing, but the longer we’re here, the more things feel … off.

It’s not until a bearded mountain man breaks into my room in the middle of the night and threatens for us to get out of his town that I realize Wilde’s End isn’t as abandoned as we were told.

But there’s nothing waiting for me in the life I left behind, and in making his demands, Wilde has accidentally tapped into my competitive side.

Terrible decisions? Me?

Wilde can bring it on.

Wilde

I escaped to Wilde’s End twenty years ago, and since then I’ve dedicated my life to the town and the people who live there. Because if I focus on others, I don't have the time or energy to face everything I’ve been running from.

The Bellamy brothers coming to town is like three horsemen of the goddamn apocalypse. They leave destruction in their wake, and when the eldest, Hudson, ignores my very kind request to leave, it’s time to take things into my own hands. Protecting this town is all I know how to do.

But I’ve never faced someone like Hudson.

His stubbornness matches mine, and his attitude has an irritating way of worming under my skin. The more I push him, the harder he pushes back, until we’re locked in a game neither of us will walk away from.

With his smart mouth, bullheaded recklessness and those damn eyelashes I’m starting to question whether I can win this one.

But if I lose, this town isn’t the only thing on the line.