Clear as Bruises - A Pete Dunham Fanfiction

©bloodlikegrace

They were neighbours once. Friends. Almost something more.

Now Ruby Clarke is twenty-two, six months sober, and barely holding her life together behind the counter of a shabby café. She thought she'd buried the past along with her addiction-until Matt Buckner, a disgraced American student, stumbles into her world and reopens an old door she swore she'd never touch again.

On the other side of that door is Pete Dunham.

Teacher by day. Firm leader by night. The boy next door who used to dare her higher, now swaggering, fearless, and every bit as reckless as she remembers.

As old loyalties flare and old wounds split open, Ruby is pulled back into a life of bruised knuckles, smoke-choked pubs, and brotherhoods that feel far too much like her own cravings. Pete is the only one who ever saw her clearly, and the one who might destroy her all over again.

Their love was never clean-only clear as bruises.