prologue
BRADY
Spring 2012
I tossed my gym bag on the metal bleachers and collapsed beside it. A moment later, Floyd and Abby joined me in a similarly exhausted heap.
Soccer practice had been brutal today. It was mostly conditioning since the boys’ team wasn’t in season. So that meant a lot of running. I didn’t mind a hard workout, but it was finally May, and the first hot temperatures of the year were sneaking through.
I loved living in the mountains of North Carolina, but I wasn’t ready for the summer heat—not when I had to run sprints at three in the afternoon with the sun beating down on my shoulders.
I yanked my tee shirt off and brought my water bottle to my lips. I figured I’d just skip the locker room altogether and head straight for the eleventh-grade parking lot and drive home.
“Man, that suuucked,” Abby said. Cole Abernathy—Abby to nearly everyone—had been my best friend since kindergarten, but I’d only recently talked him into joining the soccer team. He was probably cursing that decision now. Abby was naturally athletic, though. He’d be fine.
“Yeah, it’s hot as hell,” I agreed. I took the rest of my water and dumped it over my head.
“Know what else is hot as hell?” Floyd murmured before whacking the side of my leg with the shoe he’d just pulled off.
“What?” I asked, blinking water out of my eyes and digging in my duffel for a clean shirt.
When Floyd didn’t answer, I raised my head. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was gazing off in the distance. I followed his attention to the opposite side of the field where the girls’ soccer team was warming up. Theywerein season and had a game tonight. Sometimes, the boys’ team stayed to watch, but I was ready to go home and shower. Plus, it was Friday. That meant there was a bonfire at Abby’s.
“What’s so hot, Floyd?” Abby repeated my question.
“MacKenzie Clark,” Floyd replied with a smug tone in his voice that made me frown on instinct. His eyes were still focused on where Mac was stretching in her maroon uniform. Impulsively, I sought her out, too. Mac’s long, dark ponytail trailed down her back. She straightened and shouted something to one of her teammates before taking off at a jog.
Macwashot. Objectively so. But she was also a gigantic pain in the ass. I’d known her since preschool. Hell, we all had. That was what happened when you lived in a tiny town and everybody was in everybody’s business.
The Clarks owned Grandpappy’s—the farm across the highway from my own family’s orchard. Our two businesses had been in competition for tourist dollars since before Mac and I were born.
While we’d shared classes over the years, we’d never really been friendly. We were ... something else.
MacKenzie Clark might have been my closest neighbor for miles, but she was no girl next door.
We’d grown up pestering the hell out of each other. I’d teased her, and she’d given it right back, just as good. In first grade, I’d cut the end of her pigtail with safety scissors during nap time. Mac hadn’t tattled. Instead, she’d gotten even by holding me down and making me eat dirt at recess. I had dozens of similarstories. Teachers had eventually learned not to pair us up for projects. We argued and bickered like it was our job, but mostly, it was fun. Typically, my behavior was habit and familiarity. I enjoyed getting a rise out of her. I reckoned Mac felt the same.
That was why, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why one of my best friends would be commenting on how hot she was. Yeah, we were seventeen, and girls had become more of a priority in recent years, but it was strange that Floyd would bring up Mac, of all people. The realization that he could be into her had me shifting uncomfortably on the bleachers and my heart racing. And not from the workout.
Returning my focus to my friend, I tried to make my voice sound casual. “Mac? You think Mac is hot all of a sudden?”
Floyd’s expression sobered. Then he glanced between me and Abby. “You can’t say anything.”
Abby held up a hand in a poor approximation of a Boy Scout salute. “I swear.”
I swallowed, feeling even more uneasy. “I won’t say anything,” I confirmed.
Floyd couldn’t seem to resist smiling then.
His smug grin tilted up the corners of his lips, revealing the wide gap in his front teeth, and my chest went tight with a sense of foreboding that I couldn’t put a name to.
“Well, my aunt and uncle came to visit this week, so my momma wanted to take them around, show them the sights,” Floyd explained. “We ended up at Grandpappy’s.”
Briefly, I wondered if the disquiet I felt was even warranted. Mac worked on her family’s farm. She’d been helping out at Grandpappy’s since she was a kid. But what could that possibly have to do with Floyd and his aunt and uncle?
“I got tired of following my family around,” Floyd continued, “and went off on my own. I ran into Mac, and wehung outfor a while in the barn.”
Frowning, I asked, “Hung out? What does that mean?”
