Page 56 of Sterling Clay

“What’s going on?” Clay asks. I sense him stalking down the porch. Ford moves Winnie backward while Clay thunders down the stairs behind his brother, Knox.

“Just helping the little princess bob for apples.” A male voice smirks.

“What?” Clay yells.

At the same time, another man walks through the screen door. He chuckles as he stumbles down the steps to Clay.

“Clay, dude. Relax.”

Clay spins on him. “Perry, what the fuck? Who is this guy?”

Despite the darkness in the yard, I can see the person Clay addresses as Perry shrug. “A new friend.”

“Pick better ones,” Clay demands, pointing at Perry, a stocky man with a mullet, wearing jeans cut off at the knees and a flannel shirt missing the sleeves while open and exposing a white tank beneath it.

“And you.” Clay turns back to the other guy still standing but leaning a bit like a listing tree. “What the fuck did you say about a princess and bobbing for apples?” Clay’s face is so close to the man dressed as a poor impression of a biker, he could kiss him. Instead, the angry energy vibrating off Clay reaches me all the way up on the porch.

The porch door opens once more and another man exits the house, and rushes down the stairs. I recognize Sebastian Sylver from his bakery and being more formally introduced to him earlier tonight. He’s at Clay’s side in a blink. From the street comes another man, equal in size to Sebastian, and for a second, I worry a brawl is about to start in the front yard. It’s three against three, or so I think until the newly arrived man steps up to the other side of Clay.

I tuck Dutton closer to me, knowing I should remove him from this scene. Knowing I need to hear what happened.

“The boy just needed a little help being a man.”

“What the fuck did you say?” Clay growls, raising his hand into a fist.

But a sharp hook goes to the fake biker’s face in a flash from the new man on the lawn. The other guy goes down, both from the impact and the surprise. He folds to his back in a way I’ve seen too often in my life. Curled into himself on the ground, holding his face, he whimpers and kicks out his leg, making contact with the tough new guy. Who kicks the man back before Sebastian is in front of the new man, pushing him away.

Knox is next, standing before Clay, telling him to step back.

Only Clay isn’t letting this end. He waves his arm around his bulky brother. “Can you believe this guy?” He glances down at the man on the grass wreathing in pain. “He’s a fucking child.” Clay points blindly behind him toward the porch, implying Dutton.

I squeeze him tighter to me. His head has shifted and he’s watching the display in the yard. My hands still cover his ears, and I should shield his face. He doesn’t need to witness this type of scene. This is exactly what I wanted to protect him from by leaving Florida.

“Clay, just calm down,” Perry says, sensing Clay is on the edge of losing control.

“Fuck you, Perry.” Clay snaps at his friend. Then, he turns to the man slowly sitting upright, but still cupping his nose. “And you. You fucking come near my kid again and I’ll run you into the ground.”

“Clay, man.” Knox bitterly chuckles. “Chill.” He works on pressing his brother backward. Over his shoulder, he hollers at Perry. “Get yourself and this piece of trash out of my yard.”

As Perry bends to help up his friend, the two stumble toward the street, and my gaze falls to the collection of men huddled near one another at the bottom of the porch stairs.

Knox claps the new guy on the shoulder. “Judd, where did you come from?” He laughs good naturedly, jostling whom I now realize is another brother of theirs. Clay has mentioned the accountant brother for Sylver Seed & Soil.

“And where did that come from?” Knox continues to chuckle. “Nice left hook.”

Judd doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t shake out his hand. The tall man who looks a little more billionaire in a suit than badass simply shakes his head. “It was nothing.” His voice is deep but quiet, almost shy or embarrassed by the sudden display of aggression. An act done for my son.

“And you . . .” Teasing fills Knox’s voice as he addresses Clay. “Did you just say ‘my kid’?”

Sebastian claps his hand on Clay’s shoulder. “That’s how it starts, man.” He pats him twice more before walking up the porch stairs.

I’d forgotten about Ford, who holds Winnie to his chest, her head tucked away from the scene, but he didn’t leave Dutton or me alone up here.

Sebastian enters the house. Ford follows.

Knox exchanges a word with Clay and Judd, and then follows his other brothers into his house, giving me a wink before he does.

As I slowly straighten, knowing Dutton has stopped crying and I have a better sense of what’s happened, my body trembles with my own brand of anger. How ignorant. How disgusting. How cruel. Dutton is a child, like Clay defended, and that man is a man although the label hardly fits him. He’s a weak person, and I can’t even call him human.