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1
Dragan Carter could hear the yelling from the sidewalk, and from the lack of his dad’s silver Camry in the potholed driveway, he knew his mom was going off on one of his siblings. The brown paint on the two-bedroom town house was faded, the bare trees hanging limp as if they knew the March weather was a false promise of spring coming anytime soon. He glanced at the other houses down the street and recognized the group hanging around outside of the Miller’s. They gave Dragan the slight nod of recognition from their high school days before resuming their conversation.
He loved Oak Valley, but not that part, the part where everyone knew each other, where no one left. Hell, even if someone got out they always came back. Like one of his best friends, Colton Taylor. Man had been a pro-football player and while he managed to get out for a time, a knee injury sent him right back home. Colt’s fiancée? Lived and worked in New York City before moving back to take care of her mom.
That’s partly why, a long time ago, Dragan decided there was no out. Better to work within your means than waste time reaching for something that would never last.
He sighed, staring at the stoop. Willing his feet to work, to enter the house of nightmares.
Casmir and Lucas — next after Leon in the sibling lineup — came around the back of the house, heads bowed and in quiet conversation. All the Carter boys easily topped six feet, varying between lean and bulky but all of them muscular, while Alice was closer to five-foot-eight and curvy. Or nine. Dragan could never tell from where he stood at six-five.
“Hey,” Dragan called out to his younger brothers. They whipped their heads up. Their deer-in-the-headlights look was brief, but Dragan knew it all too well before it was replaced with wide grins. At twenty-two, Lucas still carried some adolescent weight, while Cas was more and more looking older than his twenty-four years. Like a man. They all had unnerving blue eyes and hair of varying darkness. Dragan had gotten a dirty mix of his mom’s blonde and his dad’s black, and from there their hair only got darker.
“Wow, look who the cat dragged in,” Cas said, ambling over for a hug. Lucas followed, quieter but still wanting the human contact.
If there was one thing the Carter kids had learned from being raised in a house with an angry, deadbeat dad and a cold, beaten-down mom, it was to share the hugs when they could.
And as the oldest, Dragan had always tried to ensure the other four kids knew they were loved by someone.
“I hear Mom going at it, I’m assuming Leon?”
“You know it,” Lucas mumbled. “I think one of the bills is overdue.”
Dragan nodded, remembering the responsibility of making ends meet starting when he was fourteen. All five Carter kids were two years apart, so he’d waited until he was twenty to pass the buck to Leon, hoping he’d get out sooner rather than later. But at twenty-six, Leon was still here.
“Where’s Alice?” Never any point asking about their dad; no one ever knew where James Carter was.
The older and bigger Dragan got, the better off their dad was, and he knew it.
Both guys shrugged, Dragan’s heart tightening. At only twenty years old, Alice still needed some guidance.
“She’s okay, man. Seriously, she’s older than she seems and whip smart,” Cas said, patting Dragan’s shoulder.
“You have to be, coming from this house,” Lucas added.
“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a little looking after,” Dragan grumbled. “Guess we should stop the battalion before something breaks.”
“You know Mom’s just a verbal sparrer.”
“I was talking about Leon.”
Dragan made his way up the steps, steeling himself against whatever lay beyond the front door. The backup troops trudged along behind him. He jiggled the knob the way it needed to be in order to open, the creak of the hinges barely audible over the yelling in the back of the house. As an adult, Dragan knew his mom’s need to yell was a power play for herself. She never yelled when their dad was home — she barely spoke above a whisper.
He just hated that she made herself heard with them.
They stomped down the narrow hall to the kitchen in the back. Leon rivaled Dragan in size, and he was leaning against the counter trying not to roll his eyes. Dragan knew the look. When a parent barks all the time, it loses its effect.
It’s the bite you had to watch out for, and Adrianna Carter had zero bite.
“Hey, Ma. Leon,” Dragan said, pulling out a chair from the dining table. Cas and Lucas joined, their mom taking a breather.
“Dragan! My boy, vhy are you here?” Her face broke out into a smile, her Polish lilt coming through. Despite being in America for the last thirty-ish years, her accent was relatively strong. Dragan hated it growing up. Another marker that he didn’t belong in a town like Oak Valley, didn’t fit in with the other kids at school.
Didn’t fit with the one girl who’d been by his side since kindergarten.
He cleared his throat, trying not to think of June Beaumont. Picture-perfect June, who grew up with a white picket fence and a family-owned bookstore. Who gave him places to escape when his dad was raging. Who accepted him for everything he was, even when he wasn’t worth accepting.
June, with her gold-blonde hair and lush curves. Her shy smile and loud laugh. The way her forehead crinkled when she got mad or ordered whatever he was having when they ate out because ordering made her anxious.
