“You don’t wanna get stuck here,” one of the younger men muttered.
“Fuck,” Curtis said as he walked up.
“We’ll head out,” my grandpa Dragon said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“We’ll do what we can,” the old timer told him, reaching out to shake his hand. “The rest of the crew will be here shortly.”
After that, we hurried around, double checking that we’d done everything we could to protect the house. Within minutes, we were back in our vehicles and headed toward town.
Curtis was silent beside me as we stared out the front windshield of my truck, watching for brake lights so we didn’t accidentally run into Rose’s SUV ahead of us. I looked in the rearview mirror just as a water truck turned down my grandparents’ driveway.
As soon as we’d driven through the signs blocking the road to my grandparents’ house and sped up a little, I glanced at Curtis.
“You wanna tell me what the fuck you did to Kara?”
“Nothin’ to tell,” Curtis said, sitting back in his seat as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t know what the hell her problem is.”
“Bullshit,” I spat. I knew that he was lying and honestly, I was surprised he thought he could get away with it. We’d never been able to lie to each other. Between sharing a womb and spending most of our lives connected at the hip, there wasn’t a single tone of voice or facial expression of his that I didn’t recognize.
“I’m serious,” he replied defensively. “She’s been weird as fuck for years. Didn’t have anythin’ to do with me.”
“Gonna have to disagree with you after that scene at the house.”
“After you went in, she started keepin’ to herself,” he said, dropping his arms to swipe one hand through his hair. The other curled into a fist on his lap. “It wasn’t long before she stopped goin’ to see you and stopped comin’ around the house at all.”
“And you didn’t have anythin’ to do with that?” I asked incredulously.
“Hell, I don’t know,” he replied. “All that shit was years ago.”
“She obviously remembers.”
“I don’t know what she thinks she remembers,” he said dismissively. “But I didn’t do shit to Kara.”
“You watch out for her?” I asked quietly, realization dawning.
“She didn’t want me to watch out for her,” he said with a huff. “She didn’t want anythin’ to do with me. What part aren’t you understandin’ here?”
“So when I was inside, and I was askin’ you to make sure she was okay?” I asked, my stomach churning.
“I told you what you wanted to hear,” he confessed. “But I wasn’t hearin’ any different. She was fine and you had enough on your plate, brother. You didn’t need to be worryin’ about Kara. She’s got a family to take care of her. Wasn’t your responsibility or mine.”
“We’re her fuckin’ family,” I yelled, a sense of foreboding settling under my skin like fire.
“No, we’re not,” Curtis yelled back. “And maybe if you’d realized that a little sooner, you wouldn’t have spent four years inside.”
I couldn’t even respond. I had nothing for him. The years since I’d gotten locked up became so much clearer now that I was getting a full picture of what things had been like outside. The way Kara had been acting, the animosity between her and Curt that I’d written off as a consequence of her avoiding me, the way Charlie was always trying to smooth shit over—all of it was beginning to make some kind of sense.
“It wasn’t her fault,” I finally said, my voice hoarse. “Goddamn it, Curtis.”
“Drop it,” he replied through his teeth.
“You stupid motherfucker,” I mumbled under my breath.
If we hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere in the midst of a fucking wildfire, I would have left his ass beaten and bloody on the side of the road. As it was, I still had to drive him into town. I’d deal with his ass then.
It took everything inside me not to pass the cars ahead of us so we could make it back to Callie and Grease’s faster.
Chapter 7
Kara
“How late are you planning on staying here?” I asked my stepmom as we sat curled up on my grandma’s couch.
“Well, at least until your dad gets back. He’s got my car,” she replied, stretching out until her legs were slung over my lap. “Why, you got somewhere to be?”
“No.” I glanced out the front window at the haze outside. “But I might go back to the house, if that’s cool with you.”
“You can’t avoid him forever, you know,” she said knowingly. “Not only because I didn’t raise you to be a fucking coward, but also because you know he’s not gonna let you.”
“I’m not avoiding him,” I replied dryly. “You should’ve seen how much I didn’t avoid him at Farrah’s.”
“Ooh,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Tell me.”