“We will,” I replied, glaring at Charlie as I gave my dad a hug.

  “Oh, stop,” she said, waving me off. “You know you didn’t want to come out here in the first place.”

  “And I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been so hell-bent on it,” I replied as my frustration boiled over. “And I hate this fucking smoke!”

  My dad laughed.

  “Tell me how you really feel,” Charlie said in mock sympathy.

  “This shit’s gotta end at some point,” my dad said in real sympathy as he opened my door. “It won’t be long.”

  “I should’ve hitched a ride to California with Cecilia’s family,” I said, hopping into the Jeep.

  “I doubt that would’ve been any fun,” Charlie called out as she rounded the hood. “That’s a long ass time in the car with all her kids.”

  “If it don’t get handled pretty quick, we’ll head out and spend time with your grandparents, alright?” my dad said, leaning in to kiss the side of my head. “Now go back to Callie’s and let me know when you get there. Drive careful.”

  “I will,” I said as he closed my door.

  “Sometimes, I feel the urge to throat punch you,” I said to Charlie as I turned around in the driveway. “Like, I wouldn’t actually do it—but I fantasize about it.”

  “Sometimes, I fantasize about making you go out on the town with me and then holding you down and making you eat carbs and drink tequila,” Charlie replied, not looking at me. “But I haven’t done that either, so I guess we both deserve a gold star.”

  We were silent for the rest of the ride back to my grandma’s house.

  Chapter 6

  Draco

  “I recognize that look on your face,” my gramps Casper said as he strode toward me. “And I’m sure your brother deserves whatever ass whoopin’ you’re about to dish out, but put it on hold, would ya? I need ya to get the roof watered down.”

  I stared at Curtis, who still hadn’t said a fucking word.

  “Fine,” I said finally, turning toward Gramps. “Where should I start?”

  I followed him around the side of the house, nodding as he handed me the hose and pointed at where I should start the process. Thankfully, he was pretty good about keeping gutters clean and shit, so we didn’t have to worry about any embers starting a fire that way. Still, though, if it made its way to the house, I wasn’t sure anything we did would stop it.

  “Just do what you can, bud,” Gramps said, patting my back. “We’re fightin’ a losin’ battle here.”

  “If you think that, then why are we even here?” I asked curiously as I pulled the trigger on the hose nozzle, making it spray twenty feet into the air.

  “’Cause I couldn’t let your grandmother’s house burn without at least tryin’ to save it,” he said with a rueful smile. “Without knowin’ that I did what I could.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  “You’re a good boy,” he said softly, reaching up to cuff the side of my head lightly. “Mostly a man, now, I guess. Can’t really think of ya that way, no matter how hard I try.”

  “Mom can’t either,” I joked as he started walking away.

  He turned around to look at me and kept walking backward. “My gram lived with my woman and almost grown kids, and she still felt the need to remind me to shower after work,” he said, his eyebrows high on his forehead. “I don’t think mama’s ever see their kids as adults.” He laughed to himself. “And big sisters ain’t no better. Callie still reminds me to buy your gram her birthday gift, like I’d forget all these years later.” He shrugged, then spun and rounded the corner and strode out of sight.

  Turning back toward the house, I focused on methodically wetting every single inch of roof I could see. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to keep embers from lighting the place up. Gramps was right—trying was better than not doing anything.

  I tried to keep my thoughts on the house in front of me, but they strayed back over and over to Kara calling Curtis a self-righteous prick. It wasn’t so much the words she’d said as how she’d said them that set off warning bells in the back of my mind. He’d done something or said something, and I didn’t think it had been recent. The pain in Kara’s voice hadn’t been new and sharp. It was old and dull. A memory. Something she’d lived with for a while.

  I’d just reached the edge of the roof when Kara and Charlie came out of the house, carrying a bunch of blankets. I acted like I didn’t notice them as Kara’s dad, Mack, intercepted them and they stopped to talk with him. If I was being honest, I was trying not to call any attention to myself. I wasn’t ready to go rounds with Kara again. Not yet. Not until I knew what my twin had done.

  No, first I’d talk to Curtis.

  “Those two have given me every gray hair on my fuckin’ head,” Mack said as he strode toward me a few minutes later. “My boys are wild, but Jesus, Kara and Charlie scare the shit out of me.”

  “Are they headed back to town?” I asked as Kara spun the Jeep around.

  “Yeah,” Mack replied. “Charlie decided we had it handled, so they could go.”

  I laughed. “Typical.”

  “You know why Kara was all wound up?” he asked me, crouching down to untangle the hose at our feet.

  “I told her to go back to town and we got into it,” I replied, giving him the most simplified version I could think of.

  “That’d do it,” he said, nodding. “That girl doesn’t like bein’ told what to do. Independent to a fault.”

  “She wasn’t like that when we were kids,” I replied, stepping to the side a little once I had more hose to work with. “Independent, yeah, but not stubborn like that.”

  “Nope, she wasn’t,” Mack said with a small smile as he rose back to standing. “I just figured it was part of her growin’ up. She started wantin’ to make her own decisions and fight her own battles and she was the devil incarnate if someone got in the way of that.”

  “It drives me nuts,” I muttered. “Everyone needs help once in a while.”

  “Of course it drives you nuts,” Mack replied, chuckling. “Kid, you’re a born fixer. You see somethin’ wrong, you pitch in to help. Doesn’t matter if you’re asked to or not.”

  “That’s not a bad thing.”

  “It sure as hell isn’t,” Mack agreed. “But when you put those two personalities together? The super-independent type and the fixer? Shit. Fireworks.”

  “Is this your way of saying I should just keep my distance?” I asked, only half joking.

  Mack looked at me with no trace of the previous amusement in his expression. “Now, why the hell would I say that to the kid who loved my daughter so much that he went to jail for her?”

  “I was a stupid kid,” I countered.

  “Oh, yeah,” Mack huffed, nodding. “It was stupid as hell. But you did it for the right reasons. No one can fault your reasonin.’” He paused. “Just the execution.”

  “Hey, Mack,” my grandpa Dragon called from further out in the yard. “Ya lazy fuck, come help!”

  “I should be doin’ that,” I said, jerking my head toward the branches and brush they were clearing. “And you should be doing this.”

  “Ah, give the old farts this,” Mack said, smiling as he moved past me. “A little physical labor makes us feel like we’re twenty-five again…at least until we’re finished and can hardly bend down to take our boots off.”

  I worked on wetting down the house as far as I could reach with the front porch hose and then worked my way back over it for good measure. I could hear someone else on the opposite side of the house doing the same thing, but I wasn’t sure who it was. Eventually, I shut off the water and stored the hose before rounding the house.

  The back yard was pretty much deserted, no one really went back there on a good day—but further out, I could see the men working. I couldn’t tell who was in Mark’s excavator, but whoever it was knew what they were doing. Slowly and methodically, they picked up huge piles of downed branches and moved them further from the house.

  It was surprisingly noisy outside, which is the only reason I could think of that I didn’t hear anyone pull up or see the men that had rounded the opposite side of the house and were striding toward the excavator and the guys working around it. I knew instantly who they were, or at least where they’d come from.

  As I headed in their direction, both my grandpas stopped to talk to the older of the three, a grizzled man who looked like he’d been working for the past week with no breaks. They were all wearing heavy work pants and t-shirts and they were filthy from head to toe.

  “What’s goin’ on?” I asked as I reached them.

  Gramps looked at me and ran a hand down his face in defeat. “Looks like it’s time to head out,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder.

  “Can’t make ya go,” the old timer said sympathetically. “But there’s a good chance if you don’t go soon, road is gonna be blocked and you’ll be stuck here.”

  “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.”

  I huffed out a laugh and pinched her leg. “Nothing like that, sicko.”

  “Uh huh,” she replied, unconvinced.

  “I bitched him out,” I said with a sigh, leaning my head back. “Him and Curtis both.”

  “They probably deserved it,” she replied loyally.

  “Oh, they definitely deserved it.”

  “It’s been a long time coming,” she said quietly, watching me. “You think we don’t see shit, but we do. Just because we’re your parents doesn’t mean that we missed how things went down, you know. If anything, it made us notice it more.”

  “It’s not that big of deal.”

  “Yeah,” she said, bumping me with her legs. “Yeah, it was.”

  “I’m here, bitches!” Heather yelled out as she came through the front door, her kids swarming around her. “Now someone take these kids before I lose my effing mind.”

  “Let ’em roam,” Rose replied, laughing as she sat up. “There’s enough eyes here to make sure they don’t get into too much trouble.”

  “Go find your grandma and say hello before you trash her house,” Heather instructed the kids, giving her youngest daughter a light slap on the tush. She rounded the couch and dropped down on Grandpa Grease’s recliner. “Jesus, can you believe this shit?”

  “Where’s Tommy?” Rose asked.

  “He’s outside,” Heather replied. “Poor guy is moving slowly these days.”

  “He finally did it?”

  “Yep,” Heather said in satisfaction. “No more babies for me. He got snipped a couple days ago.”

  “It’s about time,” I muttered.

  “You know, you could have waited for me,” Tommy griped as he swung open the front door.

  “I’m not moving like a snail because you can’t suck it up,” Heather replied.

  “Where’s my mom?” he asked, moving through the room. “She’ll give me some sympathy.”

  “Probably in the kitchen,” Rose replied. “If you ask her, she probably has some frozen peas for your balls.”

  Tommy flipped her off over his shoulder as he shuffled away.

  “I swear,” Heather said, rolling her eyes. “He’s such a baby.”

  I laughed. The two of them were hilarious. Between the loud arguing and the constant quiet bickering, you’d think the two of them hated each other until the very public displays of affection proved that to be a lie.

  “I’m going to head out,” I said, pushing up off the couch. “You want me to do anything before I go?”

  “Nah,” Rose said, waving me off. “Enjoy having the house to yourself for a bit. I’m sure we’ll be here for a while.”

  “Is it me?” Heather asked jokingly, smelling her armpit as I left the room.

  All the older ladies were still in the kitchen visiting when I made the rounds and told everyone goodbye.

  “You sure you don’t want to stay?” Farrah asked, giving me a hug. “It’s gonna be boring at home all by yourself.”

  “It’s going to be quiet,” I corrected, making her laugh as I pulled away. “I’ll come back tomorrow. You know everyone will show up for breakfast.”

  “Hell,” Grandma Callie said from her spot across the island. “That’s assuming anyone actually leaves tonight.”

  “Good luck with that,” I called, waving as I headed toward the stairs.

  The kids were all on the second floor, wrestling and playing and watching a movie, and I picked my way through the chaos to tell my brothers goodbye.

  I found Charlie laying on my grandparents’ bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “What are you doing in here?” I asked, sitting down next to her. “You want to go back to my parents’ house with me?”

  “No, I’m gonna stay here tonight,” she replied with a small smile. “I like the noise.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “It sounds like home,” she said with a shrug. “Plus, you know everyone’s gonna be drinking and playing cards later. I’m gonna make some money to recoup our lost wages from this week.”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

  “Hey, you don’t know,” she said, turning toward me. “I think I’m getting better at finding the old timers’ tells.”