Chapter 6

Hunter

I push the hoodie off my head, leaving my duffel bag in the car.

“Hunter!”

“I need a shower,” I call out to Farrow behind me.

We all head to the barber shop every Monday, but I’ve seen them enough today.

He slams my car door just as I hear everyone’s bike engines roar down the street. They skid to halts at the curb, and I step up onto the sidewalk, heading for the house.

“She’s coming with me to Phelan’s Throat!” Farrow yells.

“I don’t give a shit.”

I jog up the steps in my track pants and sneakers, unlocking the door with my keys, but the lock is already unsecured. I push it open and slip inside.

Farrow’s shout hits my back. “You need someone to suck your dick, you know that?”

I hear their laughter behind me before I close the door and shut my eyes.

Prick. I may as well be home with Kade.

I’ve barely spoken to Kade in a year, and I’ve talked to him twice today.

I don’t want to talk to him again before the game. Not when I’m so close. If we’re ever going to get over this, it can wait until I beat him on the field. After that, I’ll be happy to talk.

I doubt he really wants to, though. He called this morning to get in my head. He had Dylan, now he doesn’t. He feels like he’s losing control.

He hasn’t changed one bit.

Coral Lapinksi breezes past, carrying a trash bag into the living room. “Hey.”

I head for the stairs, glancing in and seeing Codi Gundry, Coral, and Arlet Rhodes sweeping, dusting, and picking up Farrow and the guys’ pizza boxes.

“I told you, you guys don’t have to do that,” I grumble.

Arlet dumps an armful of beer cans in the bag that Coral holds open. “Farrow says we do.”

I shake my head. “My mother would never pick up my dad’s shit,” I say. “And he married her. Farrow Kelly won’t fall in love with you for this. Put it down.”

“Who says he’s the one we come over here to see?” Coral teases.

I arch my brow.

Arlet’s eyes gleam. “You’re cute.”

“And nice,” Coral adds. “Smart.”

“And rich,” Arlet chimes in again.

They both laugh.

“And,” the latter continues, “There’s two of you.”

They laugh louder, and I turn away. That was pretty much the gist of it in Shelburne Falls too.

Codi can hang around all she wants, but I need to tell Farrow to keep those other girls out of here. He can clean up his own shit.

I climb the stairs, feeling my phone vibrate in my hoodie.

I reach into my pocket, hearing Arlet behind me. “At your service, Hunter Caruthers,” she sing-songs.

Dad appears on the screen. I answer, “Hi.”

“So, A.J. has collected every college brochure and mailer that arrives,” he tells me without a greeting back. “She’s saving them for you.”

I smile a little as I open the door to my room. My little sister is hard for everyone to keep up with, and I wouldn’t have her any other way.

“She inspects everything,” he says, “reads it thoroughly, and has sorted them according to location, and then specialty. She’s changed her major six times, Hunter.”

I can’t help it. I shake with a laugh I don’t let him hear. A.J. is nine years old, and she won’t leave for college for another nine, but that doesn’t stop her from being proactive about her future. I’m sure all the college mail Kade and I are getting has spurred her imagination.

“I’m going to have to go through this with her again for real someday,” my dad grumbles. “Would you give me a break here?”

I pull the phone away from my ear, slipping the hoodie over my head, taking the T-shirt with it. “Tell her I’m not going to college.”

“You’re not what?” he blurts out. “If you think you’re just going to—”

“No, no. I’m going,” I assure him, kicking off my shoes. “I said tell her I’m not. See how her head explodes.”

A.J. is very goal oriented. As an adult, she’d be intimidating. As a kid, it’s kind of creepy. I love it, though. Even if I do worry a little. When she gets old enough to start executing all of these grand plans, she’s going to find that nothing will go how she wants. People come along and fuck you up.

My dad quiets for a moment, getting ready to be serious now. When he needs to talk to us, he tries to start off with something funny. I’m not sure if it’s a Madoc Caruthers’s thing or a politician thing, but he’s good at easing into people’s space. With me, he leads with my sister because he knows I adore her.

“I agreed to this,” he tells me in a stern tone, “because you said it would settle things.”

“It will.”

My dad didn’t want me to come here. He missed me when I left and went to St. Matthew’s, but it’s a good school, so he sucked it up. Weston doesn’t send anyone to good colleges.

“Twelve days.” His tone is clear and firm. “You will walk through our door, home to your mother, win or lose, in twelve days.”

“I remember,” I reply, but it sounds more like I’m re-agreeing to our terms.

“I love you,” he says.

“You, too, Dad.”

“Bye.”

We hang up, and I toss my phone onto my bed.

I release a breath.

I’m lucky in the parent department. They weren’t dumb enough to believe my grandpa when he said he’d be leaving his mansion in the Chicago suburbs and living here with me, but I’m not Kade. I don’t make them worry about drinking, fighting, or petty crime.

And I don’t sneak girls into my room.

I walk to my window, seeing Dylan walk past her bed and open her closet. She disappears inside.

I’ve only snuck one girl into my room.

“Take her!” Kade yells to me as he pulls his girlfriend’s hand.

I glare at him across the hall as he shoves Gemma Ledger out of his room and toward mine. She pulls her sweatshirt on over her bra, the shirt cut halfway up her stomach and sliced at the neck to hang off her shoulder. She scurries into the hall in her white sweatpants and sneakers.

I hang out my door. “Kade, seriously.”

I cast a worried glance down the hall, knowing our parents are on the move. We have a picnic for Memorial Day.

But he just spits back, “Oh, Dad’ll be happy if he finds a girl in your room.”

Gemma shifts on her feet. “Will someone get me out of here, please?”

Footfalls hit the stairs, a shadow climbs the wall, and Kade practically snarls at me, baring his teeth.

I slide back, opening my door. Gemma scurries inside, and I step back in place, watching my father reach the second-floor landing. He charges toward Kade. “Whose car is parked outside and has been there all night?”

“I don’t know.”

My brother shrugs, and if I didn’t know for a fact that he was lying, I would still know. And so does our dad. Kade’s certainty that our parents can’t punish him for things they can’t prove shines through in his arrogance.

Dad steps up to him. “Open the door.”

“It’s my room.” Kade doesn’t budge. “I don’t invade your privacy.”

“You trying to lose your phone too?” Dad growls. “Move.”

Finally, Kade steps back, giving our dad space to enter. He goes in, and I watch him look around and dive into Kade’s bathroom, searching for the girl who slept over last night.

I almost smile. It’s kind of funny, my dad trying to catch his kid with a girl in the same room that we accidentally found out that our dad took our mom’s virginity in when they were sixteen. Same age as we are now. I’m not going to remind my dad of that. He’s not mad at me—yet.

Kade stands there, his chin up but his eyes down, relishing in the knowledge that our father will come up empty-handed.

Gemma stands behind my door, listening.

Dad comes back to Kade, his jaw hard as his chest rises and falls. “Are you really going to make me install cameras inside this house?” he asks Kade. “Is this what it’s coming to?”

“Do whatever you want,” Kade says. “You won’t install them in the bathroom.”

My brother breaks into laughter, and my dad yanks at his tie, loosening his collar already and it’s only nine.

“And why are you always blaming me?” Kade blurts out. “Check Hunter’s room.”

He waves his hand in my direction. My face falls, and Dad looks at me.

I glare at Kade. Oh, you motherf—

Kade laughs quietly, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

But Dad turns back to Kade, half-rolling his eyes, because I don’t have sleepovers.

More footsteps hit the staircase, and Kade swats our dad in the stomach. “Come on. We’re going to be late. Let’s get a move on.”

Dad grabs the back of his son’s neck, pulling him in. “I’m not raising your kids. Got it?”

Kade nods, finally looking contrite. “Yeah, yeah…”

Dylan appears at the top of the stairs, and Dad twists around, meeting her halfway. “Make sure they’re downstairs in twenty,” he instructs her.

She nods once, big and decisive, like he’s her general, and she continues toward us while he disappears down the stairs.

I watch her eyes light up when she sees us, the blue so marine behind the brown hair framing her face and falling down her arms. She skips up to us, tan legs so full of energy in her blue shorts. I love the way her smiles start close-lipped but so big, making you notice how her eyes dance and the blush on her cheeks before she shows you her teeth and all you see is her perfect mouth.

My chest tightens.

“You’re not going dressed like that, are you?” Kade asks her.

I jerk my head, glaring at him. “Shut up.”

But it comes out breathless because my heart is beating too fast.

She looks at him, her smile fading, but she turns back to me, forcing another one. Close-lipped, and it won’t go any further this time. I already know that.

She clears her throat. “Can I borrow your JV jersey today?” she asks me.

I start to nod, but just then, Gemma comes out and slips between the doorframe and me, stepping into the hallway.

Dylan’s spine straightens, and she watches Gemma put a hand on my chest. “Thanks,” the girl says.

Her voice is silky smooth, and I open my mouth to...what? I don’t know. Tell her to get back in Kade’s room? Or ‘no more hiding in mine?’ Anything to make it clear that I didn’t fuck the girl last night who talks about Dylan behind her back and makes fun of her.

But before I figure it out, she’s throwing Dylan a look and walking the opposite way my dad came, heading for the rear entrance through one of the guestrooms. It has an outdoor staircase she can get down from and make it to her car.

I lift my eyes, seeing the crease in Dylan’s brow.

“Wear mine,” Kade tells her. “I want you to.”

He walks back into his room and opens a drawer, grabbing the jersey.

He returns, holding it out to her. “It got a lot more wear than Hunter’s did, but it’s clean.”

I clench my teeth as she takes it, looking at him like he’s her fucking hero. “Thanks.” She walks back toward the stairs, not looking at me again. “See you guys downstairs.”

I watch her go, my stomach sinking into the goddamn floor.

Kade’s voice is light with humor. “You could’ve just told her.”

It takes a second, but finally, I say, “So could you.”

I retreat back into my room, slamming the door between us.

It wasn’t Dylan’s fault for believing I fucked a girl who treated her badly. For believing I’d been a disloyal friend.

It wasn’t my fault she thought that, either.

It was Kade’s. I shouldn’t have had to explain myself, and even if I did, he still would’ve come out of it innocent.

Because as it happens, I would hate for her to think he’d been a disloyal friend, either. I didn’t tell her because it wouldn’t have made me feel better to make him look bad in her eyes.

I was so fucking stupid.

I gaze out the window as Dylan stands just inside her closet door, with her shirt off. She thinks she’s shielded behind the closet door between us, but there’s a mirror on the wall. Her hair is out of its ponytail, and I can almost feel it on my fingers as I run my hand up her skin. The cool strands caress my knuckles.

She turns, her breasts bare in the mirror.

I drop my eyes.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen her. I accidentally walked into the bathroom at my house when she was cleaning up after we went swimming. The room was thick with shower steam. She still doesn’t know the door had been opened at all.

Still doesn’t know she’s the only one I’ve ever seen like that.

When I think about touching someone, it’s always the same body I see. Teardrop breasts. Full and firm. The skin looks so soft, with a tight waist, curving beautifully the farther down I let my eyes go. My fingertips hum, and so does my mouth, because God, I want to touch her with more than just my hands.

Slowly, I raise my eyes again, watching her stare at herself in the mirror. Her head tilts like she’s studying her body or something. She doesn’t know how many people would love the feel of her.

For a moment, I see myself standing behind her, both of us shirtless, and I’m about to touch her, but when I look up at us, into the mirror, it’s him. It could be me, but she’ll see Kade. Everyone does.

Even I do sometimes.

Grabbing my towel, I throw it over my shoulder, heading for the shower, but my phone vibrates on the bed.

I flip it over, seeing Ciaran’s name.

In person, I call him Grandpa, but for some reason it felt weird to have him listed like that in my phone once I moved in with Farrow. He sees him as Ciaran Pierce—Irish Mobster.

I answer, holding the phone to my ear. “Everyone’s calling to check on me today,” I say. “I’m still alive.”

My grandfather doesn’t hesitate. “What’s this about you not going to the barber for your weekly appointment?”

I throw down my towel. Farrow called him? Really?

“It’s not an appointment,” I retort. “It’s some old guy shooting the shit in his garage all day who’s good with a razor. I needed some time alone.”

“So, Samson Fletcher has twenty dollars less in his pocket this week, because you’re wallowing under your perpetual teenage black cloud of ‘Life just sucks so badly?’”

I close my eyes.

Jesus Christ.

“I’ll go.” I exhale. “I’m going now.”

“Good boy,” he replies. “And spend some money at Breaker’s for dinner. Hugo’s kid just had another kid.”

I snarl, shaking my head.

But I keep my damn mouth shut.

“Love you,” he says.

“Mm-hmm.”

And we hang up.

After showering, I pull on some jeans, a T-shirt, and a fresh hoodie, and leave the girls still cleaning our house as I head across the darkening street to Fletcher’s Barber Shop.

The sun is setting, the leaves sounding like paper as they blow across the pavement.

As soon as I walk in, Farrow starts chuckling from his chair.

“Fuck you,” I mumble.

That just makes him laugh more. Fletcher, a seventy-four-year-old Haitian who still wears the white barber’s coat from back in the day, drags a straight-edge up Farrow’s neck to his chin.

He lifts his gaze to me. “Haircut?”

“Do I ever want a haircut?”

I have things to do. I head past the guys sitting in the chairs along the windows and pull out a twenty. I drop it on the counter, in front of the mirror, and grab a pair of clippers to snip off a lock and call it a day.

But Farrow snaps at me, “Sit your ass down. This man works for a living.”

I drop the clippers.

He’ll tell Ciaran if I don’t stay. It was worth a try.

Fletcher continues to shave Farrow as some Nat King Cole song plays, because that’s all Samson Fletcher plays.

I gesture to the razor. “You’re gonna sterilize that before you use it on me?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Farrow mumbles.

“I know where you’ve been,”

“You don’t know everywhere I’ve been.”

“Is this a mom joke?” I chuckle, drifting to the wall of photos.

“I didn’t say it was a joke.”

Calvin and T.C. laugh along with him, and I stare up at old photos, some of them black and white, and some with the gradient color of the ’70s and ’80s.

The shop is filled with guys in all the pictures, some of them in uniforms for factory jobs, some of them in suits, and others with boys, getting their first haircuts. The pictures capture men of all ages sitting in the same spots T.C., Constin, Luca, Anders, and Calvin sit in now, and I notice the same street outside; but in the photos, it’s lined with cars and pedestrians on their way home or off to work.

Mothers.

Families.

The town was busy back then.

I peer in closer, gazing at one from the ’80s, judging by the texture of the image. A man who looks like Farrow stands there with long hair.

Blond hair down to his shoulders, hanging over his hard eyes as they neither welcome nor smile at the photographer.

His hard, green eyes.

Like my mom’s. And mine.

Like Ciaran’s.

It’s my grandfather in the picture.

I glance at Farrow, reclined with eyes closed, and that stern Pierce set to his eyebrows.

I wonder if he knows.

“You want to take her a snack, Constin?” Farrow asks as Fletcher wipes down his face and applies an antiseptic.

I look over at Constin, seeing him stand at the window, staring across the street.

He’s had his eyes on her all day.

“She’s got to be hungry,” Calvin chimes in. “We didn’t leave her any food.”

They didn’t?

And then I didn’t let her eat lunch.

Shit.

Farrow’s seat pops back up, and he rises, rubbing the aftershave into his skin.

“Come on, son,” Fletcher slaps the back of the red leather chair twice.

I walk over, taking a seat, and he immediately tilts me back, removing a hot towel from the warmer.

He fans it out, leaning over to put it on my face.

I jerk away. “I don’t need all that.”

“Yes, you do,” he states clearly. He wraps the towel around my face, and I’m forced to close my eyes, the heat coursing straight down my arms, and it’s fucking heavenly.

“Your generation—and your parents’ generation—for that matter,” he points out, “need to relearn that living is an art. To do things with care and pride, instead of speed, just for the sake of convenience. You understand?”

“I’m sure the old dudes in your time had their complaints about your generation, too,” T.C. retorts.

“Yeah,” Fletcher fires back. “They hated us, because we fought against segregation and Vietnam, you little shit.”

I hear quiet laughter from my left, but I don’t know whose.

Fletcher presses down on the towel, forcing the heat in to open up my pores or whatever the hell it does. I can’t argue that it doesn’t feel good, though. My nerves start to settle for the first time since they put her in that house yesterday.

“Doing one little thing with regard makes you feel better,” Fletcher explains. “And if you feel better, your day will go better. How you do anything, is how you do everything.”

“Amen,” Farrow says.

Pulling off the towel, Fletcher dispenses some hot lather from his machine and works it between his hands.

He closes in with it, and I shut my eyes as he covers my jaw, cheeks, and neck with the warmth.

My head starts to float high, and I expel all the breath I was holding since she arrived. That actually feels really nice.

“Your whole world can go to shit,” he goes on, “and everything could be falling on your head all at once, but you can still make your bed and get a gentleman’s shave.”

“Hell yeah,” Calvin calls out, and I hear a round of two beats as they all knock on something to show their agreement.

I know why my grandpa always liked it here. It was the people. Ciaran was old school long before he was old, and the citizens of Weston didn’t like change. They didn’t get vacations to the Caribbean, so if life’s pleasures were smaller, then why not do them right? They do things like go for walks, play cards, and a big night for kids is going for a ninety-nine cent ice cream cone at the Village Drug Store.

I’d heard what Dylan had said in first period, and she was right. There was nothing else for them.

And that had made them a unit.

That’s why I came to Weston. We’re going to win.

I hear a small lid close, and then I feel Fletcher place his hand on my cheekbone, pulling the skin taut before he slides the sterilized razor up my face.

“What time was she in bed last night?” Farrow asks.

Constin replies, “Lights were definitely out by eleven.”

Yeah, they were. I close my hands around the ends of the armrests. Constin was watching, too.

“We should’ve put cameras in there,” he says.

“We had no time,” Farrow retorts. “I didn’t think we were getting a girl, and definitely not her.”

“Someone could do it tonight,” Constin points out. “We’ll take her to eat, come back, get the bikes. We can keep her out of the house for hours.”

“I’m not hearing this,” Mr. Fletcher says as he moves across my jaw.

“I’ll stay with her,” Constin goes on. “I want to drive her to Breaker’s too. I want her to get used to being alone with me.”

I flex my jaw, Fletcher’s razor slips, and I feel the slice in my skin.

I grunt, breathing hard, and Fletcher pats the wound with a towel. “Boy, keep still.”

“You okay, Hunter?” Farrow calls out.

But his voice is amused. I lift my middle finger.

He chuckles.

“We’re not gonna do some shit, right?” T.C. asks them. “To her, I mean? I’m not into that.”

“We’re not going to hurt her,” Farrow tells him. “We’re going to groom her.”

My stomach coils.

“And then she’ll be begging us to ‘hurt’ her between the sheets all night long,” Constin coos.

I pull so hard on the armrests, I hear them whine under my fingers.

Fletcher clears his throat, and Constin pipes up again, “Relax, Mr. Fletcher. She’s eighteen.”

I push Fletcher’s arm away and bolt out of the seat, kicking his tray into the air as I charge for Constin. He meets me head on, both of us chest to chest.

Farrow pushes me back, and I stumble as he steps between us. “Are you claiming her?” he asks me.

I shake my head, the challenge in his gaze clear.

“Are you claiming her?” he says slower, his voice deeper.

Air pours in and out of my lungs. “Yes,” I whisper.

The corner of his mouth curls.

He’s not sending her back. And she won’t go home. I have no choice.

“Hey, where is she going?” Calvin asks.

Farrow doesn’t look away from me.

“Whoa, what the hell?” Luca blurts out.

“She’s going to the Falls!” Calvin shouts.

Farrow spins around, looking out the window with the rest of them. The bike races off down the street, and I stand there, still seething.

“You fucking gave her a bike!” Constin bitches at Farrow.

But Farrow’s not listening. “Get her before she gets to the bridge!”

Everyone spills out of the barber shop and into the street, running for their bikes.

And for a second, I smile as I grab the towel Fletcher offers. I wipe the shaving cream off my face.

They’re about to learn just like the men in my family learned years ago. Dylan Trent never goes according to anyone’s plan.