“Show me,” I demand.
He hesitates.
I sit back down beside him on the bed and ask more softly this time. “Show me.”
He sighs and lifts his shirt.
Two ugly bruises bloom across his ribs like storm clouds.
“Oh my God, Z.” I throw my arms around him, careful to avoid the bruised areas, my heart breaking into a thousand pieces. It’s getting more frequent. It used to be just every couple of months, but now it’s every otherweek. It’s like the older Z gets, the more he intimidates Frank, even though Z never fights back. IhateFrank.
So I’m about to sayyes. Of course, I’ll marry him. I’ll do anything to get him away from that monster?—
But then there’s a loud commotion—voices shouting, a crash like dishes breaking—outside that makes my head snap toward the window.
“Oh shit, is Frank home?”
Frank’s caused enough fights in the park that everyone knows his temper. He’s in an ongoing feud with Angelo at the other end of Grass Alley, and honestly, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.
Z joins me at the window as a woman’s shrieking and a man’s shouting get louder.
“It’s probably just Tonya getting in another argument with Bill’s mistress,” Z says.
I squint, scanning trailer to trailer. You never need reality TV when you live in Grass Alley.
Then the male voice gets louder, and my heart stops.
No. No fucking way.
I know that voice. But what the hell wouldhebe doing here?
And then, holy shit, I see?—
Itishim.
Beyond our brief encounter the last time he got out of the slammer, I essentially haven’t seen him in over five years. Not since I was twelve years old, clinging to his leg and begging him not to go run one last job—the one that got him put away again. Always one last job, no matter how hard I cried.
My father.
Silas Tucker.
Stomping straight toward Z’s trailer like he’s on a goddamn mission.
And suddenly, I know with terrible sinking dread: whatever’s about to happen, it’s going to change everything.
TWO
HARPER
The front doorof Z’s trailer slams open so hard it bounces off the wall.
But moments later, when I expect my father, it’sZ’sstepfather who suddenly storms into Z’s bedroom—wait, where the hell didhecome from?—and the temperature in the room drops twenty degrees.
He’s a big man: six-three, barrel-chested, with hands like cinder blocks and a face that looks like it was carved from a slab of craggy, not-quite-set concrete. His work boots are caked in mud.
Z’s breathing changes beside me.I feel it before I see it—that tell-tale hitch that means he’s scared.
“The fuck is going on out there?” he barks, not even looking at us yet. Just talking to the air or whoever’s unlucky enough to be in his path.