Have Your Heart Again (Rival Hearts #2)

Prologue

ASHA

AGE SIX

“That kid is so weird. Look at him. He’s skinny and pale, and those eyes… He looks like a zombie,” Preacher says to Remy.

“What’s wrong, kid? You look like you’re going to be sick or something,” Remy chimes in.

I look over my shoulder from my spot on the swings to see him for myself.

There, sitting atop the monkey bars, is the new kid, hunched over slightly, legs swinging, eyes on the dirt.

They’re not wrong; he does look sick. It’s the end of summer in Kentucky, and we’re a bunch of country kids with endless creeks, farm ponds, and pastures to run through, yet he looks like today is his first day seeing the sun.

His hair is almost as black as the coffee my father drinks every morning, and his dark eyes match the color of the chocolate chips Mom puts in my pancakes.

His words might be mean, but what Preacher says is kinda true. The kid does look sick.

His pale skin does nothing for the circles under his eyes. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in days. He looks the way I look when I stay up too late on Christmas Eve. I quickly look back at the ground in front of me and shuffle my feet in the dirt so he doesn’t catch me staring.

“He’s probably stuck up there. If he jumped down, those twigs he has for arms might snap,” Preacher taunts some more, trying to get a rise out of the boy, but he keeps his eyes pinned down on the ground.

“If I looked like that, I wouldn’t be at school. My mom would take me to the doctor,” Remy says, not so much as a joke but a fact. However, it only eggs Preacher on.

“Yeah, well, your mom isn’t embarrassed by you. Could you imagine having a zombie for a son?” Preacher chuckles.

I flick my head over my shoulder once more, waiting to see if Preacher’s and Remy’s comments will earn them any type of response, but this time, when I look at the kid on top of the monkey bars, I see something different. He doesn’t look sick; he looks sad.

I hop off the swings and turn around.

“Leave him alone,” I say with my hands firmly planted on my hips.

“Asha, what are you doing?” my friend Gabby asks, bringing her swing to a stop. “Do you know him?”

I peer up at the monkey bars, and for the first time, the boy looks up, and his dark eyes lock on mine.

My hands get clammy, and I clench my fists.

When I hopped off this swing, it was to get the boys to back off, but I can’t be sure if the eyes staring back at me are grateful or annoyed.

I suppose it doesn’t matter. My momma always taught me to be kind and to stick up for what’s right, even if it’s hard, and Preacher is being a jerk.

“No, but neither does Preacher,” I say.

“Go away, Asha,” Preacher dismisses me like he’s not scared of me, but he should be.

“Okay.” I shrug my shoulders and crack my knuckles. I didn’t think I needed to remind him about our little incident in pre-k, but I guess I do. “But you know I don’t like it when you pick on me.”

On my first day of pre-school, I sat in my chair and cried for the first hour of the day because I missed my mom.

I hated being separated from her. Until that day, I’d been her mini-me, her shadow, and then she left me all alone with a bunch of snot-nosed kids.

Preacher was one of the first kids to talk to me, except he wasn’t trying to make a friend.

He asked me if I was crying because I missed my mom in the most whiny, irritating voice imaginable.

To this day, I remember it so clearly. Bright-red hair and a face full of freckles, going out of his way to poke fun at someone who was sad.

What I did next came without thought. I punched him square in the nose, and then I was no longer the only kid in class crying.

His face turns into a scowl. “Whatever, if you want to catch cooties…” He waves his hand toward the monkey bars. “Be my guest. It’s your funeral, Fairfield.”

I roll my eyes and put one foot in front of the other, stomping past him. He’s not going to turn this around on me with cooties.

“Asha, don’t do it,” Gabby pleads.

With one foot on the bottom rung of the bars, I grab the sides and turn to my friend.

“I’m not going to catch cooties. We already got our shots…

remember?” I say, eyes wide. Gabby puts her finger to her lips and looks at the ground like she has to think about it, but I don’t give her time to think it through before I reach the top and crawl the three bars it takes to reach him.

“I’ll give him the shot, and then no one has to worry about him being sick. ”

When I turn to the boy right in front of me, his forehead is all crunched, and his eyes look worried, like he's trying to figure out if I'm really gonna help him or if I'm gonna be scared and jump down now that I'm actually up here with him.

“Hi,” I say hurriedly, my nerves getting the best of me. “I’m Asha...Asha Fairfield.” I carefully settle into my spot beside him before asking, “What’s your name?”

For long seconds, he’s quiet, and for a moment I wonder if I made the wrong choice sticking my neck out to save a boy that didn’t want to be saved.

But then he says, “Trigg.” My eyebrows rise slightly, surprised he gave me a response, and my journey up these bars wasn’t for nothing.

He thins his lips, like he messed up and gave me the wrong answer, and then adds, “Trigger. My name is Trigger Hale.”

“Hale?” I ask, unable to keep my nose from crinkling. “As in Hale Ranch?”

“Yeah, you’ve heard of it?” he says somewhat timidly.

I look over toward Gabby. Of course I came up here and risked my own hide for the enemy.

Preacher’s amused glare catches my eyes as he moves to cross his arms. “Well, get on with it, then—unless you’re afraid to touch him.”

“I wasn’t afraid to touch your nose,” I snap back, my eyes still glued on the boy in front of me.

“What’s she talking about?” Remy asks, unaware of what happened in pre-k since he wasn’t in our class back then.

“Nothing.” Preacher rolls his shoulders. “Ten seconds, or I’m telling the whole class you caught cooties from zombie boy.”

I shoot him a glare before turning to Trigg.

“Give me your arm.” He slowly extends his arm.

“Who wears long sleeves in the summer?” I ask as I push up his sleeve.

His brows tug together before I look down, and my mouth parts as a little whoosh leaves my lungs.

The underside of his arm has bruises running from his wrist to his elbow.

“It’s okay,” he says, his other hand reaching for the hem of his sleeve.

“No.” I stop his hand. My eyes dart up to his.

“I’ll be quick.” I lick my lips and clear my throat as I hold up my index finger.

“Circle, circle, dot, dot,” I say, my finger tracing the design over what looks like an old scar.

“Now you have your cootie shot,” I finish, and our eyes stay focused on the spot where my finger touched his skin.

It’s pebbled now, and when his eyes finally trace up to mine, my stomach does something funny.

“Whatever,” Preacher says with a huff, drawing our gazes to him. “Recess is almost over. Let’s go play kickball.”

We watch as he turns on his heel before running toward the kickball field with Remy.

"Thanks," Trigg says, tugging his sleeve down.

"Yeah, well, don't make me regret it." I swing my legs back and forth.

"How would I do that?" He tilts his head to the side.

"You're a Hale. It's in your blood." I point at him like I'm solving a mystery.

"What does that mean?" He scoots a little closer, making the whole monkey bar wobble.

"Your ranch is right next to mine." I wave my hand toward the direction of our houses.

"So?" He shrugs his shoulders and kicks at the air like he doesn't care at all.

"So...your ranch is the competition! Your family and mine both breed horses. You're the enemy." I cross my arms and almost lose my balance.

"Oh," he says, blinking real slow, like I just told him the sky is blue, and he never noticed before.

Now I’m the one with my eyebrows tugged together.

Maybe his parents don’t speak freely around him about the business.

I’ve never known anything but horses. It’s in my genes.

I know one day Fairfield will be mine. My mother has told me this as far back as I can remember.

I don’t know much about his family. The little I know comes from my father’s rants.

Trigg is my enemy because the last name attached to his is one my father despises, but that doesn’t mean he has to be mine. Does it?

“What did you mean before when you said you weren’t afraid to touch his nose?”

“I punched him in the nose on my first day in pre-k. He was making fun of me for missing my mom.”

He laughs. “So, it’s not your dad I need to worry about; it’s you. Are you sure your name is Asha and not Trouble?”

I smile and bite the inside of my lip so it doesn’t take over my whole face. “Hey, I didn’t go looking for trouble. He poked the bear. What about you? How did you get those bruises on your arm?”

“I just got out of the hospital a few weeks ago,” he says, shifting his weight.

“Are you sick?” Maybe after all that, Preacher was right.

“I was. I’m not anymore. I had a kidney transplant.”

My eyes go wide. “That sounds serious.”

“It is. I could have died if they didn’t find a match.”

“I’m going to punch him. I’m going to punch him square in the nose just like I did the first time,” I spit, and my cheeks flame as I look across the playground at Preacher kicking around a ball without a care in the world about the hurtful words he said to a boy he never took a second to know.

“You’d do that for me?” he asks, his dark chocolate chip eyes finding mine.

“Yeah, that’s what friends do.” The words are out of my mouth before I can think them through.

He's supposed to be the enemy, or at least that’s what my dad says, but he looks like he could use a friend, and since that’s the word I used, it’s the word I must have meant.

My mother always says there are no such things as accidents, only things that were always going to happen.

“Friends? But you just said I was the enemy.” His hands tighten around the bars.

“I know what I said. Take the title or don’t.”

“I’ll take it,” he says quickly.

“Good. Now just promise you’ll never tell my dad,” I say as I extend my hand and pop out my pinky.

His pinky wraps around mine. “Promise.” My finger tingles, and my eyes snap to his to see if he feels it too, but before I can figure it out, he’s letting it go and asking, “Why can’t I tell your father we’re friends?”

One of the teachers blows a whistle, and we both turn toward the sound.

However, I must whip my head around too fast, because everything spins.

Before I know it, my hands are slipping, and I'm falling. I crash to the ground hard, and it feels like all the air is sucked from my lungs as sharp rocks dig into my back. I can feel that my arm is twisted funny underneath me, but when I try to move it, my head explodes with the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

I blink, and a hand is on my arm, a shadow at my side, and I hear Trigger calling for me, but he sounds so far away.

Another sharp pain rips through my head, and then everything goes dark.