Leaf and Let Die (Kirby Falls #3)

Prologue

prologue

brADY

Spring 2012

I tossed my gym bag on the metal bleachers and collapsed beside it. A moment later, Floyd and Abby joined me in a similarly exhausted heap.

Soccer practice had been brutal today. It was mostly conditioning since the boys’ team wasn’t in season. So that meant a lot of running. I didn’t mind a hard workout, but it was finally May, and the first hot temperatures of the year were sneaking through.

I loved living in the mountains of North Carolina, but I wasn’t ready for the summer heat—not when I had to run sprints at three in the afternoon with the sun beating down on my shoulders.

I yanked my tee shirt off and brought my water bottle to my lips. I figured I’d just skip the locker room altogether and head straight for the eleventh-grade parking lot and drive home.

“Man, that suuucked,” Abby said. Cole Abernathy—Abby to nearly everyone—had been my best friend since kindergarten, but I’d only recently talked him into joining the soccer team. He was probably cursing that decision now. Abby was naturally athletic, though. He’d be fine .

“Yeah, it’s hot as hell,” I agreed. I took the rest of my water and dumped it over my head.

“Know what else is hot as hell?” Floyd murmured before whacking the side of my leg with the shoe he’d just pulled off.

“What?” I asked, blinking water out of my eyes and digging in my duffel for a clean shirt.

When Floyd didn’t answer, I raised my head. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was gazing off in the distance. I followed his attention to the opposite side of the field where the girls’ soccer team was warming up. They were in season and had a game tonight. Sometimes, the boys’ team stayed to watch, but I was ready to go home and shower. Plus, it was Friday. That meant there was a bonfire at Abby’s.

“What’s so hot, Floyd?” Abby repeated my question.

“MacKenzie Clark,” Floyd replied with a smug tone in his voice that made me frown on instinct. His eyes were still focused on where Mac was stretching in her maroon uniform. Impulsively, I sought her out, too. Mac’s long, dark ponytail trailed down her back. She straightened and shouted something to one of her teammates before taking off at a jog.

Mac was hot. Objectively so. But she was also a gigantic pain in the ass. I’d known her since preschool. Hell, we all had. That was what happened when you lived in a tiny town and everybody was in everybody’s business.

The Clarks owned Grandpappy’s—the farm across the highway from my own family’s orchard. Our two businesses had been in competition for tourist dollars since before Mac and I were born.

While we’d shared classes over the years, we’d never really been friendly. We were ... something else.

MacKenzie Clark might have been my closest neighbor for miles, but she was no girl next door.

We’d grown up pestering the hell out of each other. I’d teased her, and she’d given it right back, just as good. In first grade, I’d cut the end of her pigtail with safety scissors during nap time. Mac hadn’t tattled. Instead, she’d gotten even by holding me down and making me eat dirt at recess. I had dozens of similar stories. Teachers had eventually learned not to pair us up for projects. We argued and bickered like it was our job, but mostly, it was fun. Typically, my behavior was habit and familiarity. I enjoyed getting a rise out of her. I reckoned Mac felt the same.

That was why, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why one of my best friends would be commenting on how hot she was. Yeah, we were seventeen, and girls had become more of a priority in recent years, but it was strange that Floyd would bring up Mac, of all people. The realization that he could be into her had me shifting uncomfortably on the bleachers and my heart racing. And not from the workout.

Returning my focus to my friend, I tried to make my voice sound casual. “Mac? You think Mac is hot all of a sudden?”

Floyd’s expression sobered. Then he glanced between me and Abby. “You can’t say anything.”

Abby held up a hand in a poor approximation of a Boy Scout salute. “I swear.”

I swallowed, feeling even more uneasy. “I won’t say anything,” I confirmed.

Floyd couldn’t seem to resist smiling then.

His smug grin tilted up the corners of his lips, revealing the wide gap in his front teeth, and my chest went tight with a sense of foreboding that I couldn’t put a name to.

“Well, my aunt and uncle came to visit this week, so my momma wanted to take them around, show them the sights,” Floyd explained. “We ended up at Grandpappy’s.”

Briefly, I wondered if the disquiet I felt was even warranted. Mac worked on her family’s farm. She’d been helping out at Grandpappy’s since she was a kid. But what could that possibly have to do with Floyd and his aunt and uncle?

“I got tired of following my family around,” Floyd continued, “and went off on my own. I ran into Mac, and we hung out for a while in the barn.”

Frowning, I asked, “Hung out? What does that mean?”

Floyd bit his lip, gaze straying back across the field. “We made out. She let me feel her up. ”

My heart—already pounding—went double time. “Wait—what? Why? Do you even like her?”

I felt the weight of Abby’s gaze on my face from where he sat on Floyd’s other side. But I ignored him and focused on the way Floyd shrugged, nonchalant as hell.

“Nah, not really,” Floyd replied. “I was just bored. But she seemed easy enough. I bet she’d let me do more.”

Disgust had my eyebrows pulling low.

I’d known Floyd Ellerby since preschool, too. We’d been friends and teammates for a long time. I’d heard him talk about hot actresses or models, but this was different.

I dated girls my age. I flirted and fooled around, but I definitely wasn’t spending time with anyone out of boredom. I wasn’t a saint. I didn’t know a teenage guy who was, but I didn’t talk about women like that—as if they were a commodity, like they were disposable.

Mac had gone out with a few guys earlier in the year. Granted, Connor Pritchard—her last boyfriend—was a self-absorbed dick bag, and I didn’t know why she wanted anything to do with him in the first place. Whatever. Mac was free to be “bored” with whomever she pleased. It wasn’t any of my business.

Yet, the thought of my friend hooking up with her made me feel like someone had hollowed out my stomach with a melon baller.

Instead of berating Floyd for being disrespectful—something my daddy would have done—I said something altogether worse. “I don’t know why you’d even waste your time with Mac. She’s not even pretty. She’d probably give you a disease. And, sure, she seems easy enough, but that’s because no one else wants her.”

Silence followed in the wake of my statement, as heavy and oppressive as the day’s sudden heat. I counted out ten thundering heartbeats before Abby whistled a low note.

“Jesus, Brady,” Abby admonished before standing and hoisting his bag.

But, Floyd was nodding. “Yeah, man. You’re probably right. She hasn’t dated anyone since Pritchard, and he talked all kinds of shit about her. I’m not looking for drama.”

I swallowed what felt like a mouthful of glass and looked down at the shirt still in my hands. With jerky movements, I slipped it over my head and zipped up my bag.

“I’m out of here,” Abby said. “I’ll see y’all later.”

Floyd called out a goodbye, saying he’d see Abby tonight at the bonfire.

I couldn’t seem to find my voice. With a quick glance, I could see the girls’ team had moved on from stretching to some passing drills. I couldn’t bring myself to search out Mac after what I’d said.

I didn’t let myself think about the relief that flooded my veins when Floyd said he’d back off. Nor did I want to consider the reason behind it. While I was at it, I ignored the guilt and disgust twisting my stomach into knots, too.

With a quiet “See you later” for my friend, I grabbed my stuff and went home.

Mac was at the bonfire that night. The entire girls’ soccer team had come straight over after their 4–1 victory over the Cookeville Red Devils.

The temperature had dropped as soon as the sun went down. Mac still wore her uniform but with a Kirby Falls Bobcats hoodie thrown over it to ward off the chill.

Floyd wasn’t here yet, and Abby was chatting up Lara Dillion over by the fire.

I watched as the pack of soccer girls finally dispersed, making their way toward the chairs scattered around the glowing flames. Mac hung back, digging through one of the coolers.

Without any common sense or forethought, I started walking in her direction.

“Good game tonight,” I said when I reached her side.

Mac glanced up and did a double take as if surprised to find those words coming out of my mouth, which was, okay, fair. We didn’t go around complimenting one another .

Her storm-gray eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I heard you had two of those goals,” I tried again. “Nice job. Cookeville is tough.”

“Thanks,” she said cautiously as she straightened, pulling a blue sports drink out of the ice chest. “Yeah, they’re pretty aggressive.”

My instinct was to reply, Good thing you’re basically feral . But I didn’t say that. Instead, I offered a smile.

Her frown stayed firmly in place as she watched me edge closer and reach inside the cooler for a drink.

This close, I could see the tiny wisps of dark hair that had escaped her ponytail. Despite her casual appearance, there was nothing about Mac that was relaxed. She was on high alert with me in range. I might as well have been an incoming warship on her radar. She was at battle stations, prepared for attack.

And I couldn’t blame her. That was how it had always been between us. We gave each other shit and expected the worst.

But maybe it didn’t have to be that way.

Abruptly, Laramie Burke came over and threw an arm around her cousin’s shoulders. “Whoa! Any bloodshed over here?”

I grabbed the first drink my hand touched in the icy water and took a step back.

“Not yet,” Mac answered, still stone-faced as I cleared my throat awkwardly.

Laramie—everyone called her Larry—slapped me on the back. “Well, then you owe me one for saving you, Brady.”

I gave an awkward laugh and popped the top on my can of—I checked the label—Natty Light. Great . “No need. Just saying hi. Weapons are set to stun.”

Larry’s smile wilted in obvious confusion, but Mac’s nostrils flared, and she countered, “Speak for yourself.”

I took in Mac’s unwavering glare and the animosity that radiated from her in waves. Then I gave a slight nod and stepped away. I didn’t always know when to back off and retreat, but, right now, it seemed like a good idea .

As I returned to the circle of chairs surrounding the bonfire, I shook my head at what an idiot I’d been. I’d walked over there without a game plan, but I’d known that I didn’t want to fight with Mac tonight. Maybe the idea of a truce had been swirling around with all that guilt and confusion from earlier.

I spent the rest of the night avoiding MacKenzie Clark and whatever complicated feelings were preventing me from thinking straight.

A week later, when I ended up at her table during study hall, I once again attempted a civil conversation, but Mac looked at me like I was something she pulled off the bottom of her shoe.

Our encounters for the remainder of junior year were few and far between, but whenever our orbits did collide, Mac seemed extra combative. No matter what I said or how I said it, she took offense and responded in kind. I chalked it up to hormones or just being a terrifying teenage girl. Or maybe our patterns and mannerisms had long been established, and it was too late now to do anything about it.

It was easier to revert to learned behavior anyhow.

Mac loved to hate me.

It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t hate her back.