The Run Home (Wolfe Brothers #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

B oon

“I hate ’em,” I grumbled under my breath, kicking a pine cone as I walked along our property line.

My brothers had kicked me out of their basketball game when I threw an airball on my first try.

They’d laughed their butts off, calling me names that would have made Mom order them to their room if she’d heard.

It wasn’t my fault I was smaller. I was younger than them, I was supposed to be smaller!

Warrick was four years older than me, Colson two.

It sure wasn’t easy being the youngest of three boys.

A muffled giggle hit my ears and I lifted my head, stopping in my tracks. I didn’t dare walk beyond our property, not when the sun was dipping low in the sky. It would be dark soon, and even though I’d never admit it to my stupid big brothers, I hated the dark.

I crept forward, making sure to step over any sticks that could rat me out. Hiding behind the huge live oak that bordered our property and the Fletchers’, I slowly peeked around the giant tree trunk.

Shae, the girl who lived next door, sat at an aging picnic table in a bright pink dress with ruffles and frilly stuff on it.

She looked ridiculous, but also kind of magical, like maybe she might be a Disney princess.

Three teddy bears sat on the bench with her, each with a plastic place setting in front of them like they were having tea with the queen of England.

Shae stood up and poured water from a miniature teakettle, murmuring under her breath as she filled each of their cups.

Her dark red hair looked almost like red-hot lava with the last rays of the sun behind her.

I leaned a little closer, wanting to hear what she was saying.

Without a sister, I was curious how girls played.

Us boys had never had a tea party. Ever.

She put the teakettle down and sat, immediately throwing her arm around the bear closest to her. Her voice was as soft and sweet as the honey sitting in the middle of the picnic table in a squeeze bottle. “Don’t be scared, Henry. I’ve got you. I’ll be by your side the whole time.”

My shoulders fell away from my ears. In that moment it felt like everything in me yearned to be that teddy bear, Shae’s arm around me telling me everything would be alright. And then it hit me I was longing to be a little girl’s imaginary friend.

I reared my head back, face screwed up like Warrick when I borrowed one of his shirts.

Shae was so annoying. She was a year younger than me and always following me around.

I didn’t have time to wait for her short legs to catch up.

I was already trying to catch up to my big brothers.

And now she was talking to teddy bears and making me wish she’d say those words to me? Ridiculous.

My back foot crunched down on a dry stick, the snap echoing off the tree trunks.

Shae’s head whipped around and her mouth dropped open into a little round “o” that annoyed me.

Anger bubbled up in my chest and my legs were pumping before I knew what I was doing.

I reached her picnic table and swiped at the teddy bear she’d had her arm around.

He tumbled to the dry leaves below, his teacup spilling across the picnic table and soaking the tablecloth.

“Boon, no!” Shae cried, pretty gray-blue eyes instantly welling with tears.

There. Now she knew what it was like to be picked on. It wasn’t all roses and teddy bears and tea parties. Someone had to toughen her up or she’d get eaten alive at school.

I stuck my tongue out at her and ran away as fast as I could, my lungs heaving at the effort along with a strange sense that I’d kicked a sweet little puppy dog. I wasn’t proud of myself.

In fact, I decided right then and there to avoid Shae Fletcher at all costs.

Past (13 years old)

“Go out there and help her, son.” Dad clapped his big hand on my shoulder, jarring my teeth and scaring the crap out of me. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

“Who?” I asked, feigning confusion.

Dad’s mouth tipped up into a ghost of a smile. “The girl you’ve been staring at for the last ten minutes.”

I grimaced. “I’ve been looking at the stupid cow.”

Mom had come home with a milking cow last week, shocking us all. She swore Pearl would be the perfect addition to our family, but I wasn’t so sure. Seemed like a lot of work to feed her and house her, most of which Mom made me and my brothers do.

Dad’s smile only grew. “If you say so. But Shae needs a partner to bump around with. You should go help her.”

I crossed my arms across my chest, willing to argue with Dad if it meant getting out of spending time with Shae Fletcher. “Why? She’s a girl.”

“Exactly why you should go help her.”

I threw out my hands. “But she didn’t ask for help!”

“Son, we don’t wait for a woman to ask for help. We go in there and offer it. See a need, step in to help. That’s the kind of men we’re raising around here.”

I was desperate to get out of it. “Why don’t you have Warrick help her?”

Dad’s smile faded, and he got that look in his eye us boys had grown to recognize. He was done asking and pretty soon he’d be yelling or grounding us if we didn’t get with the program. “Because I asked you .”

“Fine…” I grumbled, shuffling out the front door like I was walking to the gallows.

Shae swiped the volleyball off the ground in front of her garage and got ready to serve it for at least the hundredth time today. She faltered and almost dropped the ball when she saw me approaching, hands in the pockets of my jeans.

“You gotta pull your elbow way back or you’ll never have enough power to get it over the net.”

I didn’t play volleyball, but I was a pretty good baseball player and I knew enough about mechanics to know her weak attempt at a serve would never work.

Shae lifted her pert nose in the air and shoved a pair of glasses upward. “I don’t need your help, bat boy.”

I rolled my eyes. She’d taken to calling me bat boy, which was super annoying. “Sure looks like you do. You trying to make the team next year or what?”

Shae was super smart. She had skipped a grade in elementary school and was now in my grade.

We’d be entering high school together and I’d heard through her mom and my mom that Shae desperately wanted to make the junior varsity volleyball team.

I’d laughed when I heard the news. Shae wasn’t exactly sporty.

Her bespectacled face was in the dictionary next to nerd.

“I’ll make the team, don’t worry. That’s why I’m practicing.”

God, she was stubborn. And pretty. The freckles across her nose were fading and at some point over the summer she’d grown boobs. Not that I was looking. Gross.

“Seriously, hand over the ball.” I took my hands out of my pockets and gestured for the ball.

Shae glared at me through narrowed eyes but tossed it to me.

I caught it and served it to her, the ball making a perfect arc right to her platform.

She bumped it back to me and I set it to her.

My set wasn’t great, but she was able to hit it.

We kept going like that for the next hour.

I wasn’t nice to her. I made her lunge and reach and even dive a few times to keep the ball in the air, but she didn’t complain.

When I actually cheered at her perfect overhand serve, I realized I needed to get the hell away from her. I frowned, rolling the ball back to her.

“Where you going?” she called after me.

“Got more important shit to do, Fletcher.”

I couldn’t see her face as I walked back to my house, but I could just imagine the hurt expression. She wore that look a lot around me. I got a glimpse of Dad in the front window, arms folded across his chest. I rolled my eyes.

“We’ll work on hitting tomorrow,” I called over my shoulder right before I ascended the porch steps in two giant leaps and slammed the door behind me.

Those hour-long sessions every day with Shae somehow became the most fun I had all summer.

Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone.

Past (15 years old)

Shae made the junior varsity volleyball team, but that hadn’t stopped her from being teased all freshman year.

She was younger than all of us, and way fucking smarter, which pretty much made her a target for every bully at Blueball High.

I watched it happen, cringing inwardly every time her eyes filled with unshed tears.

Dad’s gruff voice echoed in my head constantly. See a need, step in to help.

Thing was, I was popular in high school.

Being a stud baseball player who already had college scouts watching my games as a freshman pretty much sealed the deal.

I didn’t want to see Shae get teased, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to step in and make it a whole thing.

I didn’t want her to think we were friends.

So I narrowed down the bullying to one particular guy in eleventh grade, Grady Summerlin.

Grady was the worst to Shae, constantly teasing her about her glasses or ruining the grade curve in class.

Which, really, if you think about it, shouldn’t he have felt like an idiot when a freshman was kicking his ass in junior-level classes?

I cornered him after school one day, a plan in mind.

“Yo, Grady,” I hollered, pulling him aside from the herd of kids trying to leave school right as the bell rang. He was on the football team and bigger than me, but I was hoping my popularity would get him to go along with my plan.

He gave me a head dip and moved over to the chain-link fence by the baseball field with me. “Whatsup, man?”

“Hey, I need a favor. You know I live next to Shae Fletcher?”

Grady frowned. “Shae?”

The dumbass didn’t even know her name. Now I was pissed. “Yeah. Glasses, dark red hair? She sits in front of you in Lit?”

His face cleared and he smirked. “Oh, yeah. I know who you mean. She’s got a nice rack.”

I had to grit my teeth to keep from punching this asshole’s ugly face.

“Yeah, well, I have a plan for her. A little something to get her back for some shit she pulled over the summer. Think you can get everyone to lay off of her? I want her to let her guard down, and then I’m going to pull an epic prank on her. ”

Grady laughed like a fucking donkey. “You bet, man. That’s going to be hilarious. I’ll spread the word.”

“Remember. We have to keep this quiet. It can’t get back to her.”

He held out his hand and we did some stupid handshake like we were buddies. “You can count on me, Wolfe!”

He lumbered off to his car, and I watched him go.

I’d be a little late changing out for hitting practice, but it was worth it to get him and his buddies away from Shae.

I didn’t actually have a prank planned yet, but I’d figure that out later.

For now, hopefully they’d leave her alone and I wouldn’t have to see her crying through her bedroom window every night.

Somehow, someway, that girl in her fancy pink dress had reached right into my chest all those years ago and settled there.

Every time she hurt, I hurt. Every time she wished for something, I wanted to move heaven and earth to make it happen for her.

Every time she switched out her light to go to bed, I said a little prayer that she’d sleep tight and dream of me.

I highly doubt she ever did, but that was okay.

There was no world in which Shae Fletcher and I would ever be together in that way.

Especially when I got drafted to the majors straight out of high school and left Blueball far, far behind.