ONCE AND AGAIN (BARRETT CREEK #1)

Prologue

GEMMA

Barrett Creek, Texas

Then

“Go home, Tagalong.”

He’s been hissing it at me over his shoulder, every now and again, for the last mile or so. Ever since he snuck out of the house and realized that I snuck out too, right after him.

I don’t answer and I don’t turn back to do what he says. I just keep following them through the tangled strip of woods that runs along the banks of the Barrett.

“I’m serious, Tag—go home,” he says, his tone hardening. “We don’t want you here.”

We is Beck, my older brother, and Reese Redford. He says they’re just friends—best friends—but I don’t believe him. I’ve seen the way he looks at her when he thinks no one is paying attention.

And Riggs.

Riggs is with them.

He’s always with them.

It’s always been the three of them.

The Three Musketeers.

That’s what Grandpa Dent calls them.

Stuck to each other like glue, those three, since the day they were born. Never in my life have I seen anything like it.

From the way he tells it, our mom, Reese’s mom, and Riggs’ mom used to be friends—but that was before Mrs. Redford got sick and our mom got tired of putting up with him and divorced our dad and took her fancy ass back across the river.

Dad works on an oil rig in the gulf so when we cross the bridge every other weekend for his court-appointed visitation, it’s not him we come to see.

It’s Dent. Well, I come to see Dent. Beck comes to see Reese and Riggs—mostly Reese these days.

“Look—” Stopping in the middle of the narrow dirt path worn into the forest floor, Beck turns around to glare at me with barely suppressed irritation.

“If Dent wakes up and finds you gone, he’s gonna call the sheriff and if he calls the sheriff, Mom is damn sure gonna hear about it and then she won’t let us come back,” he tells me, his tone telling me his patience is wearing thin.

“Is that what you want, Tagalong? Because I sure as hell don’t. ”

Yeah, because then you won’t get to see your girlfriend anymore.

Despite my embarrassment and anger, the certainty of what he’s saying drops a big, heavy ball of unease into my belly.

He’s right. I know he’s right. Beck is different.

He’s a boy and he’s nearly eighteen. If Dent wakes up and sees his bed empty, he’d just roll his eyes and shake his head on the way back to his room.

He wouldn’t worry about him until he had breakfast on the table.

Not only am I a girl, I’m only fifteen. No way will he just roll his eyes and go back to sleep if he finds my bed unoccupied. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be sixteen in a few weeks or that I’m almost certainly with my older brother and his friends, because I also happen to be Dent’s favorite.

I know that. I know that he’d have the whole town up and looking for me if he knew I was gone and still, I’m unwilling to relent.

Stopping on the trail, I feel my jaw tighten and my gaze narrow down to slits. “Stop calling me that,” I hiss at him stubbornly.

“Then stop doing it,” he hisses back while Reese slaps a hand over her mouth to keep herself from laughing out loud. I’m not sure who she’s laughing at but before I can ask, she drops her hand away from her face.

“Just let her come,” she says quietly. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not like?—”

“No.” Beck cuts her off, his own gaze sharpening slightly to cut across the space between us.

I can barely see him. It’s late. Well past curfew.

None of us have any business out here. Least of all me, but I’ll be damned if I’ll admit it.

“She’s a spoiled brat who always gets her way.

No one tells her no. Not our mom and sure as hell not Dent. She can’t just?—”

“Jesus, shut the hell up, already,” Riggs groans impatiently from the trail, somewhere up ahead.

He’s been walking ahead of Beck and Reese this entire time, too far ahead for me to see.

“It ever occur to you that she shouldn’t go back?

” he asks, his voice moving closer in the dark.

“At least not by herself. It’s fuckin’ dark out here. ”

When he says it, I feel my guts tighten and my chin lift slightly. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

It’s a lie.

I’m totally afraid of the dark but I’d rather jump in the river than admit it. Especially to Riggs.

“Stubborn as the day is long…” Stepping into a swath of moonlight that cuts across the trail, Riggs gives me a sigh that’s almost as irritated as Beck’s. “Come on, Gem,” he says, motioning impatiently for me to turn around and start walking back the way we came. “I’ll walk you home.”

“Maybe we should all go back,” Reese says, her voice soft with indecision.

“Nah,” Riggs shakes his head, his black hair shining blue in another slice of moonlight as he makes his way back down the trail.

“You two go on ahead. I’ll catch up.” Stopping in front of me, he looks down, his features cast in shadow.

“Turn around and start walkin’,” he says, lifting an arm the size of a tree trunk to point a finger over my shoulder. “I mean it, Gem—let’s go.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” I gripe up at him, my hands cranking into fists.

Not because I’m scared or because I’m mad, even though I’m a little bit of both.

No, I’m clenching my fists because I know I’m going to cave.

I’m going to let Riggs walk me home, and there isn’t a thing I can do about it.

“Maybe not,” he says, his teeth flashing at me in the gloom. “But I can put you over my shoulder and make you.”

He’s not lying.

Even though he’s younger by nearly a year, he’s a head and a half taller than Beck and Beck isn’t small by any stretch. If he had a mind to, Riggs could make me do just about anything he wanted.

“Come on, Gem,” he says, his tone softening slightly. “Let’s go home.”

I want to tell him no. I really, really do.

But I can’t.

Shifting my head so I can see around the wide set of his shoulders, I find the pair of shadows standing on the trail ahead of us, and give in.

“Bye, Reese,” I say, fighting to keep the defeated dejections out of my tone.

Flicking my gaze at the shape of my brother standing next to her, I narrow it down to a slits. “Eat shit, Beck.”

“Jesus…” Riggs says it on an exasperated chuckle. Dropping his hands down to my shoulders, he grips them and turns me away from him to face the empty trail behind me. “Go.”

My heels dig into the dirt, rooting me in place for a few seconds before I give in.

I always give into Riggs. Beck I’ll fight all day long.

Even Grandpa Dent gets my mule-headedness more often than not—and don’t even get me started with my mother.

All she has to say is you’re just like your father and I’ll grow roots, right where I’m standing.

But not Riggs.

All he has to do is give me one of his crooked half-smiles and call me Gem and I can feel myself start to bend. It’s beyond irritating.

“I hate you,” I grumble at him over my shoulder, earning myself another exasperated chuckle, the sound of it pushing me down the trail.

“No you don’t,” he says softly, his tone caught somewhere between affable and annoyed.

“Yes I do,” I insist, even though we both know I’m lying. “Actually, I think I hate you more than I hate Beck.”

I don’t hate Riggs.

Not by a long shot.

What I feel for him is scary and new. When Grandpa Dent takes me fishing, we always stop by Merle’s for a quart of worms and a couple of Dr. Peppers.

Lately, that’s what it feels like, every time I look at him—a quart of worms, squirming around in my stomach.

Last week, when my best friend, Emily, told me that her next-door neighbor, Cade Montgomery, kissed her in her backyard, the first thing I thought about was Riggs.

What it would feel like to have his lips pressed against mine.

That’s when the worms started and now I can’t even look at him without them squirming.

Riggs doesn’t answer me when I say it. He just makes a neutral sound in the back of his throat, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans while we make our way back down the trail.

“I’m serious,” I huff up at him, those worms squirming so much I can feel them tickling the back of my throat. “I think I hate just about everything about you, Riggs Wheeler.”

Instead of answering me, he stops walking, leaving me to walk on my own for a few steps before I stop too. Turning back to look at him, I can see that the trail behind him is already empty. Beck and Reese are long gone, leaving the two of us completely alone. “What are you doing?”

“If you hate me so much, maybe I should let you walk home by yourself,” he says, his tone edging more toward annoyed.

Panicked, I shake my head on a haughty huff to cover it up. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Riggs answers me by stepping off of the trail and melting into the woods that crowd around it.

Feet rooted to the narrow strip of dirt beaten into the ground, I feel my guts twist. “Haha, Riggs,” I say, my tone full of false bravado. “Very funny—now come back.”

Nothing.

“You can’t just leave me here,” I tell him, bravado wavering.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of the dark, Gem?” Riggs taunts me from the gloom, his voice sounding farther away than I’d like.

“I’m not,” I insist stubbornly, my knees beginning to shake at the thought of him really leaving me here. “But if something happens to me, Grandpa Dent will kill all three of you for sure.”

“We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Riggs says, his voice coming from an entirely different direction. “I guess you better admit it then.”

“Admit what?” I know what—I’m just being a jerk.

“That you don’t really hate me,” he teases me from another direction altogether.

Grinding my teeth together, I shake my head.

“Go on—” His voice comes from yet another direction, like he’s walking circles around me in the woods and I turn around to face it. “all you have say is I don’t really hate you, Riggs and I’ll come back.”