Tracking Wolfe (Made Marian Legacy #4)

Prologue

I’d known Trace my whole life.

That was the thought I kept coming back to as I sat by the pool that afternoon, pretending to read.

Trace had helped Dad teach me to swim in this pool.

He’d been at every birthday, every barbecue, every Christmas morning sprawled on our couch with terrible bedhead and Papa’s good coffee.

He was part of the landscape—like the oak tree or the vines or the way the summer heat made the air shimmer.

So I didn’t understand why my hands suddenly felt clumsy holding my book.

“If you burn that portobello, Derek, I’m writing a lament and making you sing it,” Papa called from the outdoor bar area, where he was spraying the counter down with cleaning solution before setting up the ingredients for frozen drinks.

“I’ve never lost any of your ridiculous vegetables yet,” Dad said.

The sliding door opened. I glanced up out of habit to see who it was.

Trace stepped out shirtless in his swim trunks, his chest already golden brown from wherever he’d been working for the past month. He grinned at Papa. “What’s the ruling on cannonballs, Marian?”

I’d seen Trace without a shirt a hundred times. A thousand times. This shouldn’t have felt like anything.

“You mess up what I just cleaned, you’re the one redoing it,” Papa said. “Welcome back to the real world.”

“Real world, my ass,” Trace said with a laugh, dropping his towel on the chaise near mine. “Hey, kid.”

“Hey,” I said. My voice came out strange. I cleared my throat. “Hey.”

He gave me that half grin he always gave me—the one that meant he thought I was funny without meaning to be—and walked to the pool. The dive was clean. Barely a splash. He always dove like that.

I looked back at my book, but my eyes wouldn’t focus on the words.

I could hear Trace swimming. Steady strokes, the sound of water moving. The same sounds I’d heard every summer since I was small enough that he had to hold me up in the shallow end.

I turned a page I hadn’t read.

When he surfaced and pushed his wet hair back, I told myself to keep reading. That’s what I’d been doing.

Reading. I was reading.

Trace swam to the far wall. Turned. Pushed off.

My chest felt tight.

I shifted on the lounge chair, and the towel scratched my legs wrong. My skin felt too tight for my body.

I shifted again, knocking my chair into the umbrella stand beside it. The umbrella wobbled, and I reached up to steady it, smearing sunscreen on the canvas.

“Trace,” Dad called. “Give Wolfe a hand with the umbrella before it decapitates him.”

“On it.”

Trace climbed out of the pool. Water streamed off his shoulders and down his back. The beads caught the sunlight like sparkling gems winking unexpectedly. He crossed the stone and reached up to grab the umbrella pole above my head.

I should have looked away. I looked away all the time—when Papa and Dad kissed in the kitchen, when actors kissed on TV, when anything felt like I was seeing something private. It was automatic.

This time, I didn’t.

Trace stretched to hold the pole steady.

His arm extended over me, ribs visible above the slight bumps of his stomach muscles, water still dripping from his skin onto the stone beside my chair.

The umbrella created a small shadow between us.

I could smell chlorine and his deodorant—the same brand he’d always used, the same smell that had been in our house forever because he left a bag here and showered after using the pool.

Nothing was different.

Everything was different.

“Loose wing nut,” Trace said, squinting at the mechanism. “Derek, you got a—”

“Top shelf of the pantry. Left bin,” Papa supplied. Dad saluted before walking inside.

My heart pounded, but I didn’t know why. Trace was just fixing an umbrella. Trace fixed things all the time. He’d fixed our fence last month and the gate before that and helped Dad with the truck and—

He shifted his weight, and water dripped onto my knee.

I felt the cold drop like a shock.

“Got it,” Trace said when Dad handed him the wrench. He tightened the bolt with a quick twist. His forearm flexed. Water caught the light. The hair under his arm caught my eye.

I stared like I’d never seen armpit hair before. Why was it so mesmerizing? Why did I suddenly want to run my fingers through it?

He gave the wrench back to Dad, then dragged my chair deeper into the shade without asking, the same way he’d done things for me my whole life. Casual and easy. “Saved you from roasting.”

I quickly drew my knees up to my chest to keep from exposing anything embarrassing to my dad’s best friend. “Thanks?”

He leaned down. Close enough that I could see water drops caught in his eyelashes. “Reading anything good?”

My mouth was dry. “Um.” I looked at the book cover like I’d never seen it before. “It’s about… time.”

“Everything is,” Trace said. Not making fun of me or anything, just being himself. Being normal.

He touched my nose with one knuckle. “Got sunscreen on your nose,” he murmured in a soft, deep voice that rumbled into my chest. Then he mussed my hair like he’d done since I was six.

It meant you’re a good kid and I see you and we’re family.

Today, it made my whole body go hot.

Not embarrassed hot. Not sunburn hot. Something that started in my stomach and spread up my neck and made my thoughts turn to static. His hand was in my hair for maybe two seconds, and my brain just… stopped.

I flinched like something in me needed to hide. Or assess. Or protect.

Or cherish.

“I should—” I gestured vaguely at the house. “Water. I need water.”

“Hydrate.” Trace nodded easily. “Tell your dad I want the good lemonade and not the candle-tasting stuff he made last time.”

Papa made an offended sound. “Sweeten something with agave instead of cane sugar one time…”

“Run, kid. Rescue us,” Trace said, grinning at me like we shared a joke.

I stood up. My legs felt weird. I walked to the house without running because running would be obvious.

I didn’t know what would be obvious about it, but I knew I didn’t want to run like a kid.

I didn’t want Trace to think of me like a kid. Not anymore.

Inside, the air-conditioning hit me like cold water after sitting in the hot sun. I leaned against the counter and stared at the fridge.

What the hell was happening to me? Why now? Why him?

My reflection stared back at me from the microwave door. Pink face. Messy hair. I looked exactly as I had an hour ago, but I didn’t feel the same.

Trace had touched my hair, and my entire body had reacted like… like…

I didn’t have words for it. Didn’t want words for it. If I named it, it would be real.

I filled a glass with water and made myself drink half. The cold traveled down my throat but did nothing to calm my racing heart. I pressed my palm flat on the cool stone counter and counted to ten.

This was Trace. Trace. Who’d been coming to our house since before I could remember. Who knew Dad from work. Who was now Dad’s best friend—

Who’d just touched my hair and made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

I filled the glass again and dumped it in the sink, hands shaking.

In the music room, I pulled out my notebook with clumsy fingers and opened it to a blank page. The pencil felt too light. I stared at the lines.

I could hear them outside. Papa’s voice carrying through the window, Dad saying something that made Trace laugh, the twins arguing over who got to toss a swim ring into the deep end.

Normal. Everything was normal out there.

I pressed the pencil to paper.

The first line came out wrong. I crossed it out. Tried again. The words wouldn’t come. Instead, I just saw Trace climbing out of the pool, water on his shoulders, the way he’d stretched to reach the umbrella pole, how close he’d been when he leaned down—

I wrote without thinking: He shines brighter than the sun, and I can’t look too long.

My hand stopped.

I stared at what I’d written. The pencil had pressed hard enough to leave a groove in the paper.

No. No no no.

I couldn’t—this couldn’t—

This was Trace.

I folded the page over so I couldn’t see it. My face burned. My stomach hurt. I wanted to rip the page out, throw it away, pretend I’d never even had the thought.

But I couldn’t make myself get rid of it.

I sat there with the notebook closed on my lap, staring at nothing, until Dad called that dinner was ready.

I made it through the meal. Through Trace telling a story about a haunted ice maker that made Papa laugh so hard he snorted. Through clearing plates and rinsing dishes and pretending everything was fine. I let my family do most of the talking and escaped to the front porch as fast as I could.

When Trace left, he lifted a hand in a casual wave. “See you Saturday, Wolfe.”

“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded normal, thank god. “See you.”

The gate clicked shut behind him.

I stood on the porch and told myself to breathe. To stop being weird. Except I kept seeing the way water had dripped from his arm. Kept feeling his hand in my hair. Kept hearing him call me “kid” like he’d always done, except now it made something twist in my chest.

That night, I lay in bed with my journal open to the line I’d written. During dinner, I’d tucked the journal between old school papers in my drawer, like hiding it would make it less true.

He shines brighter than the sun, and I can’t look too long.

I didn’t know what this feeling meant. Didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it.

So I closed the notebook and shoved it back in the drawer.

Everything was fine. I was fine.

Tomorrow, I’d forget about this. I’d be normal again. Trace would come back Saturday, and things would go back to how they’d always been.

I turned off the light and lay there in the dark, listening to the house settle, trying not to think about Saturday.

Trying not to think about the fact that I was already counting the days.

And wondering if I’d ever be able to look away from all that bright, blazing light.