All Fired Up (Green Valley Heroes #7)

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

HUNTER

A fter training, I go home and shower, washing away the day. My brain is sluggish, like it’s too full of all the information Buck threw at us. I have to remember everything, though. I have to pass those tests at the end of our training. All of this will have been for nothing otherwise.

Well, maybe not for nothing. I got a good rise out of Madeline today. She should have known better than to mess with my car yesterday. It’s her own fault she didn’t suspect I’d try anything with hers today. And, if she was paying attention, she would have easily seen the balloons I’d wedged behind her rear tires. It’s not like I could hide them.

She’d stormed over to me, fire in her eyes as she confronted me. But what had surprised me most wasn’t the satisfaction I’d got from seeing her like that. It was the edge of...arousal that had come along with it. I wanted to see her like that again. Hot and bothered without that buttoned-up control she keeps so tightly bound around herself.

I scrub a hand down my face. I’m a sick fuck, but what’s new?

Besides, these little pranks aren’t intimidating her into quitting. What I should do is drop it and ignore her for the rest of the training.

But that doesn’t stop me from imagining other pranks I could pull on her. Nothing dangerous. And nothing that would get me caught. I don’t want to get kicked out before this has even really started.

Speaking of, if I’m being serious about this, I need to look at that textbook they gave us. The thing is like a brick, but Buck said it was important. We’re supposed to read chapters one through four to catch up on what we went over this weekend, and ideally up to chapter eight so we have an idea about what we’ll be doing next weekend.

Eight fucking chapters in one week? There’s no way. I’ll be lucky to get through one.

I bet Madeline will finish the whole damn textbook tonight. For fun.

Cracking open the spine, I settle in on my couch and find the first chapter, but the letters skip around as usual. Sometimes reading out loud as I really focus on the words helps, but it’s slow going. I don’t get how it’s so easy for other people.

Guess they’re just not as stupid as me.

After fifteen minutes, the familiar headache that forms has me wincing, and I slam the book shut. It’s not because I was trying to read. It’s because I keep comparing myself to Madeline. And obviously, I come up short.

One thing I can excel at, though, is the physical training. I’d work out now but I just showered and I’m due at Mom and Dad’s in twenty minutes. I eye the textbook again and end up leaving early rather than torturing myself.

Being in my childhood home is a different kind of torture, though. Mom greets me with her gravelly smoker’s voice and ushers me inside, and I brace myself for her to bring up the firefighting training. She has to have heard about it from someone by now.

She doesn’t say anything, though, and after a few minutes of her normal peppering me with questions, I breathe a sigh of relief. She would have brought it up by now if she knew.

A timer dings in the kitchen and she shoos me away to the living room, urging me to talk with my dad and brother who are watching a hockey pregame show. Dad already has a Natty Ice in his hand, his preferred beer. Why he likes that shit is beyond me, but whatever gets him buzzed the quickest is all he cares about.

“How’s work?” Dad grunts, his gaze never leaving the screen.

“Fine.” I slump onto the lumpy couch cushions, avoiding the puke stain still there in the center from when I had a stomach bug nearly twenty years ago.

That’s the extent of our conversation, and I sit there, staring at the screen but not really seeing anything until Mom calls us for dinner.

Dad makes a big fuss about missing the start of the game, but shuts off the TV after she asks for a second time.

“We eat in front of the TV every night,” he grumbles. “Why do we have to eat at the table tonight?”

“Because Hunter’s here,” she chides softly.

“You act like you never see the damn kid.”

Kid? I’m twenty-six.

Mom reaches out and brushes a hand over my shoulder. “You should come over for dinner more often.”

If it was only her, sure. But it’s not.

My brother, Nate, sits down across from me at the dinner table and tucks his long, greasy hair behind his ears, revealing a bruise around his temple.

“What happened to you?” Mom asks him as she sets a casserole dish on the table. Looks like Tater Tots smothered in cheese with chunks of cooked ground beef.

Yum.

Nate shakes off her concern. “Nothing,” he mumbles, letting his hair hang forward in his face.

Dad lets out a bark of laughter. “Boy was getting a little too big for his britches. Wolf had to put him in his place.”

Nate stays grim-faced.

“Hunter, when are you coming out to the Dragon with us?” Dad asks, settling in his chair and scooping a heaping portion of casserole onto his plate.

Their dumb biker bar? Yeah, no thanks. Especially if their dealer is messing people up.

“I’ve been getting a lot of overtime at the mill,” I tell him, avoiding his eye. “I’m dead tired at the end of the day.”

“You working weekends, too?”

I shrug. “Yeah.”

Just not in the way he thinks.

“You know, that invitation to join the Wraiths doesn’t last forever.”

Shit. This again? “I know.”

“Catfish has been asking me about you.”

I scoop the Tater Tots onto my plate and feign nonchalance. “Has he?”

“Yeah. And you’re making me look like a real jackass when I have to tell him I don’t know what’s holding you up.”

I make a noncommittal sound and take a huge bite so I don’t have to respond.

“You going to answer me, boy?”

Guess it doesn’t matter how old I am. Or that I haven’t lived here in years. I’ll always be boy .

Mom’s glaring at me from the other side of the table to answer him.

“I’m not really interested,” I say as diplomatically as I can.

Mom’s face crumples as Dad’s darkens.

“I’ll tell you what you’re interested in,” Dad threatens, tossing his fork onto his plate.

“Can’t we just have a nice family dinner?” Mom asks, interjecting herself into the conversation. “One night where we don’t get into it?”

She lays a hand on her husband’s arm, but he shakes it off immediately, pointing a finger at me. “I’m tired of this boy’s disrespect. You’re stupid enough as is. The least you could be is respectful.”

Respect what, exactly? Him? The man who hasn’t held a job in twenty years and deals drugs part-time for the Iron Wraiths? That’s what I’m supposed to respect?

I itch to say all that, the words bubbling to my lips, but Mom would have my hide. And then, after I leave, there’s a good chance Dad would have her hide, too. He hasn’t tried it again with me after my seventeenth birthday, when I finally matched him in height, but Mom is half a foot shorter and a good fifty pounds lighter.

“Sorry,” I mutter, keeping the peace for Mom.

“Anything exciting happen at the Dragon last night?” Mom asks, desperately trying to change the subject.

Dad gives me one last glare and lets himself be distracted, eventually laughing about something Pete Lundy did that involved him breaking a barstool.

Nate and I are both silent throughout the rest of dinner, and when Dad finally finishes and returns to the TV to watch the Predators play the Rangers, I gather the dirty dishes and bring them to the kitchen.

“You don’t have to do that,” Mom says, bustling in behind me with the leftover casserole.

“I’ll do the dishes,” I tell her, turning on the sink faucet to let the water heat up. “You can take the night off.” Lord knows no one else would offer to do anything for her around here.

“You should go spend time with Dad.”

A snort of laughter escapes me. “He’s watching hockey. Besides, all he’s going to do is guilt-trip me about not joining his precious club.”

I put in the stopper and dish soap, then let the sink fill with water, watching it bubble up.

Mom sighs as she gets out the plastic wrap to put over the casserole dish. “It hurts him that you haven’t joined the Iron Wraiths yet.”

No, it hurts his ego. Like he said at dinner, he’s got the top guys breathing down his neck about it. Why any of them are concerned about me, I have no idea.

“He wants to share that part of his life with his sons,” she continues. “It’s important to him.”

“He’s got Nate.”

“He has two sons,” she says. She studies me for a moment, then sighs again and opens the junk drawer to pull out her cigarettes and a lighter. She lights one and inhales, then blows the smoke away from me. “I don’t get why it’s even such a big deal to you. You grew up around the Wraiths. You know them all.”

And that’s exactly why I don’t want any part of it. They’re a bunch of lowlifes.

“You think you’re better than us or something?”

I glance over at her, her gaze steady on me.

“No,” I mumble, grabbing a dishcloth from underneath the sink and piling the silverware and plates into the hot water.

“Then why can’t you do this for your family?”

I bite back the question of what in the hell they’ve ever done for me, because that’s sure to open a can of worms.

“The Iron Wraiths don’t need me. Especially since I won’t deal for them.”

Both Nate and Dad have already had too many run-ins with the law. It’s only a matter of time before something real happens.

“Not everyone deals,” she argues. “Your dad and brother don’t.”

Yes, they do. She just refuses to accept the truth. How does she think they bring money home? What bullshit excuse are they giving her?

I’m silent, ignoring her stare until she gives up and puts out her cigarette, then takes the wet dishes from me to dry.

After we’re finished, I give her a brief hug and tell her I have to go, denying her protests about how I just got here.

“Let me at least give you some casserole to take home,” she offers.

I control my wince. “No, it’s fine. I have plenty of food at home.”

Before I leave, I stop by the bedroom Nate and I used to share before I moved out.

“You okay?” I ask him, motioning to his temple.

He pauses the video game he was playing and rolls his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Why’s Dad on my case again?” We’d had a huge blowup a couple of years back. I thought we were done arguing about it.

“The Wraiths have lost a lot of people lately. We need new recruits.”

That’s because the criminal dumbasses keep getting locked up.

“When are you going to get a real job?” I ask him. The man is twenty-eight and still living at home and dealing part-time.

“When you finally get laid.”

“Fuck you,” I tell him, laughing.

He grins. “Quit busting my balls, then.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I leave, waving a hand to Dad in the living room, not that he notices, and drive home, my hands flexing on the steering wheel the whole way. So he’s starting up with the whole joining the Iron Wraiths thing again? When’s he going to let that go?

When I get home, I force myself to read chapter one of the firefighting textbook, and though it takes me an hour, I manage to do it, cross-eyed by the end. Crawling into bed, the exhaustion leaves me as I stare up at the ceiling, wondering if I’m fooling myself with this volunteer firefighter thing. If anyone will actually take me seriously.

A grimace crosses my face remembering Madeline’s dig from yesterday about my family. As if I have some nefarious purpose being there that’s related to the Iron Wraiths. As if I’m not good enough.

And yet, Mom’s under the impression I think I’m better than them.

Which one is the truth? Is it somewhere in the middle?

Then where does that leave me?