Chapter One
Joe
I watched the flaps of burst tyre flutter down the hill. The horsebox was a heap of shit—ancient and tired, like everything else in my life—but I’d been counting on the brake pads to give up on me first. A cheap fix, rather than a triple-figure repair bill I’d have to sell a kidney to pay.
Fuck’s sake.I rounded the back of the horsebox and kicked what was left of the tyre. The impact rattled up my shin, but the pain wasn’t enough to ward off the fast-approaching black cloud. Guilt, frustration, and plain old rage fought for dominance in my gut and guilt won out—for now. The tyre bursting was myfault, because the anger simmering in my veins had been there before I’d come to a skidding stop in a bramble bush.
I turned my back on the horsebox and crossed the sand-dusted road. The only pro I could find at breaking down so close to the beach was that there were plenty of pubs to keep me occupied while I waited for my friendly neighbour to tow me home. At least, I hoped Dex would be friendly after I’d called him out to rescue me for the third time this month. And he wasn’t exactly my neighbour—his place was fifty miles away.
Still, he readily agreed to come and get me after I’d called him and begged for assistance. Dex was a man of few words, but he had a heart of gold and a rare smile I often thought about when I pretended his gentle giant of a fella didn’t exist. Shame Seb was even nicer than Dex. It would’ve been easy to hate him. Distracting, too; something I was in dire need of as I set myself up at the nearest tourist-rammed pub with a pint of crappy shandy.
But as hot as Dex was, he couldn’t keep me from my financial woes for long. Buying my piss-weak pint had emptied my pockets of change, and the maxed-out cards I’d left at home made my wallet so useless that I hadn’t bothered bringing it out. If the abandoned mare I’d come out to collect had been alive, I’d have lacked the resources to rescue her.
“We’ll find a way, son. We always do.”
But that shit wasn’t real. The man who’d uttered those words was as good as dead, and the mare? Fuck. At least I hadn’t seen her emaciated body. My soul was running out of room for horses I couldn’t save.
A heavy hand clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, look who it is. Jonah Carter’s boy propping up the bar. Who’d have thought it?”
Great. New tension rippled through me, merging with the disquiet already there. I was a little ways out of town and holed up in a pub that most locals wouldn’t bother to frequent at this time of year, but lately it didn’t seem to matter where I went, there was always a wanker around the corner.
I set my glass down and shrugged the man’s hand off me. A cursory glance revealed him as Dicky McGee, a one-time friend of my father’s before his life had gone to shit. “What do you want?”
Dicky took the stool next to me, his brawny fists curled menacingly on the bar. “I want my money.”
“So? What’s that got to do with me?”
“I ain’t seen your old man for weeks, so you’ll have to do.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it. Coming after me for money was almost as pointless as chasing Jonah. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, mate. Even if I gave a shit—which I don’t—I haven’t got a pot to piss in.”
“Likely story. Saw your ma driving around in that Transporter last week. Bet you’ve got a few of those tucked away on that big farm.”
“Couldn’t give them away if we had. That old thing is a heap of junk.”
Dicky knew it was true, I could tell, and the taunting humour faded from his eyes, only to be replaced with resentment that mirrored mine whenever I thought of Jonah. Staring into a pint glass with a financial cloud of doom was his job, not mine, but his inability to think beyond his next bottle of whisky had ruined more lives than he’d ever know.
“Now listen here,” Dicky rumbled, gripping my arm. “You tell your old man that I’m done waiting for my cash. If he don’t show up at the Legion on Friday with full payment, I’m gonna—”
“You’re gonna what?” I shoved his hand off me and slid from my stool, squaring up like I had been my whole life, one way or another. “What do you think you can do that I care about? ’Cause if you’re going to knock him off, you’d be doing me a favour.”
“Wouldn’t get me my money, though, would it?”
Dicky had a point, but so did I. I didn’t care what he did to my father for whatever failed scheme they’d cooked up between them; I just wanted him out of my face. “Whatever. Just piss off, yeah? I’m trying to have a quiet pint.”
Someone behind me sniggered. I reckoned probably at my expense, until the scowl on Dicky’s face said otherwise. His already ruddy skin reddened and he grabbed me again, shoving me against the bar. “Now listen here, you little poof. Your old man might be AWOL, but your ma is still right where he left her. If he don’t—”
My patience snapped. I’d never been good with folk up in my personal space, and my mum was my flashpoint. I’d decked people for even looking at her wrong. Threatening her? Damn. My fists blurred. My knuckles crashed against the bristly skin of Dicky’s face, and blood seeped through my fingers as his eyebrow split like an overripe peach.
He roared in response, lunging at me the way I wanted him to so I could punch him again—his gut this time, adrenaline surging through me as he went down.
My grandfather had taught me the world as he knew it, raising me from the hole Jonah had left me in.Never kick a man on the ground.I never had, and I didn’t now, something I regretted in the seconds it took Dicky to get up—just margin enough for someone to come to his rescue.
I fought the arms that restrained me from behind, landing blows with my elbows before the burly man holding me back was joined by another, and then another. “Get the fuck off me.”
No one paid me any attention, save Dicky, who got to his feet with a smirk. “You’re as nutty as your old man,” he scoffed.
But he was wrong about that too. Jonah was a worthless drunk who’d frittered our lives away, but it hadn’t always been like that. And as far as I knew, he’d never laid a hand on anyone. Me? I had a record as long as my arm, and as the pub landlord appeared, phone in hand, it looked like it was about to gain an extra page.
