He and his father talked only a handful of times a year these days. Not for lack of love. All they had kept was distance. One coast to the next. Divided by time zones. His father wanted a warmer climate on the West Coast. After his time overseas, Hunter had moved to North Carolina because of his buddy Nugget. They had been stationed together in Iraq. Became good friends with a love for motorcycles, small towns, hound dogs, and pumping iron. Hunter’s visit turned into a change of zip code.

Turning down a dead-end road, home is a three-bedroom ranch, single-car garage, and well-kept yard of about five acres, plenty of shade from red maples. Along the back property line is farmland. Several hundred acres—plenty of manured air and unfiltered quiet.

The garage door is open. Inside, bike motors, exhaust pipes, chain-and-sprocket kits, master links, axle blocks, camshafts, crankcase covers, and guards lie scattered over workbenches. Wrenches hang from pegboard walls like those in the bike shop where he used to work.

The blacktop drive needs a fresh coat of sealer. Cracks created by the weight of trespass, time, and summer heat. Killing the engine. Opening the door. Out of the truck, Ruby follows, her nails ticking on the hard surface, tongue lapping on Hunter’s red-stained fist. They cross green patches of yard, a combination of wild clover and red fescue grass. When the white aluminum storm door swings wide, Olivia comes out, her brunette locks all one length and paintbrushing her toned, sun-bronzed shoulders, where crazed gargoyle tattoos are lighting fires upon the demons that ride ink down her biceps and forearms, ending at her wrists. Braless in a wifebeater and loose pink sweatpants, on bare feet with chipped black toenail polish, she steps over the red brick sidewalk that leads to Hunter, who shakes his head.

“Baby, put on some clothes. You’re getting me worked up too damn early in the day,” he tells her as he wraps an arm around her waist and squeezes an ass as firm as a helium-filled balloon.

Mashing her lips to his, she takes a breath and says, “Your uncle David called.”

Her shape is that of an angel. She tastes of cinnamon and coffee as Hunter tongues his lips and asks, “Hell he want? Haven’t heard from him in a year or better.”

“Didn’t say. Just asked for Hunter. Told him you was working. He left a number, needs you to call him. A-sap.” Glancing down at Ruby, Olivia changes the subject. “What’s with the petite bitch?”

She breaks from Hunter’s embrace, kneels to Ruby, who’s all shaking ass and wagging tail and bubble-gum-colored tongue lapping Olivia’s face.

Hesitating. Almost forgetting why he was home. Hunter tells her, “Name’s Ruby. Purebred Treeing Walker. I caught Ox booting her in the ribs.”