Page 1 of Feral Heart
Chapter One
“Have a nice day, Mr. Landon,” Jamie said with a wide smile, watching the elderly man shuffle away with his overloaded cart. The wonky wheel made that familiar scuff-scuff every other step. The automatic doors whooshed open for the eighty-two year old.
Jamie brightened, trying to make a funky beat when he scanned a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, a family-sized onion ring bag, and one lonely chocolate pudding for the next woman in line. The trifecta of “dinner for one but make it festive.”
Not that being single was tragic or anything. At least, Jamie didn’t think so.
The woman kept one earbud in, humming along to something that sounded like existential dread set to a beat. He wondered what it was like to be that mellow, which was the opposite of him. He had a tendency to bounce around like a caffeinated squirrel. A habit that drove his brother crazy.
She pocketed her change without looking up, grabbed her bag, and glued her phone to her ear as she drifted away. “Have a nice day!” he called after her, but she was already mentally checked out.
In the brief quiet that followed, the hair on Jamie’s neck prickled. Someone was watching him. He glanced around, his eyes landing on his brother.
Grant.
There he was, all six-feet-two of him, lurking just past the deli section and the poster for this week’s meat specials. The mirrored wine display split his reflection into fragments—one piece smirking, one looking dead behind the eyes, the third just shadow.
Jamie rubbed the tightness in his chest, that familiar dread resurfacing. The one that dragged up memories of their dad’s grimy apartment and those Sunday visits to county lockup. If Grant was here, nothing good would follow.
Dang it.
Jamie wrung his hands as Grant walked through produce, eyeing the place like he was planning a heist. He probably is.
His brother had on a ratty black hoodie jacket over a faded band tee. On top of his light brown hair was a mesh trucker’s cap declaring, “I EAT PAIN,” all fished from the same laundry basket that had been sitting by Jamie’s couch for three days.
A groan escaped, and Jamie caught himself gripping the barcode scanner like a crucifix, like it might somehow save his soul.
The next customer—a grandmotherly type armed with a coupon binder and a judgmental glare—started unloading her cart. She’d spotted Grant too, strategically repositioning her cart like a shopping-cart fortress. Jamie tried to catch her eye with a reassuring “he’s mostly harmless” look, but she’d already retreated behind her stack of clipped savings and disapproving mutters.
Breathing out slowly, he scanned Lactaid, gluten-free bread, cholesterol supplements. He knew how she felt. His stomach rebelled against gluten and dairy too. But the real stomach ache was building in his peripheral vision.
Grant lingered at the magazine rack, flipping through a copy of People like he was deciding whether to steal it or whack the next person to walk by. His gaze kept darting to Jamie with that sly, predatory gleam that said, “You know I’m coming over there, little brother.”
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Jamie pinched the bridge of his nose, counting backward from twelve in Spanish—a therapy trick he’d never mentioned to Grant—in the desperate hope he could somehow telepathically will his brother to vanish.
Oh god.
Rowan was here too. He’d somehow missed him while fixated on Grant. But now he saw the guy, statue-still just outside the sliding doors. His hands were buried in the pockets of a pea coat that looked three seasons old and about two sizes too tight across the shoulders.
His greasy hair was scraped back into a ponytail, showcasing a gaunt, pockmarked face that always looked starved, even mid-meal. He didn’t leer exactly, more like cataloged, studying everyone like he was mentally filing away their weaknesses for later use. Jamie suppressed a shudder. Rowan was just wrong on a cellular level.
Why Grant gravitated toward these train wrecks was beyond comprehension. On second thought, he’d always had questionable choices when it came to friends.
Maybe if Jamie pretended they didn’t exist, they'd just orbit for a while before drifting off to their next catastrophe. He slid the coupon drawer shut, bagged the groceries, handed back change, and summoned his best “Have a great day” smile. He wasn’t feeling very cheery at the moment, but habit took over.
Jamie worried his bottom lip, nerves stretched wire-tight. Grant wasted zero time closing the distance.
Predators never did.
That oily smile brought back flashes of being shoved into closets, skulls bouncing off walls, his bedroom ransacked for anything worth pawning. His brother showed up last month with no warning, claiming he was just there to “visit.” He’d never left, transforming Jamie’s tidy apartment into a biohazard zone with his revolting habits, and his sketchy friends treated the front door like a turnstile.
Grant leaned across the conveyor belt before the next customer could approach, planting both palms on the black surface with that predatory grin. The same expression that had charmed him out of three juvenile detentions and into at least a dozen girls’ beds, with predictably disastrous results. Which was how he’d ended up doing time.
“Yo, Lamie!” Grant announced loud enough for every cashier, exhausted parent, and sticky-fingered toddler within earshot. “Need a twenty. Spot me, bro.”
Though Jamie’s hands trembled slightly, his voice thankfully stayed steady. “You’re not supposed to show up at my job, Grant. We talked about this already.”
With a huff, his brother slid a hand along the scanner’s edge, like he was sizing it up for a potential weapon. “Bro, you got paid today. Don’t bullshit me.” He snatched a container of Altoids from the impulse rack. Flicking the lid open, he shoved three mints into his jeans pocket, then tossed it back among the other breath fresheners. “Besides, I’ll pay you back. With interest and shit. Come on.”
