Bronx (Western Smokejumpers #1) - Tess Oliver Page 0,1

this damn pack off my back." I reached down to the canteen hanging off my belt loop and unscrewed the top. Knowing how terrible he was at rationing food and water, I offered it to King. "Need some?"

"Nah, I'm good." King reached up, lifted his hat and rubbed the short stubs of black hair on the top of his head. "Shit, this buzz cut was the best decision I've ever made."

I smiled and glanced over at him. His face was streaked with dirt, ash and sweat. "Really? The best? That stupid haircut was the best thing you've ever done in your whole life?" I laughed but the giant pack on my back reminded me to cut it short.

King scoffed and shook his head. "Yep, you grew up with me, remember?"

I nodded. "Yeah, you're right. That haircut was a highlight." Kingston Bristow and I grew up in a little, crap-ass town called Westridge. Back then, if someone would ask us where the hell Westridge was, we'd answer with 'it's the small asshole in the middle of the Rocky Mountains'. Neither of us had much of an early childhood. King's mom tried but she was always spiraling into a deep depression, and his dad decided the best way to deal with it was to ignore her. I had it a little better because my mom was grounded and always ready for whatever shit thing life threw us. My dad left us when I was three and my big brother, David was thirteen. I looked up to my brother even after he'd let me down more than once. The final blow to the pedestal I'd placed him on came when he turned eighteen. We spent the night of his birthday eating macaroni and cheese and the day old tray of brownies Mom found on the bargain shelf at the bakery. We laughed at fart jokes, and David played tag with me on the front lawn until it got so cold our breath was making clouds. I couldn't wait to give him the used Walkman I'd found at the thrift shop. I'd wrapped it in a wrinkly piece of Christmas wrapping paper I'd dug out of Mom's closet. We didn't have tape so I used glue. He told me he loved the gift, and being eight, I was sure I'd just given him the coolest damn gift in the history of brotherly gifts. I didn't want the night to end. But it did. The next morning I woke to my mom crying. David had packed up and left. 'I've got to get out of Westridge, or I'll be dead before I'm twenty,' he'd written on the back of the wrinkly wrapping paper.

"Shit, at least you got away from that town," King muttered, another sign that he was spent from our long days at the fire line. The mutter might have also come from the anger he felt every time he thought about me moving out of Westridge. I never felt right leaving him alone in our shitty little hometown, but one fortuitous day a man named Vick Devlin walked into the diner where my mom was working, one of her three jobs. As Vick told it, one sweet smile from my mom and he'd been swept off his cowboy boots. And so, at the age of twelve, I packed up my paltry possessions, hopped into the back seat of Vick's Ford truck and Mom and I started a new life in the country. Vick owned a horse ranch in the flatlands east of the Rockies. I spent my teens getting bucked, kicked and tossed off unbroken colts. I loved every second of it, but it didn't leave me with a lot of life skills, just a permanently tweaked shoulder and a scar on my jaw after being thrown into a barbed wire fence.

My history of breaking colts had earned me the nickname Bronx, even before I joined the smokejumpers. King wouldn't let the team call me anything else. "He's Bronx and there's no point arguing about it," King told them. Vick let me keep the mare who'd tossed me. I named her Barbie.

Vick was a good stepfather, and one day, when I asked him if he could be my dad, he decided right then that he would adopt me and give me his name.

"Hey remember the Jensen twins?" King's question pulled me from my thoughts. Even though I'd broken free of Westridge, King and I stayed best friends. He was always bringing up the