Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,3

the sign and knocked on his door.”

“Was anyone else here when you got here?” He looked up and down the creek to see if we were alone.

There was a solid chance my eyes were going to roll out of my head. Where the heck was he going with this?

“No.”

He blew out a ragged breath and dug into his pocket to retrieve a crumpled piece of paper. “Good. It’s just the two of us. That’ll make it easier.” He tossed the paper and it landed at my feet. I didn’t have to pick it up to see that it was Mr. Leonard’s help wanted sign. “Are you a rat, Nora Stewart?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not a rat, but I do have an older brother who will kick your butt if you don’t tell me where the heck you got a bucket full of worms without so much as a speck of dirt on your stupid, fancy clothes.”

His grin stretched wide. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

My patience was slipping fast with his trivial game, so my voice was louder than I intended as I replied, “Tell anyone what?”

“Jeez. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.”

He was wrong. As far as I knew, my bed only had one side. The side where I woke up, fought with my dad, hated my life, and crawled right back into it every night, knowing that the next morning was going to be exactly the same.

I let out an aggravated huff. “Just tell me where you got the worms.”

“Okay, but first, did Mr. Leonard tell you why he needs the worms?”

More. Freaking. Questions. And yes, I did understand that my frustration was a tad hypocritical. But he was the new kid. My questions were fair. His were just annoying. And nosy. And wasting my worm-plucking time.

“Well, duh. The whole town knows why he needs the worms. He and Dale Lewis have been feuding for months. They can’t even be in the same parking lot without the cops getting called. I don’t know how it started, but Mr. Leonard won’t be caught dead near Lewis Tractor Repair, Bait, and Booze. Which means he and his sons have nothing to fish with. Which means he hired me to find them bait. Which means you better start talking right now about where the heck you got a whole dang bucket of worms, because I was here first.” My chest heaved when I finished.

I was usually pretty good about hiding my emotions. Screaming and acting out didn’t fix anything. Going with the flow was a huge part of staying in the shadows so no one realized what was really going on at home with me, Ramsey, and our messed-up dad.

But I was sweaty.

I was dirty.

I was eleven and had spent all afternoon hunting for nasty, gag-inducing worms so my brother and I could have something for dinner. Meanwhile, this kid—who probably wasn’t loaded but definitely had enough money to use spare change as decorations in his shoes—had just shown up with a full bucket.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And I was done. Utterly. Completely. All patience gone.

Unfortunately, Camden Cole was only getting started.

“You weren’t here first,” he stated.

I took a giant step toward him. “Yes, I was! I’ve been here for hours.”

Abandoning his coffee can, he stood up, his smile finally morphing into a scowl. “Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Leonard hired me at noon!”

“Liar! The sign wasn’t even there at noon.”

With another step, he closed the distance between us. “I know because I ripped it down. He must have put it back up when I had to go home for lunch. I was late, which royally ticked off my grandpa, so he made me go back to church for seven hundred hours, and now I’m here, answering a million questions and listening to some girl I don’t even know call my clothes stupid and yell at me. So shut up. Okay? I get enough of that shit from my family.” He stared at me for a long second, a shadow passing over his dazzling eyes, but I didn’t let it snuff my fire. This kid did not want to go toe-to-toe with me in a who-has-the-crappiest-parents competition. He would lose every time.

“Blah, blah, blah. You still didn’t tell me where you got that many dang worms!”

“Who cares!” he roared into my face. “You know what?” Turning on a toe, he snatched his bucket off the ground. “Here. Take the damn worms. I