Read Heart for Free Online Page A

early morning. He picked his way across the muddy camp to the rusty caravan he called home. The yard was quiet as he walked with his head down, hands thrust in his pockets, but there were some faces around, faces he did his best to avoid.
    Too bad they had other ideas.
    Dex collided with a hard chest. He didn’t have to look to know it belonged to Tarry, Braden’s youngest son. Tarry was three years younger than Dex, but twice his size—tall, broad, and well fed. And he was a nasty, vicious twat with a penchant for making Dex’s life hell.
    “Watch where you’re going.”
    Dex mumbled an apology and stepped aside, but not quick enough to avoid the swinging blow from Tarry. The force of it sent him tumbling to the ground, soaking his clothes in the wet mud.
    Dazed, he lay there for a moment, absorbing the dull pain of the punch to his ribs. It had always been this way with Tarry and his brothers, and it was another reason for Dex to suspect they shared no blood… that his service to his “uncle” was a business arrangement and nothing more.
    The other families on the site seemed to share Tarry and his pals’ disdain for Dex, and he’d heard it said before that his own family was particularly low down in the hierarchy. For Dex, it seemed like being caught between a rock and a hard place: too far outside for any respect, but accepted enough for there to be no escape.
    He pulled himself from the ground to a chorus of mocking chuckles. Ignoring them, he crawled up the steps to the freezing-cold van and tried to find the will to care what tomorrow would bring.

Seven

     
    D EX SPENT his day cleaning caravans. The work was cold and wet, but he enjoyed it in a strange kind of way. It was a chore he’d done since he was old enough to help his da, which was as long as he could remember.
    When he was done with the last van, he went to the dilapidated outbuilding that served as a stable to clean out the horse stalls. The task was his favorite job. On most sites, the animals came and went as often as the people, and some were even left behind from time to time when the caravans moved on, but not here. The site was as permanent as any Traveller camp was likely to get, and some of the horses had been there from the start.
    Dex cleaned out the rudimentary stalls and fed each horse. When he was done, he stopped by the stalls that housed the shabbiest horses. He knew each animal by name, and he made them up for the creatures too knackered to have one. Cora, Lalla, Jon-Jo. Carric and her companion, Tauna.
    Dex whistled. Tauna looked up, but Carric paid him no heed, too busy with her evening feed. He watched her with a sad smile, knowing he was the only one who bothered to feed the oldest horses, and sooner or later, he’d be forced to stop doing it too. That was the way when you lived your life at the bottom of the food chain. Once you were deemed worthless, you were left behind to die. Sometimes, he longed for that day.
    It was dark when he finished his work, though he had no real idea what the time was. He said good-bye to the horses and, remembering Braden’s parting shot from their early morning encounter, went to wash under the outside tap.
    Mikey came to find him as he was pulling his clothes back on. “Come on, kid. Time to go.”
    Dex followed him to the van and stared out the window in silence as Mikey drove them to an industrial estate in the middle of town. Braden waited for them outside a nondescript building. He caught Dex’s shoulder and yanked him forward, glaring at him with critical eyes. “Have you grown, boy? Maybe we need to drop you in bleach again. You sell better that way. Younger the better.”
    Dex kept his gaze down. He didn’t remember having his hair dyed. Mikey had put something in his drink that made him sleep, and he’d woken up blond. A few weeks later, Braden had sent him to Cornwall to work on the beach. He’d wanted to cry when the last remnants of his bleached locks grew out, like they