The man I was now stood there and took it because I was finally strong enough to.
“Dad!” Xander snapped, stepping forward. “Stop it! You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. He’s the reason Sullivan isn’t here. He’s the reason your daughter”—he looked at Hope—“buried the love of her life when she was nineteen. He’s the reason everything goes to shit.”
“Art, you know that’s not true,” Hope said quietly.
“He gave the order that killed Sullivan.”
My breath caught as Dad’s ice-blue eyes met mine. I couldn’t deny it. Not when it was the truth.
“I didn’t know—” I started.
“You got him killed! You’re not sleeping under my roof. You’re not welcome here. Get out.”
My stomach turned to lead and plummeted to the floor.
“Dad! No!” Xander shouted.
There was zero mercy in my father’s eyes, zero give, and zero chance he was going to change his mind…but he was the one who’d asked me to come here. Didn’t he remember?
Screw this. Screw all of this. He was never going to listen. He’d made up his mind the moment he read the report Xander had promised not to show him.
I turned around and walked out of the house, letting the screen door slam behind me. Rocks jabbed into my feet as I hit the drive. Shit. I’d left my boots inside. Whatever. I had another ten pairs in the Jeep. I’d find a hotel—
“Cam!” Xander yelled as I reached the Jeep.
I climbed in, but he got to the door before I could close it. A set of keys jangled from his outstretched fingers, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, refusing to see the inevitable pity in his eyes.
“Go to my place. This will all blow over. I promise.”
He’d made that same promise when the mood of the house hadn’t lifted six months after Mom’s funeral. Xander’s optimism was a giant heap of lies he told himself to make swallowing the shit easier.
“No,” I replied. The last place I wanted to be was in Mayor Daniels’s house, getting my dirt all over his perfect life. I didn’t even know where he lived.
“Come on,” he pled. “I’ve got HBO.”
“Don’t watch much TV.”
“You’re still so damned stubborn,” he muttered, digging into his pocket and retrieving another set of keys, this one with an eighties-style Broncos stallion on the key chain. “Then, at least go up to Uncle Cal’s house. Well, I mean, technically he left it to you, so it’s your house.”
Uncle Cal. The one person I’d been able to lean on. The only guy who’d ever understood the rage that always seemed to simmer just beneath my surface.
Xander shook the keys. “Come on. Don’t go to a hotel. None of the tourist places up here are open yet, and it’s a forty-five-minute drive back to Buena Vista. The electricity still works up there, and the water runs. I check it every month. It’s not like I’ve dusted or anything, and it’s not the Four Seasons, but it’s yours. Do it for me, please. I can’t watch you drive away and wait another six years to see if you’ll come back.”
“I’m not leaving the state, for Christ’s sake. Just Dad’s house,” I promised. I’d had no intention of coming back when I left last time. We’d both known it. I couldn’t blame him for that touch of worry in his voice, so I took the keys, and he sighed in relief.
“I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be fine. Will you?” I motioned back to the house. “I know you need a break.”
“I’ll take one once Dad comes to his senses.”
Ha. Like that was going to happen.
“Look.” His voice softened. “We all know you didn’t kill Sullivan. Dad just…” He shook his head.
“I gave the order. May as well have pulled the trigger,” I said quietly, staring at the front porch. Our team had been called in to support a combat outpost under fire, and when our chopper managed to land, all hell had broken loose. I’d been ordered to head toward a break in the defenses with whichever soldiers were available.
“You relayed orders. That’s all.”
“I chose a squad leader to reinforce the side of the outpost taking the heaviest fire,” I corrected him. “That sergeant took his squad and did just that.” We’d split what was left of that platoon down the middle. I could have chosen the staff sergeant on my right. Instead, I took the one on my left and headed for the wall with his soldiers. “Sullivan was in that squad.”
“You didn’t know that.” He shook his head emphatically. “How could you have? I’ve read the report. There’s no way you would have seen him in a mess like that.”
By the time I’d recognized Sully, it was too late. My hands tightened on the wheel. He’d been shot ten feet away from me.
If I had just chosen the guy on the right, Sullivan would be alive. That was where Dad had stopped listening.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“The back way is still open,” he said. When it became apparent that I wasn’t going to reply, he mumbled something about my stubbornness and shut the door.
I waited until he was clear, then started the engine. Instead of taking the road back to Alba, I followed the fading dirt road west, putting the Jeep into four-wheel drive and skirting the edge of the Bradley property line for a few minutes until I climbed the next ridge and turned north.
I crept through the open, rusted gate and crossed onto Uncle Cal’s land. Guess it really was mine now, according to the property taxes I’d been paying. Still felt like his, though. He’d died the year before Sullivan, and I’d been deployed again, unable to bury the man I’d loved more than my own father.
A few minutes later, I put the car in park.
In the sunlight, I’d be able to see what remained of the ruins at the hot springs down the ridgeline and the tip of the abandoned Rose Rowan Mine below those. But given the sight my headlights illuminated, maybe it was a good thing it was dark.
The landscaping had overgrown the sprawling single-story home, and the roof was missing so many shingles, it looked more like a suggestion than a reality. Uncle Cal had added rooms as he’d wanted, giving the house an unsymmetrical, eclectic feel that I’d always loved as a kid. Now that I was an adult, it just meant that there was a shit ton of roof to repair. I could only hope that the solar panels had fared better.
Yeah, it was going to be a massive amount of work, but at least I wouldn’t have to sleep in body armor. The same couldn’t be said for the house I’d grown up in.
I got out of the Jeep and headed for the front door, pausing at the porch. My thumb dusted off the markings Uncle Cal had carved into the upright stone he’d jokingly called his address.
“Elba,” I repeated, shaking my head with a little laugh at the joke no one in our family ever remarked on. Napoleon’s island.
Guess I was well and truly exiled now.
How the hell was I supposed to accomplish the one thing Dad had asked of me if he wouldn’t even talk to me?
Chapter Four
Willow
My cell phone flashed an alert for a front-door entry, and a video clip automatically started playing. I tugged my headphones down to rest around my neck, effectively silencing the BANNERS album I’d been listening to, and saw my best friend on the screen, juggling a carrier tray of coffee and my house key.
Another hour and this project for Vaughn Holdings would be finished, but something told me I was about to hit a major delay. Thea never popped in without a reason, and I had a sneaking suspicion that reason was Cam.
“Willow?” Thea called out.
“In the office!” I mentally kissed my productivity goodbye and set my headphones on the glass desk.
“There you are!” She gave me a smile brighter than the morning sun and a cup of coffee from Alba Perks.
I thanked her for the coffee, then to
ok a sip of the chocolaty mocha and waited to hear why she’d dropped by so early. She liked to get to her yoga studio before nine, even in the off-season.
“I was hoping you’d be home.” Her eyebrows rose over light-blue eyes.
“Ha! It’s eight thirty a.m. on a Tuesday, so I’m working. Where else did you think I might be?” I took a sip and savored the mocha, wondering how long it would take for her to bring him up.
“Oh, I don’t know…over at the Danielses’ place?” she asked in mock innocence, blowing the steam across the lid of her cup.
Not long at all.
“Okay, what have you heard?” I leaned back in my chair as she plopped her butt right on my desk. The gossip wasn’t something I’d missed while I was at college, but Thea was someone I’d longed for every day at Rutgers.
“I know that I was dropping Jacob off at preschool and some of the other moms had a few fascinating stories about a very hot, very tattooed, very Daniels-looking man stopping in at the gas station before heading up the mountain. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now, would you?” Her blue eyes sparkled as she tilted her head.
“Why on earth would I know who stops in for gas?”
“Oh, come on. Julie Hall was dropping off Sawyer before heading to the hospital, and she said—”
My cell phone alerted me to another entry, and a quick peek showed my mother walking in.
Work from home, they said. It’ll be fun and productive, they said.
“Mom! Boundaries!” I called down the hall.
“Thea! How lovely to see you.” Mom ignored my comment, her perky grin sending warning signals down my spine. What was she up to now?
“Mom, seriously? I thought we had the whole ‘the key is only for emergencies’ discussion?” Moving back last year had definitely challenged my mom’s hovering nature, but I knew she did it out of love. She was in her element with someone to fuss over, and lately that someone was me.
“Well, you get so grouchy when I interrupt your work, so I figured I’d just let myself in and see if you were here before bugging you.”
I wasn’t touching the lack of logic in that statement with a ten-foot pole. “Right. Mom, what’s up? I know you didn’t drive all the way up here to see if I was home. You could have done that with a phone call.”
She shifted an overstuffed canvas tote on her shoulder. “Is it a crime to want to see my daughter? I mean, you were gone for four years, and I feel like I’m still getting used to having you back. I love having both my girls home again.” Her tone was so exaggerated that I nearly choked on the syrupy sweetness of it. “But I do need a favor from one of you.”
“We both know that Charity is asleep, so out with it!” I demanded with a laugh. No doubt my older sister had gone back to bed after taking Rose to school. She usually worked the closing shift at her bar, since she lived right above it.
Mom smiled back, mirroring my own, and set the bag on the purple armchair in my office. When I’d bought what I’d lovingly called The Outpost, I’d repainted every wall and all the woodwork white, decorating in pops of bright color that I could easily change out when the mood struck. Art school had given me an appreciation of how color affected mood, and after losing Sullivan…well, I’d needed a lot of color. Now, I was good with just bits and pieces.
“So you’re right, we both know Charity is still sleeping, so I was thinking that you might run a few things over to Camden for me.”
“Ha! I knew you knew!” Thea jumped off my desk, making my monitor wobble.
I steadied the equipment that cost more than I’d made my first year and sighed, glancing up at the onyx rook that sat next to my monitor. That little chess piece was more valuable than any of my electronics.
“Yes, I knew,” I told Thea. “Why can’t you run it over yourself, Mom? The Danielses’ place is way closer to your house than mine.”
I’d put off thinking about Cam since the moment I’d woken up this morning. And by put off, I meant refused to acknowledge when he’d popped into my head…which had been about every minute or so. Plan was working out great.
It wasn’t like I could help it. He’d basically been gone ten years. He was bound to bring up some thoughts…some feelings.
“Because he’s not at the Danielses’. He’s up at Cal’s place. Not that it’s Cal’s anymore. It’s his, you know,” Mom finished with a nod.
“He’s at Cal’s?” I asked quietly. He’d always been more comfortable there as a kid—we all had—but it wasn’t like that place was really cleaned up enough to live in yet.
“Art… He was difficult last night, as you well know.” Mom shot me a glare that told me she’d been filled in on what had gone down at the ravine.
God, Cam had just gotten home, and Art had kicked him out? That was the only explanation for him staying up at Cal’s. My eyes were drawn to the huge picture window in my office that looked east across the ridgeline, and my heart lunged against my ribs, like it was straining to travel without me. If he was at Cal’s, that meant there was only a mile between our houses. For ten years, he’d been thousands of miles away—half a world, sometimes—and now he was close enough to visit with a quick walk.
If I dared…which of course I never did. Because I was an idiot, not a masochist.
“Willow?” Mom prompted me from my thoughts. Always here but never present. That’s what Dad lovingly said when I drifted off as a kid. He didn’t find that same quality quite so enchanting now that I was an adult.
“Sorry,” I apologized out of habit. “So why don’t you just run it over to him yourself?”
Mom cringed. “Well, I grabbed his boots— It’s a long story, but I was there when it all happened, so I thought he might be a bit embarrassed to see me.”
“As opposed to being delighted to see me?” I tilted my head. “You know he can’t stand me.” Cam’s loathing of me was the worst-kept secret in all of Alba, and we were known for fast gossip. Even when I’d been with Sully, Cam had barely tolerated my presence those last months before he went off to basic, and then it had been under obvious duress.
It hadn’t always been that way, but it was sure where we ended up.
“Right, and that’s why he stepped in front of a loaded gun for you,” Mom chided. Oh yeah, she was miffed that I hadn’t filled her in last night.
“He did what?” Thea shouted, the sound echoing off the bare walls.
“Calm down,” I mumbled. “He had on a bulletproof vest.” Not that I’d known. When I’d thought that bullets had penetrated his chest… I never wanted to feel like that again. As for what I’d felt, well, I wasn’t pausing to examine that, either.
“Not on his head, he didn’t,” Mom retorted.
“Who had a gun?” Now it was Thea glaring at me.
“Arthur Daniels,” Mom explained. “Don’t worry—Xander locked it up. But you can’t tell me that boy hates you when he literally put his life on the line for yours.”
My mind drifted to his mint-and-pine scent. His arm locked around my waist. The way he’d ordered me to go, both before his father shot him…and after. Glad to know he was still a walking contradiction.
I sighed, letting my head rest against the high back of my chair. One thing I’d learned about Camden was that he might absolutely abhor my presence, but he’d never stand by and watch me get hurt.
“I never said hate. He no doubt did that because he loves you guys. Always has. And I’m sure he feels some weird sense of responsibility because Sullivan died.”
Both Mom and Thea averted their eyes, as usual.
“I can say his name. You can, too. It won’t hurt me any more than it already does.” Sure, his loss still ached, but not in the way it had. That first year, it had been a sucking chest wound. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t see past the next few minutes.
Now it was like a reconst
ructed knee that ached when the weather changed. I knew it could flare up again at any minute when the conditions were right, but it consumed me only in rare moments. I had put myself back together years ago. Unfortunately, none of Alba had gotten the message that I was healed. They still treated me like I might dissolve into a puddle of tears at any moment.
“We know,” Mom said softly with a sad smile. “We just…worry.”
Thea’s lips pressed into a thin line, and she nodded. Sully had been her husband’s best friend, and Pat had struggled just as hard as I had.
But no one had suffered like Camden. I’d known with one look at the funeral that Cam had been irrevocably shattered by what happened to Sullivan.
“So his boots are in the bag?” I put us back on topic just to steer clear of the grief tsunami that threatened to overtake the room.
“Right. Yes. And a few other things he might need. Would you mind running them over? I’d really appreciate it. And I know you two don’t particularly get along, though you most certainly used to.”
Man, did she love to remind me that at one point I’d been attached to the Daniels boys at the hip. Especially Cam.
“I just…” She continued when I remained quiet. “I know he’s not mine, but if Lillian were here…” She shook her head, unable to continue.
“I’ll take it,” I agreed, knowing it would ease her and maybe myself, too. “If I hurry, I can be back by ten and get this finished.”
“Oh, I have to head to the studio!” Thea jolted as if she’d just noticed the time. “I have a class coming in at ten I need to get set up for.”
“Business is good?” Mom asked.
Starting up something new was always a risk in Alba. Sure, the season—the summer months—was a gushing waterfall of business, but the fall was slow and the winter downright dead before a trickle started back up in the spring. It was one reason the younger generations kept leaving.
“Not bad! We partnered with that little resort down in Mount Princeton, so they’ve been sending business our way. Today is a bridal party!” Thea finished in excitement.
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