“Why?” I continue, breathless and my fingers itched to do something. This is where my past self would reach for a cigarette and fumble with a lighter and inhale the deepest breath. I’ve replaced that habit with jewelry making. The fine materials and detailed work keep my fingers moving and the concentration isolated me from my feelings.
“You were kids, Brigitte. The intensity of your relationship with Xan scared your mother. It scared us all. You two were so lost in each other you had no idea.”
“That wasn’t your decision,” I say with acidic hatred dripping down the back of my throat. “It wasn’t up to you.”
“It was up to us to keep you safe. To keep you away from a life like theirs.”
“Why do you keep saying that!” I lean forward on the table, pressing my palms into the wood with the force of my frustration.
“You knew Xan’s father. You knew what he was like. Your mother was terrified for you.” His evenness was almost smug as he crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. Father-knows-best is an expression I’m used to. I hate now as much as I did as a kid.
“Because his dad was an asshole? Did she think Xan abused me?”
Dad says nothing and I stare at him until his hands shake and his jaw works the words in his mouth before he says them.
“You followed him around like a puppy. You lost everything in him. You gave up everything for him. It killed us to watch you throw your future away for a boy. A boy that we assumed would end up like his father. I didn’t want that for you. Your mother didn’t want that for you. You’re better than him, but you looked at him as if he hung the moon just for you.” Dad slammed his hand on the table to drive in his point.
Tears burn my eyes, but I hold them back, fighting the urge to defend myself. I wasn’t one of those girls who lost her identity in her boyfriend. I couldn’t be. But even now, as a grown woman the moment I see him I want to go to him. Right this moment I want to go to him.
Oh God.
He didn’t know.
I straighten up abruptly, my entire being burning to talk to him. I’ve spent ten years hating him, when all this time he never knew.
We trusted the adults in our lives, and they all betrayed us.
“I’m taking your truck,” I state and Dad startles. “Millie will stay here with you.”
I snatch the keys from their hanger and head out the back door to talk to Millie. There’s a shiver to the evening air and on the bottom step I pause to listen. Prickles climb the back of my neck and I peer into the trees that surround my house. Bears are common around town, but they usually stay away from people. Even though, I get nervous. For the past year I’ve been on vigilant watch. Something’s in those trees. I can feel it. The wind rustles the leaves and I startle. Bear or human, I want neither stalking my daughter.
“Millie,” I call trying to keep my voice even and she pokes her head out of the treehouse.
“Yeah?”
“I need to run to town for a second, can you come inside and start getting ready for bed please. I’ll be back to tuck you in. Pops is here. He can read with you if you want or you can do your reading on your own.”
“Okay Mom,” she says going back to whatever imagination game she’s dreamed up. Being an only child and on the road nine months out of the year she’s gotten pretty good at entertaining herself.
“Now, please,” I holler knowing she’ll be out here til midnight unchecked. I wrap my arms around my stomach and glance at the tree line again.
She heaves a heavy sigh like only a preteen girl can and trudges down the ladder. She hugs me quick before dragging her feet back into the house.
I rub the back of my neck under my blonde curls and scan the yard one final time. I’m actually more concerned that a moose is close by than a bear. Moose are big and skittish and dangerous. I blink hard to stop the memories of Mom’s accident from flooding me. Too many things are coming at me from too many angles. Right now, I need to think about Millie. I need to talk to Xan and straighten this whole thing out. I’m not upset that my parents wanted me and Xan apart. We’re classic forbidden romance material. I get it. Different values, different lives, different priorities, different privileges. Our parents were trying to protect our way of life.
What pisses me off beyond anything I’ve known is that my kind sweet big-hearted little girl missed out on a father. All because my mother decided it was up to her to choose my fate.
Even dead my mother still controls everything in my life.
Chapter Four
XAN
The beer in front of me is still full, the bubbly white foam completely gone, but I haven’t taken more than one sip. Information tumbled through my mind all day, but it still doesn’t make any sense. I can’t be a father.
Briggs is a lot of things but she’s not the kind of person who keeps something like this on purpose. The things I said to her in that final phone call hook my gut, and with a forced breath I try to steady myself. God, I said some horrible things.
“What’s got you?” Del says, leaning on the counter across from me. It’s hard to use your bartender as your personal shrink if she’s also your bratty little sister.
“Briggs is back.” The words fall out, her name sharp on my tongue. Del’s jaw goes slack.
“No way.” My sister’s eyes light up and not in the way that benefits me. Del loved Briggs almost as much as I did.
“Yeah.” I twist my glass, studying the bubbles as they work their way to the surface and pop. I’m not sure how much to tell her beyond that until the words actually surface like the bubbles in my glass. “She has a daughter. A ten-year-old daughter. Maybe nine.”
Del meets my gaze, my young and rebellious little sister doesn’t take long to calculate it in her head before surprise shifts all her features to the outer edges of her face.
“No way.” Del smacks my arm and a grin cuts her face and she squeals. I shift uncomfortably on my stool at her reaction. This isn’t how we’re reacting here. Del jumps up and down and grabs my hands. A female gesture I’ll never understand. Why do girls jump when they’re excited?
“I’m an Auntie?” Del’s expression is pure and big and...well, shit. I never thought of that. I’m too concerned about myself to realize this isn’t affecting me and Briggs—but my entire family.
“I dunno, Del. I sort of bailed before I could find out if she was mine. But my god, she looks like me. Kinda like you, too.”
Del has the same color and texture to her hair. Long deep brown strands with a touch of auburn. Big all absorbing eyes and thick bushy brows.
“You bailed?” Del’s expression falls into one I’m very familiar with. The Xan just did something stupid grimace.
“I panicked. She showed up out of nowhere. I didn’t know what to say. I might have a kid, for fuck’s sake. And she kept it from me...for ten years.”
“I suppose that would be a lot to take in.” Del leans on the bar and taps her long fake nails on the wood.
“You suppose?” I mock her and she whips me with her towel. Maybe my sister is fine as a bartender shrink after all. I feel more relaxed despite my unsettled confusion.
“You’re going to go back and talk to her right? You’re going to be a man about this I hope.” Del busies herself wiping down the pop gun and her words sting. They cut deep because I know what they mean, I know where they come from.
“I’m not Dad, Delilah. You know that.”
She wears a hopeful smile, but her eyes betray her. She doesn’t quite believe me. I did stumble in here at ten am still drunk from the night before. That’s something Jason would do.
My phone buzzes and I check it, it’s too late for Ms. Uptight to be calling. It’s a text message.
Unknown: It’s Briggs. We need to talk.
I breathe through the spike of adrenaline I get from reading her name, struggling to wrangle my emotions back into their holding cells. My fingers shake while I respond.
Me: Meet at our spot in fifteen.
; I slide off my stool and throw a fifty-dollar bill on the counter while scanning the cooler behind my sister.
“Well, I’m going in. I think a Sixer is going to be a requirement for this conversation.” I shake my head at the giddiness that explodes across Del’s face. She claps her hands together in excitement before grabbing me a six pack of my go to beer.
She takes my fifty and I walk out the door before she can get my change. Or say anything else to me about our father.
#
Lucas’ truck is already parked on the side of the road. I stop right behind it and grip the steering wheel with shaking hands. I’ve had these moments before. Moments when I know at a soul level that my life’s about to change forever but when I crush my eyes shut all I see is smoke. Thick lung burning smoke, from when my crew stumbled out of the Creston Ridge Fire and even before I noticed we were one man short I had the same feeling. The dizzying, body numbing, mind bending realization that things were different.
That everything just changed.
I take slow breaths until the smoke clears and I suck in nothing but fresh air. My knuckles are sore from how hard I grip the steering wheel and I roll my shoulders to force them to relax.
“Don’t be like him.” The words come out hard. They’ve driven me like a mantra since I was a teenager and first saw my own father for what he was. A bully, a coward, an abuser that hid behind the Lord’s word.
Out of nowhere a laugh escapes my lips because the first time I ever noticed Briggs beyond being a girl from my church was when I was a scared and angry ten-year-old boy. She was eight. I’d gotten into a fight at school with one of her friends. She stared me square in the eye, unafraid of me even then. She jabbed me in the chest with her small finger. Her eyes were squinted in a scowl so deep the devil himself would have flinched.
“You’re nothing but a bully and a coward, Alexander Ryker. I will hate you until the day I die.”
It was the exact moment I fell in love with her. It was my first experience with the feeling I feel sitting in my truck eighteen years later. The ‘everything is different now’ feeling.
Beer in hand, I make my way through the trees and under tangled underbrush until I hear the sound of flowing water. My heart speeds up immediately and nerves begin to take over. Thank God I have so much practice and training in dealing with chaos and emergencies. My life is constant chaos. My ability to remain calm in the midst of a storm is unparalleled and why I’m so good at my job.
My heart stutters. I’m not that great at my job. I blink back thoughts of that fire. Not right now. I can’t think about that right now.
Now is Briggs.
I see her through the trees, standing by the water, her back to me. Her shoulders hunched and her arms wrapped around her middle, hugging herself. There were only a few times I saw her truly vulnerable and like right now, they were always when she didn’t know I was looking.
The unguarded version of her was my favorite. Light shone through her and I wished she didn’t bottle it up and hide it away.
The branches crack as I step through the last of the brush and into the clearing. She startles and spins to face me. She’s still and will always be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.
Woman.
The woman standing in front of me is no girl, even though she’s still so young. Only twenty-six, she doesn’t appear old enough to have a nine-year-old daughter. But her eyes show the last ten years. Gone is the innocent sheen to her large brown eyes. Her stubborn girlish pout has been replaced with the thin line of her pointed lips, a woman who’s seen the harshness that life can throw. Her features are slightly more matured but beyond what she wears or how she looks, beneath it all, she still calls to me. I have to psychically fight the urge to sweep my arms around her and place a kiss to her neck in that place that always made her melt into me as if the last ten years never happened. As if the last time I saw her was Sunday at church.
“Brigitte,” I say her full name using a terrible French accent. Her mouth twitches, I assume at the memories stirred up for both of us. Our relationship was a secret for longer than it wasn’t. We would meet here at this creek and make out for hours, hours more spent talking, and dreaming, and hoping someday we’d both be brave enough to admit we wanted the impossible. But every Sunday we’d run into each other at church with our parents. I’d say her full name, accompanied by a formal almost undetectable bow. She’d respond...
“Alexander,” she says with a curtsy.
Then while our parents were busy pretending they were upstanding citizens and true children of the Lord we would meet back here and make love on a blanket under the burning sun. Or if it was raining, which it did a lot around here, we’d fashion a bed in the covered box of my old truck and explore each other like there’d never be enough time.
That passion and ignorance is gone as we stand in front of each other now. Her smile vanishes and the heat of my memories are washed away with reality. The awkwardness hangs between us, the rush of the creek the only sound to indicate time is still pushing forward.
I try to form an appropriate sentence for the moment, but there isn’t one, so I jump straight in.
“I had no idea you kept the baby,” I say at the exact same time as Briggs blurts, “I tried to tell you I kept the baby.”
We both startle and because what the fuck else are we to do. After a long pause we both burst out laughing.
She sits hard on a long smooth boulder near the water and I join her, popping a beer from the case and handing it to her.
“We might need these for the conversation we’re about to have.”
She takes the can, cracking it open and taking a long drink. I do the same. We sit next to each other, staring at the water roll and tumble over the rocks below, a short stick bobbed along in the current and I’m mesmerized by it.
“How the hell did we get here, Xan?” she asks.
“I have no idea.” I say and turn to her, fear radiating between us. “Is she mine?”
The question comes out with so much more vulnerable emotion than I mean it to. I realize in that moment that I hope she is. I hope that little girl is my little girl. It’s foreign and disorienting but there it is, a smoldering ember in my gut.
Briggs sighs loud enough for the heavens to hear. “She’s yours. Without a doubt.”
Emotion rages through me: elation, fear, anger, relief, all clamoring over each other to rise to the top. My eyes burn and I blink hard. I take down the rest of my beer in a single chug and grab another.
“Why?” I ask and she seems to understand what I mean seeing as my brain can’t keep up and form the right words.
“My mom told you I aborted, didn’t she?” Briggs replies.
“That and a whole lot more.” I wince at the fresh sting of old words.
“Like what?” Briggs shifts her body to face me and I can feel her warmth in the cool night air.
“That you’d realized what a mistake I was. That you were only using me to rebel against your parents. That if I had any sense, I’d stay away from you and realize how I was dragging you down. That I had single handedly ruined your future and if I actually loved you, I would see how toxic I was for you and let you go.”
This is the first time I’ve ever spoken out loud the conversation I had with Amalie Marchand the night she showed up at my house in a torrential rainstorm to threaten me. Her words had buried into my soul with their conviction and I’d happily digested them as truth. Of course, someone like Briggs would never want someone like me. Of course, I was ruining her future, especially if she had my baby. It made sense to my eighteen-year-old brain.
But it also hurt. God did it fucking hurt.
Briggs blinks rapidly, but she isn’t the crying type. She lets her head fall into her hands.
“You believed her?” she asks and guilt rips through my chest. But before I have a chance to respond she continues, “I believed her too.”
“What do you mean?”
“She p
layed us both on our own insecurities. She told me a similar but opposite thing. That you were playing me. That guys like you loved to take advantage of girls like me. That it was all about the chase for you. Making the good girl go bad. But that you had no capability of committing or stepping up when it counted. She told me you’d abandon me when I needed you most.”
“And then I did,” I fill in and she nods.
“And then you did.”
Silence falls over us again, even the creek is drowned out by my thoughts. It’s going to be hard to have this conversation without talking about Amalie’s death, but I really want to only talk about our daughter.
“What’s her name?” I ask. Briggs immediately brightens, pride tugging at her perfect lips.
“Millie,” she answers. “Emilia, but she likes Millie better. I called you when she was born, before I named her. Your dad told me he’d tell you. I waited for you for a couple days. I guess he didn’t tell you. So right before I left the hospital, I named her myself. I called you every year on her birthday until she was three. I even tried to hunt you down online even though I knew you hated social media.”
She pauses with her mouth open as if she wants to say more but she doesn’t.
“My parents were as against you as yours were against me. Why did you stop trying?”
“On her third birthday, the phone number I always called, your old cell phone was disconnected. I called my dad to ask him to find your new one and he told me you’d been arrested. We fought about Millie, about you, about why I was still holding out. Again, I listened to him. He convinced me that trying to connect with you was only going to cause me pain and that the best thing for Millie was to accept what was and move forward. So, I bought a motorhome and left Vancouver and have been moving forward ever since.”
I’m unsure how to process what she’s saying because I get it and I don’t. I understand, but I want to push. We were so eager to break the rules and rebel against what was expected of us, but when it really mattered, both of us freely accepted the labels that were applied to us. I want to be angry with her for believing I could ever leave her to deal with something like raising a baby. I want to explain to her how unbelievably lost I was when she left, how deeply I felt her absence in my life. But what good does that do now? Because I was as quick to accept that she happily left me behind. That I was nothing more than a way to get back at her parents for pushing her so hard to excel at everything.
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