by Camryn Rhys
The words seemed to hit Brady hard, but he recovered well enough, sniffing and swiping at his face for only a second. “She’d never told me what really happened before, but she told me enough about her family, I knew they couldn’t be trusted.”
They sat in silence for the rest of the way to the ranch, and he kept thinking about what he was going to do when he got to Springfield. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed his brother’s number, doing a quick check-in phone call, just to make sure Eddie knew he was fine. Blamed a long nap in Springfield. Too much time on the road. By the time he hung up, he’d made up his mind.
He had to go home. Mattie had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to keep Brady alive.
“Where’s your car?” his son asked as they turned onto a long gravel road, on the other side of the ranch.
“It’s at the Sac’n’Pack.” Will pointed in front of them, somewhere, wherever the town was, and wherever his vehicle was. He was watching for the edge of the white woods.
“Are you coming back up to the ranch?”
A tight, angry feeling crossed through Will’s chest like a stomping giant. “I want to.” They reached the highway, and were still inside the white woods. “There is nothing I’d like more than to stay with your mother, here, and get to know you, and be a part of your life.”
Brady nodded, his jawline tight. He’d heard the but at the end of that sentence, just like Will had. They both knew that wasn’t going to be possible, but neither of them would say it, because saying it out loud made it too real.
A green highway sign read Springfield – 4 and there were a few more evergreens. Not too many, but enough.
“We’re outside the white woods now, aren’t we?” Will asked.
“Yeah.” His son pointed to his necklace. “But I’m still protected out here.”
“And what about your mother?”
“She wears one, too.”
Will thought back to the beautiful, naked body of Mattie Banfield that he’d seen all of that morning. He didn’t remember a white stone necklace coming off with her bra and panties. She wasn’t wearing any other jewelry.
“Does she wear it all the time?”
“It chafes her neck, so she usually takes it off once she passes the boundary.”
“But she had it on this morning? When she was in town?”
“Yeah, she always wears it in Springfield. Or anywhere outside the white woods.”
He wanted to be relieved by that. All it meant was they wouldn’t have been able to find Mattie, if they’d been tracking her.
They could still find Will.
“It’s right here,” he said, pointing to the parking lot as they passed the little grocery store. The old, beat-up Chevy he’d bought in Vegas was sitting between a couple of dirty farm trucks, just where he’d left it.
“You’re not going to stay, are you?” Brady looked down at the steering wheel as he put the truck in park, just behind Will’s car.
“I can’t.” He offered his hand. His son grabbed his, to shake it, undoubtedly, but Will was overcome by so much emotion, he pulled Brady in to his body and hugged him, both arms wrapped around his son’s back. “I hope you know, I would never have come if I’d known it might put you in danger. I have to make sure that this isn’t a blip on anyone’s radar. If I stay too long in any one place, they’ll come.”
“No.” Brady shook his head, emotion clouding his tone. “I’m glad you came.”
“I’m not.” Will gripped him tight, tears slipping out the corners of his eyes. “If this has put you in danger…” He pulled back and grabbed his son’s face in his hands, looking into his earnest, watery eyes. “I’d die before I’d let them hurt you.”
“They have to have stopped looking, don’t you think?” Brady asked, a twinge of anger in his voice.
“They’ll never stop until they find a body.” Will shook his head. “I have to leave. Now. I need to keep going, like I’m tracking you, still.”
“But if they did a spell and you went off-grid, won’t they come here looking for you?”
He looked down, not wanting to say the words out loud. “Not if I keep moving.”
They both sat in silence for several seconds. Outside the truck windows, people walked in and out of the Sac’n’Pac with canvas bags full of groceries. Will didn’t want the moment to end.
“Can they find you here?”
“Their passive spell would tell them something like a twenty-mile radius of my location, lit up on a map somewhere, if someone happens to be looking at it. But they’d need something of mine, with my DNA on it, to do their specific Location Spell, which I doubt they have, given how long it’s been since I’ve been in Concord.”
“Except your brother.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. Eddie’s DNA is his own. They couldn’t track me just by having him. That’s why they still couldn’t find you, even though they had me. They didn’t have anything of yours, and your mother kept casting Protection Spells until she undoubtedly found the right rocks to make those necklaces of yours. They take a long time to make, but use very little power. Besides, your grandmother burned down our house, so they didn’t have anything of Mattie’s to cast her Location Spell, either. That’s why I started looking for you, myself. All they had was a general location, before she started casting the Protection Spells. Eddie and I took over from there.”
Brady gripped the steering wheel and glared at the car ahead of them. Will’s eyes went to the same vehicle. It had brought him to the white woods, and it would take him away.
I have no choice.
“Can you ever come back?”
“Not unless they stop looking for you,” he said, a drop at the end of his sentence. “But you need to know, I’ve been looking for you, your entire life. I’ve never stopped loving you, or your mother. And I never will.” Will hugged his son one last time and got out of the truck, slamming the door behind him.
For so many years, he’d wanted nothing more than to find Mattie, and to find his child. It’d been the only thing he wanted, obsessing his thoughts when he woke up in the morning and when he went to bed at night.
Sometimes, getting what you want fucking sucked.
Chapter Ten
Six months later
Mattie Banfield put the finishing touches on the Christmas tree and sighed at the sight. Christmas decorations always signified the end of the year, and this year had been a doozy.
She still couldn’t wake up in the morning without seeing Will’s face in her mind’s eye. Brady had promised they wouldn’t see him again, but a part of her hoped every day, that he’d just walk through the door.
It was time to start a new year. One where she didn’t let Will’s absence hold her back. He was never coming back, and it was time to move on with her life.
Gabrielle had tried to convince her to move on for years after they’d come to Springfield, but for witches, once they found their Kindred, it wasn’t easy to let themselves be with anyone else.
That was the excuse she’d always used.
Mattie still dreamed about sex with Will in the mountain cabin. The wild abandon that’d grown inside her, the complete freedom.
He hadn’t even gotten angry with her for running away, for hiding. He’d just accepted it, and then fallen on the sword.
Damn William Walker and his stupid, beautiful, valiant heart.
“Right side’s low,” came her son’s voice from behind her.
Mattie turned and cast a smile at Brady across the wide, high-ceilinged room. Exposed logs added to the homey feeling of the decorations, and the ten-food Christmas tree in front of the big picture windows still made her breath catch in her throat, no matter how many times they put one up.
It was the life she’d always wanted. Home. Family. Love.
She had it all, really.
“You can fix it, then,” she said, trying for laughter. “You’re taller than I am.”
“I
was just giving you a hard time, Mom.” Brady’s voice had the same almost-but-not-quite-happy tone she heard in her own. He hadn’t been the same since Will had been there. Her normally even-keel son had been quiet so often, like he had after his fiancée had died. Brady was mourning his father in his own way, and Mattie tried not to push it.
This would be the first Christmas that they all knew Will was alive and should be with them, but he wasn’t.
He should be here.
“I do think the right side’s low, actually,” she said, studying the garland hanging over the mantle. She pulled the little step ladder over to the big, rock fireplace that covered nearly half of one wall.
“Mom. I was kidding.” Her son came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine.”
They didn’t have much contact anymore, and the combination of having Will-thoughts, and having finished the Christmas decorations, made Mattie tear up. She turned into Brady’s chest and hugged him hard.
He put his hand on the back of her head. “It’s okay, Mom.” He rested one arm around her back with a sigh. “It’s really okay.”
She pulled back and looked up into his blue eyes—the same blue eyes she saw in the mirror, and in Will’s own gaze, before the shimmer had started. “What’s okay?”
“I know that look,” Brady said with a tense smile. “When you’re thinking about Will. About Dad.”
Mattie winced and closed her eyes, sinking back against his chest. It’d been months since he’d said that word. She hated thinking about what their magick cost them sometimes.
It was easier to believe in the goodness of Fate when things were going well. These days, it was harder to muster the old everything-happens-for-a-reason mantra she used to spout.
“It’s Christmas,” she said wistfully. “I guess, just for a tiny second last summer, I let myself think that we’d eventually all get to be together again.”
“He said, if they ever stop looking for me.” Brady’s arms tightened around her. “But that’s only if you stay with—”
“Stop,” she ordered, pulling away before he could finish his sentence. “We’ve talked about this, Brady William Banfield.”
“Just hear me out, Mom.” He held his hands up. “Dad said they don’t have anything of mine, so they can’t track me.”
“No.” Mattie shook her head so violently, it nearly made her lose her balance. “We don’t know what kind of tracking they might’ve developed over the years. We don’t know how badly they want to find you.”
“But he said there were only two kinds.”
“Spells aren’t set in stone, Brady.” She put her hand on his arm. “They can change if a witch builds them differently. If she knows what she’s doing, with the ancient languages, she can make them more powerful, or change how they work. We don’t know what they’ve been doing for twenty-eight years.”
Her son sighed in frustration, running a hand through his golden hair and looking a little like a movie star posing for a magazine cover. Hard-lined face, deep in thought, paused in mid-action.
“The only safe place for both of us is in the white woods.”
The words echoed in the big space, like the ominous reminder of the close boundaries of their life. Neither of them did much in the way of traveling, and Mattie appreciated that Brady took seriously the importance of staying protected at all times.
But it did make her feel trapped.
Did it make him feel like that?
She couldn’t bear to ask the question.
“Where’re Paul and Jamie?” Mattie asked, turning away from the fire place and carrying the step ladder to the other side of the room. She slid it between the hutch and the little wall that separated the living room from the dining room.
Everything in its place.
“Paul took some paperwork over to the Gallagher ranch for me. I think Jamie’s still in town with her boy toy, probably at the restaurant.”
She put her hand on the wall and looked down the hallway, the low light of the afternoon sun cascading across the blond wood. Something tingled through her body like she’d just touched a light socket. She checked under her hand, but nothing was there.
“I should probably get back up to the ranch office,” Brady said with a sigh. “There’s still some registration paperwork to file for that new stallion, and I want to get it taken care of before the weekend.”
“I cleared off the walkway this morning,” Mattie said, off-handedly, gesturing up toward the barn. “It snowed again over lunch.”
“Mountain life.” He kissed her cheek on his way to the kitchen. “It’s the same every year, Mom. I don’t get how you can still be surprised.”
“Not surprised, necessarily,” she said with half a smile. “Just—”
She stopped, her heartbeat thumping as she caught an image out the corner of her eye. At the front door, framed by the yellow wood. Partly covered by the big Christmas wreath.
Is that Brady?
Mattie glanced the opposite direction, toward the kitchen, and saw her son’s dark shape disappearing around the corner. She moved toward the front door.
It’s not Brady.
The man stood very still, hand raised almost like he planned to knock, but couldn’t.
Is it the UPS?
She turned the doorknob and the familiar face of Will Walker greeted her like a ghost from a dream. Mattie shook her head, staring at him.
His beard was a little longer, his hair a little scruffier. He had on a thick, puffy coat, and his glassy eyes shimmered green in the half-dark under the porch awning. Snow began to fall behind him, like something out of a Bing Crosby movie.
Cold stole around her, making her skin pebble, but she didn’t care. “Is this a dream?” she asked, her own voice sounding foreign in her ears.
Will gripped her arms, fast and strong. “It’s not a dream.”
Her breath came hard when he touched her, and she found herself almost panting, her mouth hanging open, but a warmth bubbled up in her abdomen and spread through her whole body, with his fingers closed around her arms.
“We were just…” Mattie shook her head again. It was like a mirage, and if it wasn’t real, she wanted it to go away. It would break her heart if this was another dream. “We were just talking about you.”
A smile curled across his lips. “I hope it was good.”
Will pulled her into his body and brought his mouth down on hers, crushing her against him. Mattie felt almost powerless, and the surrender inside her was comforting. She’d been longing for this moment for months.
Will was home, even if he was only passing through.
She slid her arms around him and opened to his foraging tongue. He devoured her, like a starving man after a long journey. It was a balm to her soul. Even if it was only temporary.
It didn’t matter.
Will backed her up against the rough wall of the hallway and kept slanting his head down, like he was trying to get deeper into her. Electricity shot through every centimeter of Mattie’s body, and she spread her legs to curl them around him.
Breathless, he pulled his mouth away and kissed down the side of her neck, whispering her name like a prayer. His reverence made her shudder and cling to his strength. There was nothing she wanted more than to have him inside her, but she was savoring his very presence.
He wouldn’t be able to stay long, and she’d rather hold him and look at him than have sex with him, right at that moment. Then she felt his hardness against her core, and lost all ability to think and reason. Mattie moaned, holding his neck and tightening her legs, drawing him closer.
“Let’s go to my bedroom,” she breathed. “I don’t want to waste the little time that we have.”
“Little time?” Will’s short laugh sent shivers through her body. “What do you mean?”
“This way.” She slipped out into the hallway, taking him by the hand and leading him through the house. The big master bedroom was on the far side of the sprawling r
anch house, and she couldn’t get Will there fast enough.
“Mattie. What’re you doing?” he said, the same laughter beneath his tone.
“I’m taking you to my bedroom. If you’re only here for a couple of hours, I want to spend every one of them in bed.”
“Wait.” Will pulled her to a stop in the middle of the long hall. Lit Christmas garlands were draped along the walls, and in the dark space, that was the only light.
“Oh, of course.” She dropped his hand, her heart sinking a little. “I’m sure you’ll want to see Brady while you’re here.” Mattie pointed back toward the kitchen, so far away, now. “He took the side door up to the ranch office. You just missed him.”
His smile was wide and bright as he took her face in his hands. “Mattie. Stop.”
He lowered his lips to hers again and the same desire shot through her, building this time, and welling up in her like water pushing at a dam.
Will pulled back and his gaze roamed across her features. The feeling of his warm body pressed against hers like this was almost heaven. She couldn’t imagine heaven being any better than this.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said in a dark voice. “Just let me look at you.”
Mattie smiled up at him, recognizing the impulse. Like her eyes couldn’t get enough of him. Her whole body wanted him, and they didn’t have much time.
“We can look later,” she said, taking his hand again and tugging him down the hallway.
“Mattie.” Will’s tone had such easy laughter in it, she stopped just inside her bedroom door and looked up at him.
“You’re not in a hurry?” she asked, pulling at the buttons on her pants.
He stilled her fingers. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“But… Why not?”
He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Because I want to savor this, Lianne Matilda. And we have all the time in the world to do just that.”
Her heart skipped a beat at his words. She licked her lips. “All the time in the world? Did they stop looking for Brady?”