Chapter 6
LIAM
Terrified eyes stare up at me.
Tears stream down her temples.
Her voice cracks as she begs for me to stop, but I don’t.
I can’t.
My hands tighten around her throat as rage courses through me.
Heating my blood.
Tightening my skin.
Blurring my vision until I can barely see the woman beneath me.
Her fingernails claw at my hands and wrists, trying to get me to release my hold, but I’m lost to it now.
The darkness.
The need to end her, to pay her back for what she’s done to me.
This bitch is as good as dead.
Only, I’m not looking down at her anymore.
I’m in her position.
Looking up.
At myself…
I bolt awake drenched in sweat, my chest heaving, my labored breaths the only sound in the dark loft of my cabin.
Holy.
Shit.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I scrub my hands over my face, trying to wipe away the last lingering vestiges of the nightmare, trying to clear my head of that horrific vision—my face on the man strangling the life from her.
But I know it will stay cemented there.
Just as it has for so many months.
Because it’s the same every night.
My father morphs into me as he kills my mother.
Not the one who raised me; the one who sacrificed her life to give me one.
Roberta Byers…
Bobby…
I only recognize her in my dreams because after I learned the truth, I went to the library and searched for any information on her and found several old newspaper articles with her in them from before I was born.
Some where she’s smiling next to my father.
Whatever happened between them, whatever went wrong, either she was very good at hiding it, or they hadn’t reached that point yet because they look happy. And Earl looks normal.
Not like a deranged killer and kidnapper.
Not completely unhinged like he was up on that mountain when Killian finally confronted him.
But the problem is, he doesn’t just look normal in those old photos, he looks like me.
How could no one have noticed it?
The Byers have been here for generations, and even though they lived around the far side of the mountain, well away from town, Earl spent enough time here that people knew him.
So how come no one saw how much I looked like him?
Maybe as I got older, someone put two and two together and figured out I was his missing son and never said anything.
Maybe Connie always suspected and never said a word because she knew Bobby and that if she left me on that doorstep, there was a reason for it.
Maybe everyone was “in” on keeping this giant secret about my identity from me my entire life…
Just more questions that never will have answers.
Just more agonizing unknowns that will plague me day and night.
I shake my head and throw back the covers, climbing from bed in nothing but my boxers and staggering down the stairs and over to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
But as soon as I have the glass in my hand, I know it won’t be enough and instead open the cabinet and pull down a bottle of bourbon, pour myself a shot, then double it.
My hand trembles as I bring the glass to my lips to gulp it down greedily. The burn in my stomach helps wake me up even more, but that feeling still lingers…
That rage that consumed me during the nightmare that wasn’t mine—that was his—hovers like the mist that always covers the mountain.
How the fuck did I know how he felt?
Why do I keep seeing it?
I pour another shot and slam it back, hissing at the sting in my throat and that vision I want to burn from my memory.
It’s just your imagination.
Deep down, I know that.
I know that it isn’t real.
Everything I’m experiencing in these nightmares is really my own brain playing tricks on me, creating the scenario I’ve imagined so many times during waking hours. Turning them into these flashes that play endlessly like horror movies in my head.
But it’s just my imagination.
It. Isn’t. Real.
Because no one knows how he killed my mother, whether he strangled her or shot her or did something else unspeakable to her that snuffed the life from her before he tossed her in the river. And we will never know since her body was never discovered.
I’ll never be able to give her a proper burial.
And I may never be able to get these images out of my head.
I pour myself another drink and down it.
My body vibrates.
My skin feels too tight.
The cabin feels too small.
I glance at the clock and see it’s only three am.
There’s no way I’ll fall back asleep. I need to do something to work off all this coiling tension writhing inside me. There has to be some release before I explode.
For a moment, my gaze drifts back to the bottle of bourbon, but I shouldn’t have any more.
Fuck.
I stalk back up the stairs, tug on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, shove my feet into a pair of boots, and yank open the front door.
Crisp, clean mountain night air hits me, and I suck in a long breath, filling my lungs with it before I head out to the secondary barn that doubles as my workshop.
My footsteps crunch on gravel and grass, the noises familiar and soothing in a way I hadn’t imagined they could be.
All these real things help ground me in the now, keep me from thinking about the past.
By the time I reach the barn and slide open the door, my heartrate has almost returned to normal, and the trembling in my hands seems to have somewhat abated.
With as much time as I spend out here, I should have created thousands of pieces by now, but I’m too much of a perfectionist. I spend too much time picking out the perfect tree, cutting the perfect pieces from it, then carving them into whatever it tells me it wants to be.
Which means that each and every piece I make is unique, and each and every piece takes time. Like the one sitting in the middle of the workshop now.
This is the one that set everything with Willow in motion.
I’d been waiting to cut down that particular tree and build this rocking chair from it for over a year before the day Connor, Killian, and I went up there to chop it down and instead discovered Willow in the river.
And now it sits only a quarter finished because working on it only reminds me of that day, and of the spiral it sent me down after.
Yet tonight, my hands itch to do something.
To mold something.
To build something instead of breaking it down the way I’m breaking down.
I snag my tools from the workbench and try to push the nightmare to the back of my head as I focus on the task at hand.
The scent of fresh wood fills the air, and the sound of my tools moving across it, slicing off pieces, sanding it down, becomes a soothing melody that finally starts to lull me away from that dark place I went.
By the time I hear footsteps approaching, sunlight is already starting to trickle in through the open barn door.
Killian steps in, then leans back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches me work. “How long have you been out here?”
I shrug as casually as I can, knowing full well that if he knew how little sleep I’m really getting, he’d worry. “Not long.”
He snorts and pushes himself off the wall, making his way toward me. “Given how much you’ve done on it since I came over here yesterday, that’s a fucking lie.”
Killian eyes me with an all-too-knowing look. I try to avoid meeting his gaze, but eventually, I do and he raises a brow.
“Have you been sleeping?”
Hell.
I must really look like shit for him to want to get into this so damn early in the morning. “We’re not doing this, Kill.”
After hours losing myself in this work, fighting against the nightmare, I’m not ready to confront it with him. I push up to my feet and stalk over to the workbench to grab a different pad of sandpaper, then return to my spot, trying to fine tune one edge.
Killian releases a long sigh. “I know you just want me to leave you alone, Liam, but I wouldn’t be a very good brother if I did that, would I?”
“Right now? Yeah, you would.”
He shoves a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated with my unwillingness to discuss anything with him. It’s been an endless battle the past several months—him trying to push me to open up and me trying to push him away.
Please don’t do it, Kill…
I squeeze my eyes closed, willing him to drop it.
A resigned sigh fills the barn, then he clears his throat. “So, what are you going to do with this when you’re done?”
Relief courses through me, and I open my eyes and stare at the chair.
I hadn’t really thought about it yet.
Selling it somehow doesn’t seem right. Not with how it’s tied to the mountain.
To Willow and her rescue. To the family.
There’s too much history built into it. But it doesn’t belong here either, on our land or in one of our homes.
I don’t know that I could live with that memory forever staring me in the face.
“I’ll find somewhere for it.”
“I’m sure you will. Willow is going to be working at the store today getting things ready.
I’ll bring down the shelves.” He motions to the stack of black walnut shelves I built over the last several days for her shop.
“Will you be able to swing by to hang them? I would do it, but I have that meeting with the city council today and she wants to keep moving forward on getting set up.”
I nod. “Yeah, I can do it today. I might be tied up later this week up at the site.”
Killian pauses for a second. “I can take care of that, if you’re not up for it.”
Hell…
Apparently I haven’t done a very good job at hiding my unease about having to go beyond the gorge, but I won’t open that can of worms. Nor am I going to concede defeat by refusing to face the remnants of the past.
“No. It’s all right.” I glance up at him and hope I’m offering a convincing smile. “Let me do my job. And I’m more than happy to help Willow.”
It’s the least I can do for her, and maybe, just maybe, it’s a start to making amends for the sins of my father.
* * *
LUCKY
Careful.
Slow and steady.