Chapter 12 #2
“And”—she glances at Raven before she finishes—”we discovered that the man who took me was Liam’s biological father.”
What the hell?
I stare at her with my mouth open, trying to process what she just told me. “Wh-how? I…I don’t understand.”
Willow locks her gray gaze with mine, sympathy swimming in it. “His birth mother, Bobbie, took him when he was a baby and fled from Earl, who was abusive to her. She left Liam—”
I complete the sentence for her as everything clicks into place. “On Connie McBride’s doorstep.”
She nods. “And then, eventually, Earl caught up with her. He killed her. Never knowing what happened to the baby.”
Oh, my God.
“And Liam just learned all of this?”
She nods. “We all did. Earl always kept to himself. We would see him occasionally in town, maybe every couple months. No one ever put two and two together, and he never saw Liam, never suspected. None of us did. Until we saw them together that day, and there was no denying it once they were together in front of us.”
Oh, my God.
Suddenly, the way Liam reacted every time we talked about his family and his history makes sense. What he said to me last night about there being things I didn’t know, about there being secrets…
This is what he was referencing.
This is what he didn’t want to tell me—because he was scared about how I would react.
“Holy shit.”
Willow presses her lips together for a moment, thinking about something. “So, ever since then, things have been rough for him. He doesn’t want to talk about it. With any of us. Not even me. I think he feels responsible for what his father did.”
“What? But that doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t even know him.”
“That’s what we’ve all been telling him, but he’s kind of shut down. Shut all of us out. No one knows what to do about it. Honestly…” She offers me a half smile. “You’re the first person who seems to have made him laugh, or actually gotten through to him, in almost a year.”
Raven nods. “It’s been hard…watching him change like that. He’s just not himself anymore.”
“Wow…I…had no idea.”
And now that I do know, it changes everything.
* * *
LIAM
The familiar weight of the axe in my hands as it flies through the air and the reverberation up the handle when I slam the head into the tree trunk do little to relieve the tension that’s permeating my body.
If anything, my normal source of release—coming out onto the mountain and obliterating something with steel—seems to be ramping me up more. Making every muscle even tighter, especially those squeezing my chest, creating a permanent ache there.
Maybe because of where I’m doing it.
The darkest place on the mountain.
Where the worst of humanity destroyed so much—where my father did.
I work the axe head free of the wood, then throw it back and slam it in again, repeating the same movement I’ve been doing for the last thirty minutes, already onto my second massive red spruce.
Thankfully, there’s an entire forest of them up here for me to work out my frustration on because God knows I’m going to need hours at this to have any hope of getting some of these emotions out.
And it still won’t be enough.
There’s too much uncertainty.
Too much to process.
So many conflicting feelings that war inside me hard enough to tear me apart…
Footsteps crunch over twigs and leaves behind me, making me tighten my grip on the axe.
That didn’t last very long…
I knew they’d find me eventually. The sound of my afternoon activity echoes across the mountain, and it led them right to me.
I would have preferred more time —to try to work through this—physically and mentally.
To gather my thoughts the only way I know how to.
But I can’t hide from them forever. I never could.
“You know we have machines that can do that now.” Connor’s sarcastic comment floats between the trees, laced with humor as well as an older brother’s concern. “A lot faster, too.”
No shit.
I swing again, driving the axe head even deeper into the wood before I turn to face him, wiping sweat from my brow.
My hands, shoulders, and back ache from the exertion, but it’s the good kind. The kind my body craves. The kind that reminds me I’m still alive despite everything that’s been happening.
It brings me back to the basics—Mom showing me how to use an axe. Teaching me how to properly fell a tree. Working with her, Killian, and Connor on the mountain with her employees from the yard. Learning the business and how to protect the mountain while only taking what we absolutely need from it.
Those were simpler times.
I didn’t question who I was or why I was here.
I didn’t worry about anything but my school work and having fun with my brothers.
I didn’t have nightmares about this place.
Connor leans against a tree a few yards away, Killian standing beside him with his arms crossed over his chest, looking every bit the big brother with something to say.
For as stoically quiet he often is, lately, he’s been pushing harder for me to talk about the very things I don’t want to. And that now includes Lucky and what happened this morning.
Killian assesses me, his blue eyes hard and narrowed. “We’ve been looking for you.”
I wondered how long it would take them to realize I had walked away from the site, from the meeting with the foreman who had a laundry list of issues that needed our attention.
They were deep in discussions I thought would keep them distracted longer, but apparently, I was sorely mistaken.
The guilt at shirking my responsibilities to come out here to do this starts to eke its way in, but I just couldn’t be up there anymore, couldn’t stand being in the place where Willow was held and where I saw him for the first—and last—time.
Part of me thinks Killian can only tolerate it because it helps remind him that it’s over for her, for them. Because they have each other. They have their family. They have the confidence of what their future holds to help them work through the pain of the past.
But for me, all I see is my father’s face.
All I feel there are his crimes.
Those nightmares become real up here.
So does my fear.
I give Killian and Connor my back again and return to demolishing the tree.
Killian releases a heavy sigh loud enough for me to hear over my own labored breathing and the slam of metal into the wood. Only a few more shots and this one will come down, and then I’ll start on another, and another, until I work all this out.
“Are we going to talk about this?”
I glare at Connor over my shoulder.
I’ve been avoiding this conversation about Lucky as much as I have been the ones about my father, and I only managed to this long today because I drove up here in my truck and they followed in Killian’s.
If we had all been riding together, it would have been hours to get up to this site of them peppering me with questions I don’t have answers for.
There are no answers.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I found Lucky standing there with that gun, but I don’t know why she had it or what is going on with her. I’m in the dark about the woman I slept with last night. A woman I really barely know even though everything in me wants to know everything.
She took me into her body and gave me the best night of my life, but she’s still keeping me locked out of what’s most important.
That hurts.
And I don’t want to admit to them that she’s shut down all my attempts to get the truth from her.
But I also can’t ignore them.
They’re not going away until we talk.
Nor should they.
This situation has become untenable in only one night, and my plan to give her space and time evaporated the moment I saw that gun pointed at Connor.
I finally release a resigned sigh, give the tree a final swing, and watch as it topples away from us, exactly as I expertly directed it. It crashes into the forest floor, releasing a plume of debris, and I drape my axe over my shoulder and walk toward my brothers.
“I don’t know why she has a gun. And I don’t know why she pulled it.”
Killian snorts. “Well, I wasn’t there, but I think we can surmise she didn’t know it was Connor coming in.” He glances at him. “Unless you’re such an asshole that your reputation preceded you.”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Connor pushes off the tree. “What do you know?”
I sigh, set the axe down on the ground and wipe the sweat from my brow again.
Not enough.
It’s the real answer—that I don’t nearly enough about the woman I’m falling so fucking hard for.
“That she’s running from something. Maybe someone. And it has her scared.”
A sympathetic look crosses both of their gazes, but I see the worry there, too. The deep concern over what transpired even as Killian jokes about it in an attempt to lighten the dark mood hanging around me and the mountain.
“Lucky doesn’t want to tell me.” That frustration surges to the forefront again, tightening my fists at my sides and making my voice come out rough. Strained by my desire to help her. “She told me it was safer if I didn’t know.”
One of Killian’s blond brows rises. “She used the word ‘safer’?”
I nod, remembering the look in her eyes when she said it—both times.
Pure terror.
“Shit.” He shoves a hand through his hair. “Well, that isn’t good.”
No, it isn’t.
I clench my jaw, trying not to lash out with everything I’ve been thinking, all the horrible scenarios I’ve been imagining that might be threatening to her. “My thoughts exactly, but I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t force her to tell me.”
Killian scowls. “Why the fuck not?”
I glower at him.
I would think by now that these two would understand that forcing someone to talk about something that they’re not ready to only creates more problems instead of making the situation better.
If I push her on this, it might push her away.
I can’t risk that.
“Look, I realize you like this girl.” Killian locks his gaze with mine, doing his damnedest to use his “big brother” voice that used to put me in my place when we were younger.
“But if there’s something dangerous out there coming after her, we need to know about it.
We need to understand why it might be coming to McBride Mountain and how to deal with it.
I have a wife and a son at home who just went through something incredibly traumatic.
I don’t need any fucking surprises, Liam. ”
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” I throw my hands up.
“You think I don’t understand every single fucking thing my father did to Willow?
You think I don’t picture it and see it in my head every minute of every day.
You think I don’t dream about it? Fuck, Killian, you don’t have to remind me of the fucking obvious. ”
Shit.
The way they’re looking at me, I know I’ve said too much.
Again.
But rather than going the icy, glacial blue it does when he’s angry, Killian’s gaze warms and softens, which is almost worse. “Is that why you won’t talk to us? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me? And her?”
Fuck.
I pace away from them, into the forest, needing to move, needing to do something other than stand there under their scrutiny.
They follow, their footsteps slow and deliberate across the underbrush.
He gives me a moment to try to breathe and find my center before he speaks again. “I’ve said this before, but you know that nothing he did was your fault.”
“Fuck.” I whirl toward him. “Of course I know that, Killian, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel guilty about it.
That I don’t still feel like…fuck”—I throw out my hands again—“like I don’t know, like maybe part of whatever did that to him is inside me, too.
That if he’s capable of it, then maybe I am. ”
Connor narrows his dark gaze. “You can’t be serious. You’re about as different from Earl Byers as anyone on the planet. You don’t hurt people, Liam. You protect them. You help them. That’s who you’ve always been.”
Killian nods. “That’s what you did for me when we found Willow. You’re the one who forced me to come clean with her and to face whatever happened head-on together. You made things possible for us. And finding out whose blood runs through your veins doesn’t change that. You’re a McBride.”
Despite his best effort to reassure me, Killian’s insistence doesn’t help.
“That’s what I keep trying to tell myself but…” I shake my head, trying to break free from the dark cloud that’s encased it. “But it doesn’t stop the nightmares.”
Connor rubs the back of his neck, tilting his head as he considers me. “But she does?”
Shit.
Is it that obvious?
How much I’ve become attached to her?
That woman and that dog are the only things that have given me any semblance of peace in nine fucking months, and now that peace has been shattered by what I witnessed this morning.
Whatever’s going on with her, I can’t allow her to keep it from me anymore because it isn’t putting only me in danger, it’s putting Willow, and Niall, and everyone else in the line of fire, too.
What if she had pulled that trigger when Connor walked in?
What if I hadn’t been able to talk her down?
Fuck.
I bury my face in my hands.
“You have to talk to her.” Connor’s voice comes deep and level. “Now.”
He isn’t angry, even though he has every right to be.
He’s just worried.
“I know. I know.” I scrub my hands over my face. “I don’t want to push her away. I don’t want her to hate me for doing it and try to run.”
Killian steps forward and claps me on the shoulder. “If she runs, you’ll just have to go after her.”