Chapter 17 #2
I squeeze her hand as we push into the trees, making our way down a familiar barely-there path no one would even see if they didn’t know it was here. But I recognize it and know it by heart.
Because I made it with Killian and Connor.
We walked it so many times, we could probably do it blindfolded.
Gizmo trots along beside us, dodging around our feet and disappearing off to the sides to explore everything around us.
A few raindrops hit us, and Lucky flinches, glancing up at the trees arching overhead, toward the darkening sky barely visible between the branches and leaves.
“We’re going to get rained on, Liam.”
I grin at her. “Trust me.”
I’ve said those words so many times to her over the past month, made demands of her that probably weren’t fair, considering everything she had been through.
Trust is earned, and Lucky, of all people, has every reason to never trust anyone again.
But things have changed.
We have changed.
A light rain starts to fall, trickling through the leaves, the sound soft and soothing as I draw to a stop just in time.
Lucky glances around at the thick trees. “Why did we stop here?”
I pull her up against me, pressing my body to hers and feathering a kiss across her lips. “You didn’t think that I would let you get soaked out here, did you?”
Her brow furrows, and I look up.
She follows my line of sight, her eyes widening. “What is that?”
I grin at her. “That is one of the McBride brothers’ secrets. Something I’ve never shown anyone else. Our very first building project.”
* * *
LUCKY
If Liam hadn’t pointed it out, I would’ve walked right past it without even noticing it.
The structure blends into the trees the same way his cabin does up on the mountain, the beams and floorboards the same color as the limbs around them, supporting them as if the trunk itself grew specifically for this purpose.
“Is that a treehouse?”
He grins as the rain picks up and starts seeping through the canopy harder. “It is. Come on.”
His hand tightens around mine, and he pulls me to the massive tree where slats of wood appear to be screwed into the trunk to act as a ladder. “You first.”
I stare up at how high it is. At least twenty or thirty feet up. “You…can’t be serious.”
Heights have never scared me, but the thought of climbing up the side of a tree on old pieces of wood that have probably been here for decades makes my stomach drop out.
He nods, kissing my cheek. “I am. I’ll bring Giz.”
Sitting at our feet, Gizmo tilts his head, looking up as if trying to determine what the hell is happening.
I glance over my shoulder at him. “It can’t be safe, Liam…”
“It is.”
“Even after all these years?”
He nods. “We built it to last, and I stop by to check on it every once in a while, to replace any boards that need repair.”
If there is one thing the McBrides know, it’s how to handle wood. They’ve built so many beautiful things, and he has never led me astray before, but it’s the rain starting to fall in earnest, soaking into our clothes, that finally forces me to grab the first rung.
“All right.”
With a grin, Liam scoops up Giz and puts him into his backpack, his head sticking out as he tries to watch what’s happening.
I heave myself up, and Liam’s hands find my ass as it reaches his eye level. He nudges me slightly—and completely unnecessarily—and I look back and grin at him.
“I appreciate the boost.”
He winks, waggling his eyebrows. “Anytime, Bluebell.”
That easy-going, playful smile and relaxed demeanor that first drew me to Liam seeps into me now the same way the rain does, helping wash away some of those lingering feelings our meeting today left me with.
I cautiously make my way up the makeshift ladder, my hands tightening around the old wood, testing each rung before I put my full weight on it.
The higher I climb, the harder the rain falls, so by the time I reach the top and pull myself up through the small opening cut into the floor of the structure, it’s coming down steadily.
Liam’s head appears in the gap a moment later, and he reaches back and snags Giz out of the backpack to lift him into the treehouse, giving him room to squeeze his broad shoulders through the narrow hole.
Giz immediately begins searching and sniffing around the small space.
In here, the rain makes a different sound as it hits the wooden roof only about five feet above us.
It isn’t tall enough for us to stand up inside, though it would have been when the McBrides were children, and visions of the three of them as small boys up here draws a grin across my face.
Liam sits across from me, a smile playing at his lips. “So, what do you think?”
I scan the small space that can’t be any bigger than five by five. “How old were you when you built this?”
He looks at it wistfully. “I think Killian was twelve? And Connor would’ve been…nine? I was six or seven.”
I laugh. “And your mom let you come down here and do this?”
He nods, the affection for her glowing in his gaze.
“My mom gave us a lot of leeway to be boys and to explore and really enjoy the mountain. When she had to be at the lumber yard, she’d let us come over here and mess around.
Where do you think we got all the materials to build this in the first place? ”
My heart aches at the longing in his voice. He clearly misses her, and after everything I’ve heard about her from literally everyone I’ve spoken to since I arrived on the mountain, I can see why.
Connie was the type of mother I always dreamed of but never got. Someone to love me unconditionally and give me a safe place where I never had to worry about what happened inside the walls, where even the world outside them wasn’t so scary because she was there.
“She sounds like a wonderful mother.”
He offers a sad smile. “She was. I wish you could have met her.” His warm gaze roams over me. “She would have loved you, the same way I do.”
My eyes start to fill with tears, and I try to blink them away but fail.
For the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.
Like sitting up here in this treehouse, surrounded by nothing but the forest and the falling rain, my past is being washed away, wiped clean.
Like maybe, everything really is changing. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“Of course.”
Gizmo makes a snuffling sound, something in the corner making him dig at the wood slightly, and I crawl toward him and discover carvings in the walls.
I trail my fingers over several of the words and images, making my way around the entire structure, taking them all in. “Did you do all these?”
He shakes his head. “A lot of it was Killian, a little bit Connor.”
Some of them are initials, some names of people I assume were friends of theirs during childhood, but I pause at one that makes me smile, dragging my fingers over the familiar peak.
“This is McBride Mountain.”
He scoots next to me and nods, doing the same with his own calloused fingertips. “Yep. Killian did that one. He has it tattooed on his chest, too.”
Of course, I’ve seen it as he’s worked in the hot summer sun around the homestead the last few weeks, but I never asked him about it.
Truth be told, the other McBride brothers unnerve me.
Not because they haven’t been anything but welcoming to me in their home, but because of the intensity with which they do everything.
Especially Killian.
“He’ll never leave.”
Liam shakes his head. “No, he won’t.”
“What about Connor?”
He sighs slightly and leans back on his hands. “I don’t think he will, either.”
“I know Killian has Willow and Niall, and the lumber yard and now Willow’s shop, but what keeps Connor here? He doesn’t seem particularly friendly with anyone in town.”
Liam issues a low chuckle. “Have you been reading Raven’s articles?”
I duck my head slightly, embarrassed at being called out for reading the McBride Mountain gossip. “Yes, but my own personal observation, too. He hasn’t said very much to me…”
Scooching closer, Liam offers me a sympathetic look. “He isn’t mad, you know? About what happened. That’s just how he is. He’s more quiet. More reclusive. Even more so than Killian.”
“And what does he do?”
“What do you mean?”
I shrug, staring at the art, thinking about both Killian and Liam’s workshops on the homestead. “Well, Killian has his family and his carvings. You have your chairs—”
“And you and Giz.”
Giz climbs into my lap and settles, sufficiently done with his exploration as the sound of the rain increases above us, now pouring down so hard it’s difficult to imagine how we’ll get back to the truck without being soaked unless it lets up soon.
Liam’s words make my throat tighten, the ease with which he says them and the intensity and surety in them.
“But what does Connor have?” It’s something I’ve asked myself multiple times over the last few weeks, when I’ve seen his dark eyes get a faraway look. “It just seems like he’s missing something in his life.”
“I agree with you.” His coppery-red head bobs slightly. “And believe me, we’ve had conversations with him about it over the years, tried to get him to open up more, but he just prefers to be alone. Spends most of his time in his cabin doing whatever it is he does.”
“Has he ever had a girlfriend?”
Liam shakes his head. “Not that I know of.”
“That sounds…lonely.”
He nods. “It is.”
Only he isn’t talking about Connor anymore; he’s talking about himself. About what his life was like before I came to McBride Mountain. And he’s worried about what it will become if I have to leave.
If we have to leave.
What he said the day of the opening has been weighing heavily on my shoulders ever since, his promise to leave with me, to start over somewhere new if we have to.
He would do that for me.
And that meeting with the lawyer this morning rattled me.
While Snow assured me that he thinks he can speak with the FBI agent in charge of investigating the bank robbery, to come up with some sort of proffer agreement that would permit me to give information in exchange for their guarantee that I won’t face any charges, we all know it won’t be so simple.
Not once I revealed Brad’s true identity to Snow and he recoiled slightly.
Because it’s a name people beyond McBride Mountain would recognize.
One that means those men who robbed that bank are capable of so much worse.
I saw it in their eyes through the slits of their masks, in the way they so easily pointed the gun at me, at the tellers.
They were killers.
Stone-cold ones.
And they expected me to die in that warehouse.
The fact that I got away makes me a loose end.
One they might want to tie up if they ever figure out I’m still alive and talking.
“Where’d you go just now?”
I shake my head to clear it and refocus on Liam, his brows drawn low over his eyes in worry. “I was just thinking about what we discussed the day of the opening.”
“About leaving McBride Mountain?”
“I don’t want to.” I run my hands over Giz, using the familiar motion to soothe the disquiet I’m feeling about Liam’s promise. “I don’t want you to have to leave your brothers, I don’t want to have to leave these people. I don’t want to leave this.”
I motion upward absently as the sound of the rain drowns out the rest of the world.
“Then we won’t.” Liam says it so definitively, as if there isn’t a shadow of a doubt.
“If that’s what you want, we won’t. I told you I would run with you, and I still mean it.
But if what you want is McBride Mountain, then no matter what happens, we’ll stay and fight.
” He pushes up and shifts over to me, pulling my face to his.
“I’ll fight for you, Lucky. For us. For this. So we can always stay on the mountain.”