Chapter 44 Taryn
Taryn
The next two days pass in a haze of Christmas-flavored joy.
We decorate more of the house, winding the decor up the stairs and into the upstairs hall, and then hang lights on the outside eves.
Gabe attaches those lights to the generator so they’ll turn on even if we lose power—always a possibility this deep in the winter—and I bake so many cookies that we start eating them as meals.
This leads to a joke that we don’t eat real food in the Hawke house, we only eat cookies, and by the time Christmas Eve rolls around we’re using this as some sort of code between the three of us.
“Cookies at midnight tonight?” Gabe will ask.
“When the otter flies,” I’ll reply.
And Gunner will laugh so hard he spits coffee on the table.
It’s beautiful and hilarious and indicative of what we’re building together, this threesome where our arms are linked and our cheeks ache from laughing, and for these two days, I feel like we’ve figured it out.
We know how to move around and with each other and how to take care of what we have.
I sleep in their beds at night—sometimes the three of us, sometimes just two—and we spend every waking moment together during the day.
We feel as if we’ve been together forever, and like this will never end.
I should feel safe and satisfied, and like I’ve finally come home, but the truth is, I know this will end.
It’s just a matter of time. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my mother and Johnny in the city and their continued threats against me.
I’ve heard from her three times in the last two days, the threats increasing in strongly worded violence, and though I’m still not positive that she knows I’m up here, my instincts are screaming.
My mother has never considered me an individual of my own, and now that I have something she wants, she’ll never stop until she takes it from me.
And I don’t have the paperwork I need yet, so legally, I don’t know if I can do anything to stop her.
With the way things currently stand, if she shows up here and tries to take me home without my permission, I don’t think anyone can stop her.
Sure, I’m over eighteen and officially my own person, but the important birthday—the one that will mean my true independence—doesn’t happen until next week.
I haven’t said anything about this to Gabe and Gunner because I don’t want them to worry.
Gunner knows a little, but not everything, and after having seen him over the past three days, I’m truly concerned about what he’ll do if he finds out.
He’s gone from acting like I’m not here to acting like I’m his sun, moon, and stars, and if he finds out about the threats I’m receiving, I think he might kill someone.
Even if that someone is the woman he used to love.
My bigger concern is that my mother will use the conflict between us to hurt Gabe and Gunner. Destroy everything they’ve built up here on the mountain.
And of course I can’t tell them that. I don’t want them to worry, and I’m not positive that she’ll even show up. Hell, I might be overestimating my own importance to her and borrowing trouble I don’t need. I don’t want to use my own exaggerations to destroy Gabe and Gunner’s Christmas.
Whatever happens, I’ll handle it without involving them or ruining their peace.
I’ll protect them.
I take yet another tray of cookies out of the oven and slide it onto the counter, laughing.
There’s a stack of cookies a mile tall already on the plate at the end of the counter, and I honestly don’t know why I started this batch.
Actually, that’s a lie. Gabe asked me to create peppermint cookies for Christmas, and I didn’t know how to tell him we didn’t need them because we already had five different varieties that we needed to eat.
Honestly, I wonder if those two are starting to take advantage of having someone who can bake in the house.
The banging starts when the tray is only halfway secure, and I drop everything and scream.
The aluminum sheet hits the floor with a loud clatter and cookies shoot across the kitchen floor, but I’m already spinning toward the door, which is shaking in its hinges with the force of the person hammering it from the outside.
What the actual fuck is going on out there?
It’s not snowing anymore but the snow is still heavy enough on the ground that no one is traveling much, and we haven’t had any visitors from town at all.
I know no one from down the mountain is coming up right now; the roads are too hard to drive for people who don’t know them.
The thought brings my heart to a freeze, though, and suddenly my feet are moving toward the door, because if someone from down the mountain got up here, I need to know about it.
If the roads are open, I need to start planning.
I jerk the door open, ready to shout at whoever is making such a racket, and then freeze again. I know that face. And I know the face of the person behind it.
They’ve found me.
My mother leans up against the door frame and gives me a very nasty, very intentional smile. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the prodigal daughter.”
The prodigal son. The one who returns home after a long absence, and after having squandered his inheritance. The symbolism isn’t lost on me, though she’s got the story wrong if she thinks this is how it goes.
“That’s son,” I tell her bluntly. “And prodigal means he returns home voluntarily. That’s not happening here. What are you doing here, Mom?”
Johnny reaches from behind her and grabs me, pulling me toward him so quickly I slam against the door jamb on the way out.
“We’re here for what’s ours, girl. And we’re not leaving until we get it.”
He turns and shoves me toward the driveway, and I cry out as my toe hits a step on the way by.
Moments later, I’m on the ground in the snow, my mind working overtime as it tries to understand what the fuck is going on here.
One moment I was in the kitchen making more cookies, Christmas only hours away, my heart full of love for the men I’ve come to call family, and the next my old family is at the door pulling me back out into the cold and shoving me around.
There’s a metaphor there, but I don’t have time for that sort of thing right now. I need to figure out what the fuck they want and get them out of here before everything goes sideways.
And I want to know how the fuck they got up here when the roads should be so icy they’re not passable.
I get to my feet and spin back toward my mother, the question already on my tongue, when I see that they have someone else with them.
Someone who would definitely know how to drive the mountain roads in the snow.
“Gabby,” I say quietly.
She tilts her chin up and looks me up and down like she’s never seen anything more disgusting in her life. “That’s right.”
I don’t even have to ask what she thinks she’s doing, because my brain is already putting it all together.
My mother spent four years living in this town, and I presume Gabby was here at that time.
They must have known each other, or at least known of each other.
And since I’ve been back in town, Gabby has spent most of her time throwing me dirty looks and reminding everyone that Gunner belongs to her.
Not me.
“You went and got her,” I say, stating the conclusion out loud.
She just shrugs, like this is all completely standard.
“Course I did. I figured she’d want to know what her darling daughter was up to.
Moving into Hawke’s Wood and winding the Hawke men around her little finger.
Making them fall in love with you. Keeping them to yourself and not allowing anyone else in the house. ”
It’s such an unfair accusation, and so insane, that when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Making them fall in love with me? Keeping them to myself?
What?
Johnny doesn’t seem to be worried about that aspect, though. He’s got only one thing on his mind, and it isn’t Gabe or Gunner. He yanks a gun out of his waistband, clicks the safety off, and holds the nose up to my forehead.
“It doesn’t matter how we got up here or what those men think of you,” he grinds out. “We’re not here for your fucking fairy tale ending, little girl. I don’t have time for that shit.”
Right.
“What do you want?” I ask, kicking myself for not having a plan yet. I thought I had more time to come up with something, though.
Thought I’d go into this conversation with better weapons.
Like papers that say I’m no longer legally attached to Helen Matthews, and if I die, she doesn’t get anything I have.
“We want you home,” my mother answers, and now she’s not even trying to sound like she cares about me. “You belong in New York, not up here in the mountains. You have school and your future to think about. Your career. Your family.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at her words.
“My family? You’ve got to be joking. You haven’t cared about me since we got back to the city, and Johnny Massimo isn’t my family.”
My mother gets so close I can smell the coffee on her breath.
“Neither are those men.”
I take one step closer to her so we’re nose to nose, and give her my iciest glare. “They’re more family than you are. They love me more than you do. And I’m telling you right now that I’m not leaving. I’m staying here with the family I choose, and you can’t stop me.”
My mother snorts at that, but does take a step back, like she wasn’t expecting me to stand up to her and tell her to kick rocks.
Good. The girl I was before I came up here would have backed down from a fight with her. She would have avoided conflict at all costs. Sold her soul to make sure other people were happy. But I’ve changed since I arrived in Hawke’s Wood.
And I’m not the girl who backs down from a fight anymore.
“Try me, Mom,” I say quietly. “Try me and find out.”
She raises both eyebrows and looks at me like she’s never even seen me before.
Then her expression goes even harder and colder.
“Try you? I’ll do better than that. Johnny and I want you home, and we want it now.
We want access to that little inheritance you know you’re getting.
After that, you’re welcome to do whatever the fuck you want.
But until you turn twenty-one, you belong to me. You know it, and I know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” I spit. “I haven’t belonged to you in years.”
“And yet the terms of your inheritance state very plainly that you have to live with me until you’re twenty-one, or you don’t get what he left you,” she replies quickly.
She’s right. My father named me in his will and I’m getting more than she did, but there are rules for it. I have to still share an address with her to get my inheritance, and if I don’t—if I move or die—everything goes to her.
I know what he left me, and why he left it to me rather than her. He was trying to give me the freedom he knew I wanted.
And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her have something he wanted me to get.
It’s why I started the paperwork to legally divorce her and get out of that clause, and it’s why I’ve been pushing my attorney to get the paperwork filed so quickly.
But as far as I know it’s been filed but not finalized, which means unless I live with her, I don’t get what my dad wanted me to have.
If I do go back to live with her, I have no doubt it will mean my life. Because the moment I’m dead, my inheritance is hers.
“We can ruin them, you know,” she says suddenly.
“Their little business. All that stupid furniture. Hell, we can ruin the entire town if we want to. And it’ll be your fault.
Your fault if we take down these men you think you love and the town they built.
Of course, that doesn’t have to happen, if you come home with us.
Come home, and I’ll let Gabe and Gunner keep everything they have.
Stay, and I’ll make sure they lose it all. ”
And there it is. The choice I knew might come down on my head. My mother is casually threatening Gabe and Gunner and everything they hold dear if I stay here. The town. Everyone’s livelihoods.
Their homes.
My own mother is ready to ruin everything just to get her hands on my inheritance.
And I can either stay here and ruin Gabe and Gunner’s lives, destroy them with my presence...
Or save them by deserting them again.