Chapter 2
Jason
I put my truck in park in the space directly opposite the hardware store, eyes on the vehicle riding the curb right outside the double doors.
I step down onto the blacktop and make my way across the road, wondering how long my brother Mitch has been waiting for me to arrive.
Tripp, the store cashier and the owner’s eighteen-year-old son, leans over the front counter when I breach the entrance.
He catches my eye and grins. “Your truck looks like it’s on ’roids.”
I laugh as I walk past him. “Yeah, it got ’em from your kitchen cabinet.”
“You know who was just in here?” he continues, and I spare him a glance as I scan the front section.
“Who?”
“That blonde chick, Denver Layne. She was asking about you,” he adds with a wink.
“Uh-huh,” I drawl wryly, flicking through the new stripwood they’ve got in store.
“You should ask her out,” he says excitedly.
I shake my head. “Not gonna happen.”
“Why not?” he asks, leaning forwards. “She’s fine as hell. And super into you.”
I give him a smirk as I replace the timber. “Appreciate the confidence. But I’m not looking.”
His brow creases with confusion and I chuckle quietly as he mulls that over.
Between deployments I used to loosen up a little, but now that I’m back home it hasn’t been on my agenda.
I mean, there was one person who I considered, but it was impossible to get a hold of her. For one, she doesn’t live in town anymore, and two, she’s probably not even single.
She was always so damn beautiful, there’ll be a million guys wanting to lock her down.
And screwing my way around this town is the last thing I’d ever do. Everyone knows everyone, and I don’t need the whole neighbourhood knowing my business.
I turn the corner to the next aisle and my brother Mitch glances up from the shelves. There’s a sample pot of paint in his free hand, and the swatch on the side is baby pink.
Like me, he’s six-four, two-fifty, and tanned bronze from working in the sun. Because even when we’re knee-deep in snow, the UVA glare in the mountains is relentless.
He places the small tin of paint in his basket and turns around without a word.
“Not judging,” I tell him gruffly, shaking out my wrists as we reach the next section. I start scanning the bottom shelf, knowing what we’re looking for. “If Harper wants the house painted pink, so be it.”
“She doesn’t want the house painted pink,” he rumbles quietly, swiping a large hand through his hair. “Told her I’d start making up the baby’s room and said I’d get us a couple paint samples.”
They’ve only known about his fiancée’s pregnancy for a grand total of ten days, but the second that they found out about it my brother instantly moved her into his place. Mitch is from Phoenix Falls and Harper’s from LA, but she’s been embracing the small-town life like she was made for it.
I jerk my chin at the basket gripped in his fist and he silently shows me the rest of the choices.
Primrose yellow, sugar-crystal blue, and three different shades of baby pink.
A smile crease cuts into the hollow of my cheek.
Someone’s hoping for a baby girl.
“You fuckin’ marshmallow,” I rumble teasingly, and he huffs out a laugh, his neck turning red. “You been in here long?”
“Five minutes. What was the hold up?”
I shake my head as we check the quantities. “Got a call from search-and-rescue. Almost had to head up to Bear Pass.”
“Jesus Christ,” he exhales, rubbing his palm down his face. “Tell me you didn’t actually have to go up there this morning.”
“Had to climb the ridge in the snowmobile, but the hikers were just on the border. Two of them, not from around here, and they didn’t cross into bear territory. They didn’t realise that ‘no snow in town yet’ doesn’t translate to ‘no snow on the peaks’, and that when the snow starts up there it doesn’t stop for four damn months.”
I got them down without a scratch but those are two lucky motherfuckers.
“They were hiking up there?” Mitch asks, his brow arched with disbelief. “Up near Bear Pass? In – what – seven inches of snow?”
After working with Phoenix Falls’ search-and-rescue department for the past four winters, I’m no longer surprised by the reckless behaviour of some out-of-towners.
And God knows how many more searches I’ll end up doing before the winter starts thawing in a couple months’ time.
But even though some hikers can be careless, at the end of the day they’re harmless, so my being situated at the base of the mountains gives me the perfect location to provide help when needed.
During spring and summer, I’m off of search-and-rescue duty so that I can focus all of my time into my company, Coleson Construction. But when the large-scale construction jobs finish up at the end of the Fall, the team spends the winter working small-town fix-ups, freeing up my schedule for a couple mountain search missions every week.
Having my house situated in the lower mountains means that I can be on-call whenever I want to be, and being able to ride a snowmobile, as well as having a past operating high-stakes missions, means that I’m as well suited for the job as the job is well suited for me.
I was with the US Military Police for more than a decade before I received honorary discharge, but just because I’m no longer in the Army doesn’t mean that I wanted to quit serving the people of my country. And even though the search-and-rescue department is small scale in the scheme of things, it’s hard not to offer your help when you were built with the natural hardware.
Physical strength. Integrity. The ability to compartmentalise self-sacrifice.
At the end of the day, it’s straightforward. Even the smallest acts of decency make a difference.
I breathe in a deep chest-swelling inhale and then hunch down to pick up the first sack of subsoil.
Mitch sighs quietly beside me and then hunches down to do the same.
“Can’t believe you’re doing this,” he grits out, throwing one bag over his shoulder and grabbing another in his fist.
A low rumble sounds in my chest as I hoist up another sack.
“You did it,” I reply gruffly. “How hard can it be?”
He shoots me a dry look and starts heading toward the counter.
“I didn’t do it in the middle of winter,” he rumbles, dropping the bags in front of Tripp as I heave down mine.
“You did it in the Fall. Same freakin’ difference.”
He rolls his eyes, before glancing down at his basket of small paints.
“Throw them in my order,” I tell him, grabbing my wallet from the back of my utility pants.
He frowns across at me, holding the basket firmer in his grip. “No.”
I breathe out a laugh, shaking my head, and wait for Tripp to ring up my bill.
“What’re you making?” Tripp asks as I tap my card against the reader.
I pocket my wallet and keep it vague.
“Filling a hole.”
Because aside from my set schedule with Coleson Construction and the voluntary calls for search-and-rescue, the less regimented winter season also allows me the time to take up personal jobs – just a couple favours here and there that might make someone’s day a little brighter.
And seeing as my buddy Casey isn’t even at home right now, it’s the perfect time to work on something that he’s always wanted but is too humble to ask for.
So it’s a subtle way of giving back to a fellow brother-in-arms.
Tripp gives me a smirk as he passes me my receipt, and then I widen my stance as I haul the bags off the counter. I clamp two in each hand, holding them by the roll-tops so they don’t split, and my biceps feel the familiar burn of bearing two hundred pounds in each fist.
Mitch carefully sets his paints on the desk, eyeing them cautiously as Tripp starts scanning them.
“If you need help with the excavation, just give me a call,” Mitch says. He pulls a couple notes from his wallet as he works out how much his order will be.
“Already excavated it,” I tell him.
“Backhoe?”
“Bare hands.”
He nods once. “Nice.”
Casey’s yard is big enough for the machinery, but a backhoe doesn’t get the kind of precision you have with a shovel. Plus, the ground isn’t iced over yet, and I like getting in as much manual work as I can.
“And you and Harper need some alone-time with your paint,” I add, making him huff out a laugh.
I kick his boot with mine and he shakes his head, hiding his smirk.
“That’s eighteen dollars,” Tripp says, grabbing a brown paper bag from beside the till.
He takes the twenty that my brother hands him and, before he can ring up any change, Mitch holds up his palm, silently letting him know that he can keep it.
He takes the paints and after a salute from Tripp we head out of the store.
“When are you going to start laying this down?” Mitch asks, and I grunt quietly as I drop the last sack into the bed of my truck.
I pull the lid down over the back and say, “I’ll head to Casey’s tomorrow morning. Before that other thing we have to do in town.”
“Shit, I almost forgot about that,” Mitch replies, raking his hand back through his hair.
As I’m the owner of Coleson Construction and my brother is the owner of Coleson Joinery, we tend to work different aspects of the same jobs, especially when they’re based close to our hometown.
I round the side of my truck and call out, “Tell me which paint y’all end up picking.”
He smirks at me as I get in the vehicle and I smirk right back at him.
Both of us already know which paint they’ll be picking.
I give him a jerk of my chin and pull out of the lot with a smile.
No doubt about it. Definitely baby pink.