Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Cole loaded up the truck with enough food for four days.
“You shouldn’t be on your own this weekend,” Mom said.
She’d said the same thing for the last two years.
She hated that he’d bought the block of land and took off on his own whenever he could.
She hated it more when he left on the anniversary of the accident that had stolen the life he should be living and dropped him into the one he’d been trying to avoid, like he was supposed to replace both cousins in the family business.
“It’s better that I do. I don’t want to be around people.
” Especially not family who would only remember the good things about Patrick and Chuck.
No one wanted to hear that they’d been drinking and hunting and had picked him up late.
No one had wanted to know that seven years ago either.
Somehow, it had become his fault. If he hadn’t needed to be picked up, they wouldn’t be dead.
He didn’t know if what he’d seen that night was real or not, but he wasn’t about to start talking about stone jewelry, wolves, and red-eyed monsters.
“Cole…”
“Mom. As I’ve said before, the cabin’s pretty much done, and you’re welcome to join me whenever you want, but I’m not sticking around to reminisce about the accident.
” He shoved his hand in his pocket, touching the rock and pretending that it made him stronger and braver and that it held some kind of magic. Maybe pretending was enough.
Her voice softened. “You’d tell me if you are having dark thoughts?”
He rolled his eyes. The first year, yeah, that had been rough.
He’d had to learn how to walk again. The fractured pelvis and shoulder blade meant he’d never play professional football.
It had been a big news story at the time.
The school he had been going to had generously decided not to kick him out, but he hadn’t wanted to stay.
It was easier to go to the local school.
He’d managed to finish high school, but college was out of the picture, even though his parents wanted him to go to the local community college.
What was the point in taking on the debt?
The whole point of football and college was to get out of this miserable existence of barely scraping by.
He’d never made another plan to get out beyond football and was now stuck.
His aunt had died less than a year after the accident, and then his uncle had virtually stopped working as he’d been unable to function.
Everything had turned to shit.
It was still shit.
The only good thing in his life was the cabin.
Saving up for the land, and then the supplies, and then building it had given him something to focus on.
Now it was done. He wanted to enjoy it…but at the same time, he needed a new goal.
Something else to think about, so he didn’t dwell on what might have been.
“Mom, I’m fine.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back on Monday night. Same as always.”
“I worry about you up there.”
He wasn’t worried about being at the cabin alone, even though he was sure someone else was up there.
Of course there were other people up there.
Plenty of people owned bits of land, and some of them had been built on.
And if someone was living rough, they’d never bothered him.
He’d never seen any signs of a break-in at his cabin, and nothing had ever been taken when it was nothing more than a building site.
“Please don’t.” She needed to worry less about other people.
Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly bitter, he blamed his aunt. After all, if they hadn’t moved in when she’d gotten sick, his life would look very different.
Most of the time, he tried not to think about the past; it was easier that way. Much like rehab, it was better to only think of one step at a time. However, only thinking of the next step also stopped him from thinking about the future.
The cabin had given him focus and something to do, but it had also been a safe non-plan because he wasn’t making any changes in his day-to-day life. He was still running the same mouse wheel. It was safe, and it was familiar, and he hated it.
But making a new plan was terrifying.
What if he found something he wanted to do and it was snatched away from him again? Not only that, but his father needed him in the business.
If he walked away, what was his father going to do?
What was he going to do? Wait until his father retired before he lived?
He didn’t know the answers to those questions even though he had been asking them for months. Maybe years if he included the whispers he’d refused to acknowledge because there had been other things to think about.
Sometimes he hoped this was a dream and that it wasn’t his life. Maybe he was still unconscious in the hospital, and when he woke up, everything would be fine. He wouldn’t be so badly hurt, and the door to his future wouldn’t slam on his ass.
He gave his mom another hug. “I’ll be fine, but maybe next time you should come with me and have a few days off. We can buy some new puzzles and games, or just watch the sun move across the sky.” Sometimes he watched the stars because they were so much brighter out there.
Everything felt bigger and brighter out there, like all his dreams were possible…
The trouble was he’d forgotten how to dream. If he dreamed big, it felt as though he were abandoning his parents and his uncle.
Perhaps that’s what Mom was worried about, that he was getting ready to fly away and find a new adventure. But isn’t that what he was supposed to do? Hadn’t that been the plan from the first time the coach had said he was going places?
Now he was spinning his wheels, and they were digging further into the dirt.
If he kept doing the same thing, he’d get buried so deep he’d never get out.
For whatever reason, this seventh anniversary felt different.
He either put something under his tires to get a bit of traction and break free, or he gave up and lay down in the mud.
He’d never been very good at lying down and doing nothing, which had sucked when that was all he could do, but his fractured pelvis had healed. So that meant he needed to find something to get him out of the hole.
He was twenty-three. The same age as Chuck when he died. He was not living Chuck’s life until he died.