Bigger Than the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #3)

Chapter 1

TWO MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE HOMESTEAD

CONNOR

Laughter floats through the still night air, spreading out across the homestead and drifting up to me where I sit on the front porch of my cabin. The happy, joyful sound makes me wince. It only makes my pain worse.

My hand tightens around the glass of bourbon until my knuckles ache, but I don’t loosen it.

I can’t…

Not when that death grip and the alcohol within it are the only things that seem to keep me grounded lately. The more I drink, the less I think. Or at least, the less my thoughts drift to the agonizing, dark place I don’t want to be stuck in.

Yet, that’s where I find myself more often than not, especially on nights like this.

Swirling in that onyx abyss…

Surrounded by brief flashes of moonlight glinting off the axe head as I drove it down—

No.

I squeeze my eyes closed and take a long drink, hoping the spicy liquor burning down my throat and through my belly will also sear away the memory and the pain.

That’s always the hope, yet it doesn’t.

It might create a kind of haze that dulls the clarity of the memories, but it can never eliminate them completely.

Another peal of laughter reaches me…

Light.

Feminine.

So filled with a brightness I’ve never felt and never will.

Lucky.

The woman’s name fits her so perfectly. Hearing her so happy, so carefree after everything she went through.

Listening to Liam’s boom of a laugh joining with hers.

That combined happiness should help alleviate the guilt that plagues me.

It should wash away the tsunami of anxiety that threatens to drown me every day.

It should replace the sound of the gunshots and the axe sinking into flesh and bone.

It should reassure me that what I did was right and necessary.

But it doesn’t.

It can’t.

Nothing can.

Nothing I’ve found, anyway.

And I’ve looked.

I’ve scoured every inch of McBride Mountain to find something—literally anything—that might act as a parachute for this downward spiral I’ve found myself in, but it doesn’t exist.

All that does is pain, regret, guilt, and endlessly questioning the actions I took and what they made me.

A killer.

Four men.

Four lives.

I take another gulp of bourbon, waiting for the blissful haze to finally overtake me so I might be able to get a few minutes of sleep tonight, but just as I start to relax back into the chair, a twig snaps on the hill leading up to my cabin. I flinch, my body stiffening and going on high alert.

The glass in my hand trembles as I set it down and reach for my axe where it leans against the arm of the Adirondack chair Liam built for me. My palm slides along the worn handle, and another pop of breaking wood makes me tighten my grip on my old friend.

Gunshots echo in my head the same way they did across the mountain that night.

My shoulder aches from the recoil of my shotgun each time I fired it.

That same vise tightens around my chest with each step that brings someone closer.

It can’t be Killian…

He knows this land like the back of his hand and how to move through it without making a sound—which he also knows is the only way he would ever get close enough to my cabin before I disappeared into the woods rather than talk to him.

That’s what I’ve been doing for months since the attack on the homestead—avoiding him, avoiding Liam, avoiding their nosy women who can’t leave well enough alone and give me fucking space.

I’ve tried to protect them from how unstable I’ve been, tried to keep them at bay with assurances that I’m fine when I’m anything but…

It hasn’t worked because they just keep coming at me. But not like this—not so directly. Sounding like a herd of elephants moving through the woods. So, it isn’t my big brother making his way up the incline from his cabin toward mine.

Which means it can only be one other person.

Willow…

My stomach tightens along with my hand around the axe, but only because Willow poses the worst kind of threat to me.

She pushes.

Relentlessly.

Almost as badly as her pain-in-my-ass best friend does.

There isn’t any escaping either of them when they set their sights on getting something, and what Willow wants is for me to open up. She wants me to reveal all the dark thoughts and troubling feelings that plague me so ruthlessly—the absolute last thing I ever want to do.

I can’t put my bullshit on her when she’s already suffered so much.

She doesn’t deserve that, and I definitely can’t handle another tension-filled conversation with her tonight.

One where she pushes and I push right back and say or do something I instantly regret when I see the hurt look in her soft gray eyes.

Nope.

Not doing it tonight.

I push up from my chair, snag the bottle of bourbon from the small table beside it, and start to turn toward the steps that will lead to my escape route onto the mountain when another twig snaps closer.

Too close. It draws my gaze into the trees.

To the flash of blond hair, not the dark hair I expected…

Fucking hell.

Not Willow.

I thought it was bad enough when I was anticipating my sweet sister-in-law, but it’s so much worse.

She’s so much worse.

My night just went from shitty to absolutely fucking unbearable.

Raven weaves around the final few tree trunks and steps out into the moonlight, the only illumination on the dark mountain this late at night.

Those sharp green eyes of hers that are always filled with so much judgment and animosity sweep over me—from the axe in my right hand to the bottle in my left. “Going somewhere?”

Her voice cuts through the air like a sharpened knife, grating on my every nerve the same way it does every time this woman opens her mouth. Those perfect pink lips of hers twist as she awaits my response, as she continues to dress me down without saying another word.

She may have made a career out of spilling them on paper, on spreading other people’s business around when it should stay private, but what this woman can do with her mouth is so much worse.

I grit my teeth until my jaw hurts. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

Raven pauses a few steps from the porch, the moonlight making her pale golden-blond hair almost glow like a halo around her angelic face.

But the woman standing in front of me is no fucking angel.

Far from it.

More like the Mistress of the Underworld.

No one can make fiery rage flare through my veins with the intensity of the flames of Hell except Raven Perry, and she seems like she’s on a mission to stoke that inferno tonight.

Why else would she be here?

“You missed dinner.” Her gaze continues to sweep over me, and despite the moon being the only light, she can see far more than I want her to.

She can see how unstable I am tonight. How on edge I am.

It’s in the way her emerald eyes narrow on the booze bottle, on my tense hold on the axe, on the way my entire body trembles.

The reporter in her never misses a fucking thing. She sees it all. “Again.”

Fuck.

There is so much judgment in that single word. An accusation about my behavior and the fact that I’ve been ditching my brothers and their women day after day, night after night.

But she doesn’t know why.

Because I haven’t been able to eat for months.

Because sitting across the table from Killian, Willow, Liam, and Lucky and having to feel their intrusive gazes probing at me with every movement I took became a form of torture I couldn’t handle anymore.

Because it was always even worse when this woman joined us—which seems to be happening more and more often lately.

Almost as if God, or Karma, or whatever higher power exists out there beyond the mountain sky is punishing me for what I did by throwing that bane of my existence, a.k.a. Raven, in my path constantly.

Maybe this is my penance.

But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I scowl at her. “So concerned about whether I’m fed or not…are you my mother now?”

Her lips purse as she crosses her arms over her chest, which makes her exposed cleavage thrust out even more.

Which she likely does on purpose, to try to throw the people she’s questioning off guard.

“I don’t care if you starve to death up here alone, Connor McBride.

In fact, it would make my life a whole lot more pleasant if you did.

” Truth rings in her words and her unwavering voice.

“But for some reason I can’t comprehend, Willow does care.

And she’s my best friend, so I care about her feelings. ”

Fucking hell…

That pain hits my gut again.

A volatile mix of guilt, regret, and affection for that woman who is so important to the McBrides floods my veins.

Willow has always showered all of us with so much unconditional love, but it’s love I can’t accept right now.

Not when I can’t even look at myself in the mirror without seeing the killer staring right back at me…

“Tell her I’m sorry but I’m not coming down.”

It’s all I can offer.

No real explanation.

No excuses.

I’ve used them all over the last few months—more than once.

Everyone is already done eating by now, but knowing Willow, she has an overflowing plate ready to reheat for me if I ever did make it down the slope to their cabin only a few hundred yards from my own.

She would welcome me with open arms and a genuine smile, unlike her best friend standing in front of me, who is more likely to stab a blade straight into my back.

Raven continues to watch me, shifting in her black combat boots on the pine needles and dead leaves beneath her as if being so close to me makes her as uneasy as it does me. “Kinda figured that since it’s already Niall’s bedtime.”

I wince at the mention of my nephew.

That sweet, innocent, tiny human who has already been through so much in his short life.

I’m missing so many things. So much time with him. Watching him grow and explore the world around him over the past two months has passed without me being there. Because I can’t stand to touch him with my tainted hands.

All I see is blood on them.