Chapter 22
TWO WEEKS LATER
RAVEN
The fire in the pit at the center of the McBride homestead cracks and pops, and I snuggle deeper in the blanket wrapped around me where I sit in one of Liam’s chairs.
Trying to enjoy the evening, trying not to get lost in my thoughts the way I have been the last couple weeks since the shit hit the fan and the Lorells hit McBride Mountain.
Again.
Willow looks over at me, concern etched in her brow. “You okay?”
I nod even though I’m far from it. “Yeah, just a little cold.”
She nods her agreement, cradling a sleeping Niall against her chest, as does Lucky, sitting on my other side.
Fall is definitely here, and with it, all kinds of change.
Some good. Some bad. Some undetermined…
Lucky watches me carefully, the same way she has for the last two weeks that I’ve been recovering, the same way everyone has been.
I understand it now—how Liam and Connor both felt. Like they were under a microscope, something to be examined and dissected. It makes sense why they shut everyone out, why they felt that was the only way for them to survive.
I’ve never been one to sit back and wait for someone to say something, though. “Just spit it out, Lucky.”
“What?”
The feigned surprise and confusion in her voice annoys me almost as much as the fact that she felt she couldn’t just say whatever it is she has wanted to.
We’re friends. We have been since a few days after she arrived on McBride Mountain.
She shouldn’t feel like she has to hold back anything from me. I certainly never have from her…
Except that I was writing the story.
I turn and look at her. “Whatever it is you’ve been trying to say but you won’t. Just spit it out.”
She frowns as Willow tries to hide a laugh behind her hand, the other supporting Niall, who completely wore himself out around the homestead today.
And I envy him.
I wish I could sleep that soundly.
The last time was on the mountain, in that tiny bed, in that dilapidated shack, in Connor McBride’s arms the night before he left with my story and everything went to absolute shit.
Lucky releases a sigh and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She narrows her eyes on me. “You’re joking, right?”
I release an annoyed sigh, rolling my eyes. “I swear to God, if you apologize to me for what those fuckers did, something that you played absolutely no role in, I’m going to come over there and smack you.”
Willow barks out a laugh. “I’m glad to see none of this has changed you at all.”
Her words draw my gaze over to my best friend, the person who has helped see me through all of the fallout from my story, who has been a rock for me through the last few weeks of uncertainty and pain. “Why would it have changed anything?”
The humor in her face fades, her smile faltering because she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Connor.
The man who, even as we speak, is at his cabin here on the homestead, packing up more of his life, preparing to hike back up that mountain again to get in a few more weeks of work on his new home before the weather completely changes and he would be stuck up there.
The man who has barely spoken to me since he left me in the hospital…
One moment, I was in his arms, being cradled so gently, handled so carefully and with such affection, and the next, I was on a gurney, and then received nothing but awkward hellos and goodbyes when we were in the same room together and looks I never want to see on his face again.
It isn’t the same hatred that once lied there; it’s worse.
It’s guilt.
And that’s something that is so much harder for him to get over than anger.
Two weeks…
Two damn weeks was all it took for us to figure out we didn’t despise each other the way we thought we did, to find something in each other we hadn’t with anyone else.
But two lifetimes could pass and he’ll never forgive himself for what happened to me.
He’ll never stop thinking it was all his fault. And that means Connor McBride will never again be the man he was up on that mountain with me.
Willow’s lips twist into a frown. “You haven’t talked to him?”
I shake my head because I’m afraid if I open my mouth to try to answer that way, I may end up sobbing or saying something stupid.
It didn’t take long to come clean with her, and Lucky, about everything that happened between us up on the mountain.
There was no way to avoid it when I had to explain how I had to spend two weeks with that man, writing the story, when they know how much we always hated each other.
But now that they know everything, it’s almost worse than when they knew nothing about why I hated Connor McBride.
“He’s planning on leaving in the morning.”
I nod slowly. “Killian told me when he picked me up from my follow-up appointment this morning.”
My body is healing far faster than my head or my heart.
The smaller cuts have scabbed over and the larger ones mostly healed with a few stitches that finally came out today—save for the deep stab in my side that will need far more time to truly heal.
The bruises have shifted from the dark purples and blacks into the yellow and greenish hues that make it impossible for me to even look in the mirror these days.
The aches and pains that were so prevalent during those first few days have eased, and I can finally move around almost normally again without wincing and cursing out the dead man who did this to me.
I’m feeling better…
Yet somehow a thousand times worse than I did before that fucker ever laid a hand on me.
Mostly because of the man up here right now, pretending that nothing ever happened between us who is ready to pack up and flee to that remote space we shared without looking back or even really discussing anything.
Lucky releases a little sigh. “You should go talk to him.”
I glance at her. “Why? He’s made it very clear he doesn’t want to. That he just wants to go back to how things were between us before all this went down.”
Avoiding each other. Arguing when we have to see each other. Animosity and big feelings we don’t talk about standing in the way of either of us moving forward with our lives.
Willow chews on her lip. “You think that’s possible?”
“Do I think what’s possible?”
“Going back. Pretending none of it happened.” She sighs, shifting her sleeping son slightly in her hold.
“Killian and I tried that, remember? Even though I had no memories of that year, I told him that I just wanted to go back and pretend none of it happened, but it wasn’t possible.
You can’t just forget about big chunks of your life and move on as if they never occurred. You can’t pretend.”
“It’ll be a lot easier once he moves up onto the mountain…”
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
That’s what I’ve been saying in my head every minute of every day he didn’t come to the hospital to talk to me.
And every moment of every night I spent sleeping alone in that horrible bed that made the one in the old cabin feel like a luxury one at The Four Seasons.
Definitely every second since I was released and have been trying to get back to some semblance of my normal life when absolutely nothing is the same.
“That’s what you want?” Lucky twirls her blue hair around her finger. “You really want him to go back up there?”
I chew on the inside of my lip, thankful that it finally healed as I’m not cursing myself like I did the first few times I inadvertently did it after we came back down the mountain.
It certainly might make my life easier to not have to see him, to not have to wonder what he’s doing or what he’s thinking, to not have to agonize over why he can’t just open up the way he did when we were alone and talk to me about how he’s feeling.
And maybe it would be better for him, mentally, to just go.
Maybe the mountain is truly what he needs.
Not what we had.
Just that place and his solitude.
But deep down, if my heart really believed that, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“I don’t know…”
I barely whisper the words, but I know they hear me even over the sounds of the fire.
A few tense seconds pass before either of them dares say anything, though.
Lucky finally throws up her hands, motioning toward the direction of the hill that leads up to Connor’s place. “Then go talk to him before he leaves.”
My stomach tenses. “I don’t know what I would say.”
Willow barks out a laugh, then quickly remembers the baby is in her arms and glances down at him, but he sleeps right through it. “You have never lacked words, Raven. Words are what have always gotten you in trouble.”
That’s very true, but they’re also what saved us this time.
Despite the horrific fallout of what the Lorells did, including the death of Tanya Briggs, everything else went as planned.
The information got to Agent Michaelson and his trusted FBI coworkers and to the editor of The Atlantic Times.
Once they both vetted all my sources, the story hit the wire and Michaelson hit the Lorells, placing the vast majority of their criminal empire in handcuffs.
The laundry list of federal charges against all of them now includes the assault on me, the murder of Barry, an attack on McBride Mountain law enforcement, and the murder of a sheriff’s wife, which turned out to be precisely the types of crimes supported by the kinds of evidence they needed for RICO to stick.
So, while there still may be a few lingering low-level henchmen out there, the ones we really need to worry about are locked away without any prospect of getting out anytime soon. According to Michaelson, this is one of the most solid RICO cases ever prosecuted, thanks to all my hard work.
Which means I should be sleeping at night, the way that Willow, Killian, Lucky, and Liam are, but I’m not.
Not in my cold, lonely bed above the bakery.
It feels too big.
Too empty.
Too…so many things.