Chapter 1
Cameron
“They’re playing tricks on us,” she says suddenly, her voice brimming with intensity. “Can’t sit still long enough for us to get a read on anything.”
“Who?” I ask, confused. “What?”
She turns and pokes me in the ribs, giggling. “What do you mean ‘who’? Haven’t you been paying attention? Are you daydreaming again?”
I squirm away from her, laughter caught in my throat, and try to get words out around a tongue suddenly too thick to speak. “I am paying attention! You need to stop jumping across subjects like they’re fucking lily pads in your way!”
She scoffs at that, as usual, and goes right back to what she was talking about–or maybe a new subject?–as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
“As I was saying,” she huffs. “I don’t see why he has to come home at all.
And if he does, how he thinks it’s okay to suddenly think he’s in charge.
Think he can play dad, like it’s a pair of boots he just puts on any old time.
He’s been gone for three years and now he just shows up again?
Throwing his dick around, acting like he owns the place. ”
Oh, right.
She’s talking about Bear. And maybe I’d have known that if she didn’t jump from thought to thought without completing any of them.
Then again, she wouldn’t be Samantha Price if she didn’t go through life like it was a race she was trying to win, with the finish line just around the bend, there for the taking if she could just make her feet move a little faster.
I glance at her now, a grin caught in the corner of my mouth, and take in the tousled black curls and rounded cheeks of her. That rose bud mouth, pushed out in an angry pout, and the long, dark lashes that show me she’s got her eyes closed–the better to visualize her revenge, no doubt.
The girl loves speed like any good adrenaline junkie, but not as much as she loves a prank.
Bonus if that prank is played on one Barrett Hawke, and includes revenge for him having deserted us years ago and showing up again last week, home from his career in the Marines and acting like he never left–and that he has rights up here on the mountain.
Rights that he gave up a long time ago.
The thing is, he’s my dad, by blood, but he’s no relation to Sammy herself.
It’s a long and convoluted story, starting with my mother and him being in love and crossing over my mother’s escape, Sammy’s mother being in need of a husband, me being shoved into the Price household, Sammy’s mother dying, and a certain Aunt Sue, but the whole thing is capped off by this: Bear is my father but not Sammy’s, and when he comes home and pretends like he has any authority over her. ..
Well, today it’s ended up with us in our favorite clearing, laying on our backs and plotting his death.
Personally, I don’t think there’s much we can do, but Sammy’s scheming like a schoolgirl–which she is–about what we might do, and I’m too smart to tell her no.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, turning away from her and looking up at the clouds before she can catch me staring. “Because I assume you’ve already got one.”
She cuts off mid-huff. “Of course I do. And this is a good one.”
Of course it is.
Every time she comes up with a plan, she tells me it’s better than the last.
News flash: It almost never is. Each plan is more dangerous, more far-fetched, more This Would Only Work in a Book-coded.
And I always go along with it anyhow. Because when you’re attached to a girl like Sammy, you don’t tell her no.
You bite your lip, grab her hand, and go along for the ride, praying with your entire soul that she doesn’t realize she’d carry it off better without you and your stupid straight man caution.
You wish on every wishbone, every set of angel numbers, that she never, ever decides to leave you behind.
“Well, tell me then,” I say, both resigned and breathless with excitement.
Hey, don’t look at me that way. I’m straight as an arrow and I would never come up with these pranks on my own. But getting to hear the way her mind works is one of my favorite things in the entire world.
She reaches down, takes my hand in some sort of conspiratorial grip, and starts talking, and as she does, the plan takes shape around us.
It’s a fluffy, bubblegum-flavored thing, full of hiding and leaving something out as a trap, then videoing the aftermath, and by the time she’s finished telling it, she’s giggling so hard she can barely contain herself, the mirth fizzing out of her like she’s made of soda pop.
And I’m laughing too, because even though I see approximately eleventy-three plot holes in her plan, the bubbles from her soda pop are infectious enough to have me feeling half-drunk myself.
“One of these days, you’re going to be the death of me with these plans,” I say, breathless with laughter.
She turns and brushes her lips across my cheek, the touch so quick, so light and airy, that for a moment I think I must have imagined it.
The flush of my skin, though, tells me otherwise.
My brain might have been too slow to notice when it was happening, but my body wasn’t.
Every nerve ending has lit up with a soft, hazy glow that makes me feel like I’ve become a dandelion.
All fluff and delicate, overly sensitive blossoms, fluttering in the wind and ready to blow into a million pieces.
Christ.
“I would never, ever let you die on me,” she whispers. “If anything ever went wrong, you’re the first person I’d save.”
Christ again. Christ doubled.
Suddenly, though, her hand shoots up over our heads, her pointer finger out toward the clouds above us, and she switches subjects again.
“What’s that one?”
I look up at where she’s pointing and try to orient myself again.
Put my roots down into the ground below us and tether myself to the earth rather than her joy.
Biting my lip, I remind myself where we are: our favorite mountain meadow, high above town.
We come here when we need to get out of the hustle and bustles of Hawke’s Wood.
When the gossip of the town and the intrusive eyes of our neighbors become too much.
Sammy and I have both grown up in a whirlwind of drama–not only because of Bear, but also because my mother fled town when I was seven, leaving me alone, and Sammy’s mother died when we were only fourteen.
Bear married Sammy’s mother when we were seven and forced us to become a family right after my mother left, and between Sammy and me. ..
Well, I guess we keep the town gossips gossiping.
And sometimes escaping that is the only way we can maintain our sanity.
Up here, the sky is larger and the air more open, the land softer and quieter.
There are only trees and birds to watch us, with the occasional deer and cougar.
The top of the mountain rears up on one side, with a valley dropping below us on the other, and I’ve always felt like I could either scream into the void or sit and keep my voice inside, and either would be just fine with the grass and trees and flowers.
They don’t expect me to perform. Don’t have a specific idea of who I should be or what I should think. And they sure as hell aren’t going to turn to the woman standing next to them and mutter about what a poor boy I am, with both a mother and father who deserted him.
This is peace, and when I brought Sammy here for the first time, it immediately became our place.
I look to my left again and find her staring at me like she’s thinking the same thing, her fair, freckled face softer than usual. Her large, gray eyes consider me seriously, the color of a dove’s wing, and when a black curl blows across her face, I reach out to smooth it away.
“Cameron,” she whispers, and I think for a moment that she knows what’s sitting on my heart, heavy and dense and Sammy-shaped.
Then she speaks again. “The cloud.”
Oh, right.
I turn from her and look at the cloud she pointed out, trying to turn my mind away from the way her skin shines like she’s got the moon inside of her to the game we’re playing.
It’s one of our favorites–giving names and identities to the clouds–but she’s evidently started playing it before I was ready.
No surprise, there.
The cloud above us is broad and flat, with two pieces that stretch to the sides and a ripple of color moving through it, and I stare up, trying to focus on it, but see only the coloration. Gray and blue, shades of silver around the edges. Gray like a bird in the sunlight.
Gray like a dove.
“A bird,” I whisper, before I can think about it. “A dove.”
She snorts.
“Wrong. It’s a dragon. One that’s ready to take on the world if he needs to. Ready to protect the damsel in distress, the moment she asks him to. And even if she doesn’t. You lose.”
My mouth drops open and I stare at the cloud, trying to see past the dove and toward the dragon, but before I can respond, she’s on her feet and sprinting away, giggling again.
I sit up and follow her with my eyes, confused. “Where the fuck are you going?”
“The bridge!” she shouts. “And if I get there first, I’m jumping without you!”
I don’t even think. I get to my feet and sprint after her, stretching my legs as long as they can go and pumping them desperately, my heart pounding and the breath short in my lungs. Because I also know that game, and I know the rules.
And I don’t like them.
Because it doesn’t matter that there won’t be enough water in the river this late in the summer for her to jump from the bridge.
It doesn’t matter that there will only be one pool deep enough to catch her, and that one impossible to reach for that tiny girl.
If she gets there before I can stop her, she’ll jump anyhow.
The same way she always tries to.
Because at her base, Samantha Price is a girl who’s been deserted so many times that she no longer thinks her own life is worth saving. And I’m the only one paying enough attention to try to keep her here.
I wake with a start and jump up, my brain intent on getting to the bridge and grabbing Sammy before she can do anything stupid, then jerk in surprise when my bare feet don’t find meadow grass and daisies under them. Instead, I’m standing on bare wood.
A hard wood floor, to be exact, with my big toe resting on a throw rug made of red and white rags.
I look at the rug, my brain snagged on what it could be doing in the meadow, and then glance down at the floor.
My eyes come up to the room itself–four walls, a dresser, and a roughly made bed frame covered in a mattress and far too many blankets–and then to the door itself. That door is open, and beyond it...
The house.
Aunt Sue’s house.
And in the kitchen, the rattling of dishes that tells me Sammy is out there, making a mess of the place the same way she always does, as she makes some sort of chaotic breakfast that will look like it should be terrible and taste delicious.
Not the meadow.
Not the mountain.
And not our sixteen-year-old selves, plotting against the man who likes to pretend he’s our father.
I’m at home, and that dream was a memory of us three years ago.
The squeeze in my heart eases a bit, and my body relaxes with the realization that I don’t have to save Sammy from her games on the bridge right now. I can sit. I can breathe for a moment and plan the day out before I even leave my room.
Of course, I should know better.
I’ve lived with Sammy too long to ever get a moment of peace.
“Cameron, are you up?” she shouts from the kitchen. “Get dressed! I’ve got breakfast and coffee, and the truck is already running. We’ve got a delivery to make! And after that, I want to go to the bridge!”
Moments later, the door slams, and a second after that her words sink in. She isn’t making breakfast. I don’t have a chance to sit and plan out my day–or the delivery we have to make up at Old Man Rivers’ house.
She was crashing around to wake me up because she’s leaving.
Like, now.
And the delivery in question is right next to that meadow, and the bridge that just appeared in my dreams.
The one she likes to try to jump off if I’m not there to stop her.
I’m in action before I can think about it, grabbing jeans and fresh boxers, a shirt that won’t embarrass me, and then my boots.
I don’t even pause for socks, because I don’t have time.
I’m through the door to my bedroom and then through the kitchen in seconds flat, grabbing a croissant on the way by the counter and charging for the door to the driveway without thinking about anything else.
By the time I get outside she’s already in the truck and pulling out, and it’s all I can do to catch the fucking thing before she gets onto the road.
I leap when I’m still three feet away, praying to the universe that I haven’t misjudged, and hit the tailgate just as she turns out, sliding over it and into the bed with a roll I perfected three years ago.
When Sammy first started driving and decided it was funny to leave the house without me and make me chase her.
I roll onto my back, pull my jeans on, and then get to my knees. We’re already at the stop sign a block away, and I take the momentary pause to slide the window open and smack her in the arm.
“You’re going to kill me one of these days,” I say, though there’s no heat in it.
She just laughs. “Absolutely not. I’d sell my own soul to save you, and you know it.”
The problem is, I do.
Because I’ve seen her try to do that, too.