Chapter 19
Bear
This is a bad idea.
This is a very bad idea.
Hell, I don’t even remember why I thought it was a good one. Too high on Sammy’s words from last night, I guess. And delusional about finally having some good luck.
As I knock on the door of my brother’s house, though, I’m starting to seriously question how I could think that one little girl standing up for me meant that I had any luck at all.
I’m living in a town where the council literally just tried to throw me out for a made-up reason and none of the townspeople stood up for me.
I have an out-of-town bike gang making trouble and tourists attacking the locals in ways that don’t make any sense.
I came home because I’ve been kicked out of the Marines for refusing to follow orders that would have had me leaving my men behind.
I’m not exactly on a roll over the past six months.
And yet here I am at my brother’s door, ready to ask a favor of someone who didn’t even come to defend me last night when my career was on the line.
Someone who didn’t fight for me when my father decided I didn’t deserve part of his company and who rarely bothered to talk to me when I was in town, home on vacation from the military.
I’m here to ask for help from someone who’s never helped me before, and though Gunner is my big brother and therefore my blood, I have to admit to myself that I think I might actually be crazy. I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my time, and this actually...
Feels like the worst.
I knock before I can talk myself out of it, though, and then spend several minutes on the front patio putting up my walls and getting ready for what’s coming.
He’s my brother, and I know he loves me, though he sometimes has trouble showing it.
Honestly Gunner is a lot like my dad was when we were small.
Big and loud and very rough, but goodhearted at the base of it.
He never understood the view I had of the world, but he also didn’t try to force me to change.
Of course, he also told me I couldn’t help to run the company and essentially said I would be better off going out into the wide world and figuring myself out than staying at home and continuing his legacy.
No one said he was perfect.
That’s the aspect I’m going to be dealing with from Gunner, though, and that’s what I prepare for as I stand there. I love my brother. I love my brother. I love my brother.
And I still think I’m crazy, but I’m also running out of options.
The council may have stood down last night, thanks to Sammy’s intervention, but that doesn’t mean I’m in the clear.
They could change their minds at any moment, and they’re certainly building a case against me.
I might not think that case has any merit, but the council is judge and jury in this town, and if they want me out, no one is going to be able to do anything about it.
The minute they cancel my contract as sheriff it’s going to open the door to them running me right out of town.
I need to have a plan I can execute before that happens.
Which is what’s brought me to Gunner’s doorstep.
At that moment the door flies open and nearly hits me, and I jump back just in time, both surprised and annoyed.
When I look up, ready to give Gabe a hard time for being so careless, I find my brother standing there instead.
His beard is trimmed more closely than it was the last time I saw him and his face is fuller, so he’s happier than he was.
Taryn is definitely making him eat more regularly, and probably giving him more to smile about.
But he’s not smiling right now, and his eyes tell me immediately that he’s not happy to see me.
Though I catch a glimpse of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and I wonder how much of that’s bluster, and how much it’s the truth. Because if I remember Gunner, he wouldn’t even have opened the door if he didn’t want to see me.
“Gunner,” I say carefully.
His answer is devoid of any expression. “Barrett.”
I roll my eyes at that. “Please don’t call me that. Nobody calls me that.”
“Our father called you that.”
This forces a grin onto my face. “Honestly, that’s probably why I don’t like it.”
He laughs, which surprises me, and then opens the door wide and gestures for me to come in.
We walk through the entry way and right to the kitchen, where Gunner has always done business, and I’m surprised at how different the house looks now.
There are flowers on almost every flat surface, and the great room actually feels like someone lives there.
Someone is baking a cake–maybe cookies? –and there are actually unwashed coffee cups on the counter.
Artwork lines the walls, and I notice two pieces that have Cameron’s fingerprints all over them.
So, Gunner knows Cameron’s work and definitely supports him.
Interesting. I wonder if he’s ever considered adding my son to his own business.
The two would be a natural fit, both of their styles rustic and a bit rough around the edges, and having artwork included in his offering would expand Gunner’s operations.
It would also give Cameron reach he doesn’t have right now, and the kid is talented enough that he deserves that.
I wonder if Cam’s thought of it.
I’m certain Sammy has.
And that’s not my problem right now, because I’m here on to serve my own interests. I need to make sure I get to stay in town, and Gunner is the easiest way to do that. Once I get that settled, I can worry about my son’s business.
And the little black-haired vixen running it for him.
“I’m guessing I know why you’re here,” Gunner says without any small talk.
Right to the point. So very Gunner.
“I’m guessing you do, too,” I say, pulling a chair up to the counter and sitting down. “I need help.”
He pours a cup of coffee for himself and then one for me, and lifts one eyebrow to ask if I want anything in it.
That’s Gunner, too, and I have to stop myself from laughing about it.
When we were kids, he specialized in non-verbal communication.
He was one of the smartest kids in town and always knew things he shouldn’t know, but when it came to actually talking, he was as quiet as could be.
He would make a face at you rather than using words to talk to you, and if he could spend an entire day without talking, he’d do it.
I grew up being one of the only ones who knew how to translate what he wanted–despite the fact that he was younger–and it gave us a bond I didn’t think any other siblings ever had.
I always wondered if he truly didn’t want to talk or if he was just being stubborn. Like a joke you start and then can’t stop, because people buy into it. But I never asked.
These days, I don’t know if I have the standing to even bring it up.
“Just black, thanks,” I say, accepting the coffee when he slides it toward me.
“Same old Bear,” he responds.
I shift in my seat. “Not exactly the same. Some things have changed.”
He gives me a look that takes in everything, from my hair–longer now that I’m in town–to the tight-fitting jeans and unscuffed boots, and lifts one very red eyebrow.
“Dressing better, at least.”
“Sammy’s doing, I’m afraid.” I can feel the blush on my cheeks at the memory of the lecture she gave me this morning, about how a grown man shouldn’t go out with shoes that looked like they belonged to a twelve-year-old, and when I look at him again, I find him grinning at me.
“That bad, eh?”
I narrow my eyes, unwilling to talk about Sammy and all the complications that come with her, and wait for him to move on.
This just makes his smile even wider, and we take part in a short but very intense stare-down that only ends when he shakes his head and laughs.
He’s not the same anymore, either. In the past, he never would have let me win a contest like that. Taryn is doing very good things for him, and I hope to God he’s being nicer to Gabe as part of it.
“You here for a job?” he finally asks.
Right. Straight into it, then. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Actually, I’m here to ask you to let me help you run the company.”
He wasn’t expecting that, I don’t think, because he jerks like he’s just been hit and then looks at me like I’ve just said the most interesting thing he’s ever heard. “You think you’re ready for that? Last time I checked, you were an artist, not a businessman.”
“And yet I’ve spent my entire adult life learning how to take care of people in situations Wood would never experience. Saving lives. Making split-second decisions. I’m not the kid you used to know, Gunner. I want a chance.”
Several seconds go buy as he presumably things about this, and I watch the wheels turning in his head.
I know what he remembers. The pranks and a boy who was more interested in fun than learning.
A man who returned only when he had to and deserted two wives and two kids when the need to run overcame him.
I know who I used to be, and so does he.
I just hope he’ll give me a chance to be someone better.
But then he shakes his head, and my heart drops into my stomach. No. Of course he’s going to say no. I should have expected that, I guess.
But I was hoping for better.
“Can’t do that, Bear. Not yet.”
This surprises me. “Not... yet?”
He pulls out his phone, thumbs it open, and slides it over to me, and when I look down, I see that he’s pulled up a video. I look up at him, confused, and he gestures for me to take it and watch it.
I pick the thing up and hit the arrow to turn it on, and when I do...
“Jesus,” I breathe.
It’s a video of me fighting with the bikers, and then another shot of me sitting far too close to Sammy in my squad car, my lips nearly on her cheek.
That was nothing, I know. I was pointing something out to her on a map as we tried to decide the most efficient route during our drive-along. Completely innocent.
Nothing had happened between us yet.
But it doesn’t look that way in a photograph.
I turn my eyes back to Gunner, half shocked and half furious at what I’ve just seen. It’s a video montage of Why We Hate Bear, and I think I might have to kill whoever put it together.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask.
He holds up a hand quickly. “It’s not mine. I mean, it is, but only because someone else gave it to me.”
“Gunner, what is it?” I snap. “Is this what they’re passing around on the council? Is this what they think of me?”
“Someone gave this to the council, and they gave it to me,” he says. “The council was told it was pulled off traffic cams, but you and I both know we don’t have those here, and if the council was thinking straight, they’d remember that too.”
I blow out a soft breath, mind reeling. “So, someone put this together on purpose. Someone has been... watching.”
It matches what I thought in the council meeting, when they had such specific information about where I was when crimes occurred, but I didn’t think anything more of it. Now it looks like someone was not only watching me but also videoing me.
And they turned it into a reel to make trouble with the council.
What the fuck?
“You have things you have to clean up, Bear. I want to welcome you back. I do. You’re my brother and I love you, and my fucking son won’t stop talking about how cool you are.
But I can’t do it when your reputation is taking such a beating.
You need to figure out what’s going on here and clean it up before I can bring you in. ”
That takes the wind out of all my anger and I have to sit and process it for a moment, finding the path through what he just said.
Someone is setting me up, and Gunner believes that. He’s actually helping me by showing me this video. He’s giving me information I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
He’s open to me working with him in his business. He isn’t saying no to that. But he won’t let me come on at the company until after I figure out what’s going on and who’s trying to set me up.
He’s worried about the company’s reputation and needs to make sure mine is clean before I start working with him. So, it’s not a no... but it’s also not a yes.
And it’s not an offer to help, even though he knows as well as I do that whatever is happening isn’t my doing.
I breathe out and shake my head slowly, but don’t bother to argue with him, because I know he’s already got his mind made up. And I know he thinks he’s doing it for the right reason–even if it’s hurting both of us.
He thinks he’s doing the right thing, and he’s not going to let anyone else talk him out of that.
Typical fucking Gunner.
“I’ll take care of it,” I say. And then I get up and walk out of his house, leaving my coffee untouched and my brother watching me as I leave. Because I have to figure out what the fuck is going on here, and who’s behind it.
Before they destroy the life I’m trying to build with Cameron and Sammy.