Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Cal
We don’t speak much on the drive down the mountain.
After spending the last few days together, you’d think we’d be more comfortable with each other.
And we are. Only… now I know exactly how she tastes.
How she feels when her pussy clenches around my cock.
How insanely hot she is when she screams out my name when she comes.
So, now, the air between us is thick with a different kind of tension. The kind that makes it hard to breathe when she looks at me. The kind that makes it almost impossible to keep my thoughts straight when she shifts in her seat next to me, drawing my eyes to her bare thigh.
But I need to focus. I need to keep my thoughts clear.
The last thing I need is to be distracted in any way when the threat of Hatch is still very real.
He’ll get his money, but I know I’ve pushed it by making him wait as long as I already have.
Not that there’s been much choice. With the closest bank hours away in the city, it’s not like that kind of cash is easy to access.
Not that he’ll care.
It’s a miracle he’s been as patient as he has.
Going down the mountain now is a risk. But when Willow tells me she hasn’t heard from her father, I see the look in her eyes. However complicated things are between them, he’s still her dad, and she’s worried.
There’s no way I’m denying her the opportunity to check on him.
Hell, I’d be a lying asshole if I said that I’d deny her anything. I won’t. I can’t.
Because, as hard as I tried to avoid it, Willow's worked her way in. And I’m not fighting it. Not anymore.
And it’s a damn good thing she doesn’t know that…yet.
I’m already in way too much trouble when it comes to this woman and the feelings I haven’t even begun to try to sort out.
Every so often, I catch her glancing over at me quickly before looking away, like she, too, is trying to figure out what exactly is going on between us.
It’s a conversation for later.
Much later.
As we get closer to town, Willow gives me simple directions. I haven’t asked many questions about her family. I don’t need to. The bits and pieces she’s let slip, plus the fact that she’s in the situation she’s in, have been enough for me to read between the lines and paint a clear enough picture.
Still, nothing can prepare me for the place she calls home.
The yard, if you can even call it that, is overgrown with weeds.
There are flower boxes on the front steps, but whatever had been blooming there is brown and shriveled from the hot sun.
There’s an old truck sitting up on blocks, rusting out on the edge of the drive.
And an old, stained couch sags near the porch like someone tried to remove it once and gave up when they got that far.
Beside me, Willow stiffens and sucks in a breath.
“Before you say anything,” she mutters, all the familiar sharpness she’s let slide over the last few days, clicking back into place. “I know it looks bad.”
I glance over at her. Her walls are firmly back in place. The traces of vulnerability I’d started to see over the last few days, gone.
“Don’t judge,” she says.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
She huffs in a breath like she doesn’t believe me.
“I do my best,” she adds quietly, her eyes once more staring out the windshield at the place she calls home. “The flowers are dead.”
The small realization that Willow would have planted those flower boxes in an effort to cheer up her home, and they’d gone neglected in her short absence, makes me sad for her, and a fresh surge of protectiveness toward her washes over me.
I put the truck in park and pull the keys from the ignition.
The second I reach for the door handle, Willow frowns. “What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.”
“Cal. You don’t—”
“I don’t have to do anything, Willow.” I hold her gaze. “But if you really think I’m going to let you walk into that house on your own, then you don’t know me very well yet.”
“It’s my house.”
"And if everything’s fine, then afterward you can tell me I’m overreacting.”
Something in her face softens, and she blows out a breath before she finally says, “You’re a stubborn ass, you know.”
“Been called worse.”
Together, we walk through the dead grass and past the brown flowers, up to the front door. The second I step into the house, I understand two things real fast: Willow's been carrying far more than she should, and there’s no fucking way I’m walking away from this now.
Willow
Instantly, I’m hit with the familiar smell of home. Stale cigarettes, beer, and the damp that manages to creep into everything, and something that can only be described as sad.
Once familiar, now, the smell makes me gag.
It’s only been a few days that I’ve been away, but it might as well have been years for how different it feels.
My instincts take over, and I slip automatically into the familiar role I’ve spent almost my entire life in. Before I even realize I’m doing it, I’m picking up beer bottles, dumping their half-empty contents, and putting them in the bin under the sink.
Behind me, I can feel Cal taking everything in without saying a word.
He did say that he’s not judging me. I risk a glance over at his blank expression. If he has any opinions about what he’s seeing, I can’t tell.
“Dad?” I call, moving farther into the kitchen. “You here?”
A cough sounds down the hallway, and some of the tension I didn’t realize I’d been carrying slips from my shoulders.
Thank God.
At least he’s alive.
It’s a fear I live with every day, even when I’m not away. But having not heard from him for the last few days, that worry was only magnified.
With the way he drinks…never mind his health problems…and with no one to cook for him or make sure he’s looking after his basic needs…
I can’t even let myself think about what could have happened while I was—what? While I was what exactly?
Hiding? Yes.
Having wild sex with a mountain man? Yes.
Feeling lighter than I have in years?
Also, yes.
And that’s the part that guts me. The last few days with Cal have been some of the best I can remember, and I was too busy living them to wonder what was happening down here without me.
But I don’t have time to dwell on it. I move to the fridge, frowning at the almost empty shelves while I mentally start making a grocery list we can’t afford.
Maybe some bread and eggs.
Something besides beer and the leftover macaroni casserole that’s still sitting untouched exactly where I left it earlier in the week.
“Did you eat today?” I call.
No answer except another cough.
Of course.
It’s before noon, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t already been into the beer.
I find his pill bottle near the sink and do a quick check to see how many tablets are left before setting it down.
There are only a few days left. Which means he’s been taking too many.
Again.
With the combination of his pain meds and the alcohol, it’s no surprise he can’t get out of bed.
A quiet frustration settles over me, the tension in my shoulders returning. I should be used to it by now. This is how things are.
Since the accident that took Mom and fractured Dad’s leg, leaving him in almost constant pain, whether it was from the broken bones or the loss of his love, it had been like this.
He drinks too much. Takes too many pills.
And we scrape out a life—if you can call it that—with the disability cheques and what’s left of the settlement from the accident.
Combined with the few dollars I can bring in with whatever small jobs around town I can pick up here and there, it’s usually enough to get by.
Of course, whenever Bryson screws up, which is more and more lately, it takes whatever savings I’ve managed to squirrel away, and then some, to get us out of his latest mess.
I look up to see Cal watching me carefully. His expression unreadable.
“What?”
His gaze flicks briefly to the pill bottle before returning to my face. “How long’s it been like this”
I almost laugh.
Not because anything about this is funny, but because I honestly don’t have any idea how to answer that question.
Instead, I say, “Some days are better than others.”
Cal’s jaw tightens slightly like he doesn’t believe that for a second.
Honestly, neither do I. But what else am I going to say?
Another cough sounds from down the hallway, and instinct immediately spurs me into motion. I grab a glass that doesn’t look too dirty and give it a quick rinse before filling it with water and reaching for a different pill bottle. The pills he should have been taking.
“You don’t have to do this by yourself, you know?”
The comment stops me, but I don’t bother turning around. “And who would you suggest should do it then?”
“You don’t have to do it alone,” he says after a moment.
The gentleness in his voice cracks the thin bit of control I’ve been hanging onto in half. Because the thing is, he says it like he means it, and I don’t know what to make of that.
I stare down at the pills in my hand and let myself think about the last few days on the mountain.
About how I’d probably smiled more in the last three days than I had in the last three years. Never mind the fact that I’ve slept deeper than I have in years.
The realization makes me want to cry because now that I know what it could feel like, standing in this dim, dirty, smelly kitchen feels even sadder than it used to.
A floorboard creaks behind me, and then Cal is there. His arms wrap around me and pull me back into his hard chest. He doesn’t say a word while I drop my head and try to fight back the tears that are burning the backs of my eyelids.
“You can’t keep carrying everybody forever, darling,” he murmurs in my ear. “You don’t have to.”
Before I can answer, or even let myself relax in the knowledge that even if it feels like no one has my back, Cal does, there’s a creak in the floorboards and a thick throat clearing.
We turn to see Dad leaning heavily on the doorframe, looking thinner and frailer than he did when I left a few days ago.
His eyes move to Cal, who hasn’t stepped away.