Chapter Nine
“Be sure to reach out if there’s any other disturbance,” Sheriff Willis told Xavier as he walked him to the door of the police station.
Xavier nodded. “Anyone looks at me funny, you’ll be the first to hear about it,” he assured him.
Willis nodded and reached out his hand to shake Xavier’s. “Thanks for coming in,” he told him. “We’ll file those reports today, make sure there’s a paper trail if anything else happens.”
Xavier shook his hand in appreciation. Having the local cops on their side, at least, was something.
Willis was a good guy, and they’d had a positive relationship with the local police with him as sheriff.
Warrior Peak had done a lot of work with former police as well as former military, and Willis appreciated the work they did to get them back on their feet.
“You think it’s going to help?” Hannah asked Xavier as they stepped back out on to the street.
“I don’t know,” Xavier admitted. “But at least we have a case open if something else does happen.”
“Yeah, I guess that has to count for something,” she agreed, but she sounded pretty doubtful.
Xavier felt a twinge of guilt for telling her about the break-in, but he knew there would be no point in hiding it from her. She could always guess when something was going on inside his head, and he was done pretending otherwise.
He felt a little better now that he had told Willis about what happened.
Xavier had filled him in on everything, from the break-in in his room to the generators going out and their trip to the Haynes’ brothers’ ranch—though Xavier had added that he and Lawson were pretty sure the brothers had nothing to do with what had gone down.
“You want to get something to eat while we’re here?
” Xavier suggested. He knew he and Hannah should probably be getting back to the lodge, but it wasn’t often he got to spend time alone with her, and he didn’t want to waste it.
Yes, he knew he shouldn’t be doing anything to encourage his feelings for her, but they were friends, right?
And friends sometimes got lunch together. It didn’t have to mean anything.
“That sounds great,” she agreed. “I’m starving. I hardly got breakfast this morning before I had to go meet Jed.”
Jed. There was another nudge at the back of Xavier’s mind, though he was sure he had no reason to be suspicious of the new arrival. He had only just gotten to Warrior Peak, so the chance of him being involved with everything that had been going on was next to zero.
They drove to the closest café down the street. Mary Cinder, who owned the fabric store next door, was just gathering herself from the last table by the window to go back to work.
“Oh, you two take this table,” she told them. “I should be getting back to the store anyway.”
“Thanks, Mary,” Hannah replied with a smile, taking a seat at the vacated table.
Xavier ordered for the two of them at the counter before he came back to join her. He knew what she liked—he always paid attention to what she chose at mealtimes, taking in all those little details about her that he doubted she even paid much mind to herself.
Returning to the table, he noticed a line of lingering frost around the edge of the window. Hannah had noticed it, too, and she sighed.
“I can’t wait for spring,” she remarked to him. “Winter lasts way too long here. I do enjoy my cool morning walks, but I feel like I’m going to freeze to death before I see the flowers bloom.”
“Yeah, agreed,” he replied.
Back when he had been growing up, winter had been his favorite time of the year.
He had counted down the days until the first snow, when he and Max could go out and have a snowball fight and sled down the large hill behind their house.
Their hands would burn with the frozen cold when they came in, and their mom would always have a hot cocoa ready and waiting for them on the stove when they got back.
He could still remember that sweet aroma, the way it smelled like home to him.
He suddenly realized Hannah was staring at him, a small smile on her face, while he’d been lost in his head. “What is it?” he asked, shifting slightly in his seat.
“Nothing,” she replied, shaking her head. “You just looked…content there for a moment. I don’t see that a lot in you.”
He grimaced. Yeah, she had a point there. Especially these last few months, as much as he had tried to pretend otherwise. He had been on edge, tormented by the memories of losing his brother, and he knew he hadn’t been doing a good job of hiding it.
“Winters have always been long here,” he remarked, changing the subject. “Ever since I was a kid. My brother and I—” The words were out before he could stop them, but he clammed up the moment they were out of his mouth.
Hannah must have been able to tell how much his memories got to him. “I like hearing about the sanctuary when it was your family home,” she told him, offering him a smile. “And about your brother. Max, right?”
Hearing her say his name like that made him tense.
He flinched, and she must have noticed. She reached across the table and placed her hand on top of his.
Her touch took him back to a better place—a place where he had never lost his brother, where the pain of what he had been through didn’t weigh so heavily on him.
Warm, full of love and light, where he didn’t carry the shame of what he had done.
Or what he had failed to do.
“Yeah, Max,” he replied, reaching his thumb up to brush against her skin. This was dangerous, too dangerous. He should have stopped it before it went any further, but how the hell could he, when having her this close felt so right? He felt the electricity racing from her skin to his.
“You should talk to Sarah,” she suggested again, and he drew his hand back at once. He could feel that defensiveness rising inside of him, that urge to push back against what she was suggesting and tell her to back off. “I don’t want to go through all that again,” he muttered.
“You don’t have to talk about the bad stuff right away,” she suggested. “You could start with the good memories. The stuff you want to remember.”
He drew his gaze away from her and shook his head. “It’s not a good idea.”
“I’m worried about you, Xavier,” she told him, a sadness to her voice. “I know… I can see how much you’ve been struggling. I just want the best for you.”
He didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, he didn’t have to come up with anything, because the cheery waitress arrived with their food a moment later, placing it in front of them as she chattered away about the weather.
Hannah sighed, clearly seeing that the moment was lost, and tucked in to her meal.
Afterward, when they stepped outside, she seemed subdued.
Xavier could tell she was still bothered by the conversation they’d had before lunch.
It would have been easy for him to just leave it there and hope she didn’t bring it up again, but something in him was urging him to tell her more.
No matter how much it hurt, no matter how much it dredged up for him.
She was trying to reach out, trying to make a difference, and she deserved more than to just be brushed off.
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “I’m sorry for shutting you out.”
She glanced up at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
He still didn’t meet her gaze. “I know you’re trying to help,” he explained. “With the…the stuff with Sarah, I mean. But I just can’t go back there and pull all those memories up again. They’re bad enough as it is, with the dreams and everything…”
“The dreams?” she asked softly.
“I—I used to have these dreams all the time, about what happened to my brother,” he continued, stilted.
He wasn’t used to being this honest with anyone, let alone her, and making himself so vulnerable felt like a mistake.
He had held it all in for so long, so how could telling the truth fix any of this?
“And I thought they were done a long time ago,” he went on.
“Actually, they were. Up until the night of the fire. Ever since then, I’ve been…
dealing with them again. I don’t think I’ve made it through a whole night without having them at some point. ”
“But the fire was nearly three months ago,” she whispered.
He grimaced. “Yeah. I know.”
She fell silent for a moment and followed behind him as they made their way back to his vehicle.
It was obvious she still had a lot of questions, but he wasn’t sure he had it in him to keep answering.
Even sharing that much hurt. It brought to mind all the memories of Max that Xavier had been torturing himself with for so long now.
He wished he could just focus on the good times, but every time his beloved baby brother came into his mind, it was with the harsh reminder of how he had been lost. How Xavier had been there, right there next to him, and unable to stop it.
Maybe his mom had been right when she blamed him for his brother’s death.
How could he have let it happen?
Whenever he closed his eyes, that was all he could see.
Fire, blood, the sudden blank look in Max’s eyes, the blooming red stain on his neck running down his camouflage uniform as he fell to the ground.
Nothing could have saved him, but that didn’t mean that Xavier didn’t wish he had tried.
He had been so frozen in shock and horror, he had taken vital seconds to snap back into reality, and if he had acted sooner…
He climbed into the SUV, and Hannah scrambled in the other side, not taking her eyes off of him. Gripping the wheel, he kept staring straight ahead. Had he said too much? Maybe now she thought he was weak, pathetic for being so consumed by the memory of what had happened.
But if she wanted to know, he would do his best to be open with her. She was about the only person in his life he felt like he could be honest with about this, even if he didn’t know why.
No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why. As much as he might have tried to deny it, it was the same reason he had been so shaken after the fire. He had seen far worse, far more violence than that, but it was the first time in a long time that he felt like he had a life worth protecting.
Like he had someone in his life he wanted to protect.
Instead of sitting in the passenger seat like he expected, Hannah got to her knees on the seat, not taking her eyes off of him.
He turned to her, confused, and before he could say anything, she launched herself into his arms, wrapping herself around him, one hand at the back of his neck and the other slowly rubbing against his shoulder.
He thought about pushing her away, setting her back in her own seat, he really did.
Maybe a stronger man would have, but he knew that he couldn’t.
It felt too good to have her that close.
As soon as she touched him, he felt everything else just fall away, all the fight he’d had to keep his distance vanishing.
“It’s going to be okay, Xavier,” she murmured to him.
He couldn’t think of anything to say back, but he didn’t need to.
Instead, he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her in even closer to him.
The scent of her shampoo and perfume filled the air around him, creating this little protective bubble that seemed to keep them safe from the rest of the world.
He didn’t care what anyone else thought in that moment.
The only thing that mattered to him was the feel of her small, strong body pressed against his and her promise that everything was going to be okay.
Because, when she said it, he could almost believe her.