Chapter 4
four
“But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” - Maya Angelou
Heat tore through Cole every time he replayed the conversation they’d had in the living room the night before. The scene rolled through his mind like a movie put on a loop, and he couldn’t stop hearing the edge in Jocelyn’s voice—sharp and sure, not at all what he’d expected from her.
He’d been knocked sideways already just by her presence; she was the kind of woman that made a man’s throat go dry—curves, grace, a fire in her eyes that stirred him up.
But that warning? It hit like a punch he hadn’t seen coming.
His mama had gone quiet after Jocelyn left, lips pressed in a tight line as she sat beside his daddy.
And Cole had stood by the window clenching his fists like that might keep him from breaking something.
Her car was already gone, but he’d stared down the spot where it’d been like he could make her feel his anger.
“John,” Ellen had said, soft but steady. Not upset about Jocelyn’s insinuation. Not even surprised.
That had stung more than he liked.
He’d spun on his heel to face them, anger fanned by frustration and uncertainty.
Ellen was looking straight at his daddy, who hadn’t said a damn word. John’s eyes were locked on his hands folded between his knees, shoulders rounded by… shame.
“Pop?”
John lifted his head and let out a sigh like he’d been holding it for years. “I’m sorry, Cole.”
“Sorry for what?” Cole had demanded. Even now, his gut tightened, dread clawing up his throat remembering.
“I haven’t been straight with you about some things.”
His mama’s hand had run circles along his daddy’s back as she sat quiet and resigned. Which meant she’d known for a long time. Of course she had. Betrayal had pierced him then, and it drilled into him now. He hadn’t been ready for it.
Still wasn’t.
But the trees out here didn’t give a damn. They just stood tall and steady, and that steadiness kept him from snapping in two.
Still, the hammer felt too light in his hand as he squared up the studs, framing out the wall that’d stand between the kitchen and living room. It was all just wood and nails for now, but something sturdy and reliable would stand here one day. And right then, he needed sturdy and reliable.
Evenings or early mornings offered the only bearable times to be out working on the house, which was barely more than a slab of foundation at the moment. Good thing it wasn’t much more than concrete because his hands itched to tear something apart.
Hammering the shit out of this frame was a good second option.
When something rattled loose in him—anger, nerves, whatever—he ended up out here on this patch of land that’d been in his mama’s family for generations. It belonged to him now, after his granddad had moved to an old folks’ home.
Right now, it was the perfect place. No cell signal, no distractions. Just quiet.
He was supposed to be up at the high school, hammering together booths and platforms for the festival.
Could’ve offered the same busyness to soothe, but he didn’t have the patience for small-town chatter, not when everything in him felt half a step off.
Not enough for most folks to notice, but he sure as hell did.
Problem was, it pissed him off how something like this could get under his skin that easy. Felt damn near dramatic, and that just made it worse.
He wanted to lay the blame on Jocelyn’s doorstep, but it was more than that.
Cole had never fully shaken the resentment toward his daddy’s job. It’d taken John from them more than it gave. While his daddy was off pulling shifts at the station, it was just him and his mama for days at a time.
Sure, what his daddy did was noble—important, even—but there were times it felt like he had a whole other family. A crew of men Cole had called uncles that he’d envied deep down. Those boys had gotten John for full days and nights, built something with him Cole could never touch.
To a kid starving for time, it looked like a feast behind glass.
By the time Cole hit middle school, he was already a handful—bitter as week-old coffee and twice as hard to swallow.
He was fourteen when his daddy pulled Jocelyn out of that fire—the one that took her mama.
Whole thing threw Cedar Hollow into the spotlight.
News crews swarmed the station, their house, the scene.
And Pop? He got pulled even further away.
Giving interviews, shaking hands, getting honored like a damn hero.
All it did was make the gap at home wider.
Cole understood the weight of it, an ordinary man saving a life. That kind of thing stuck with folks. Made them see you different. But he resented it all the same. It turned his daddy into something untouchable. The Hero. The man who always did right.
Took him a long while to see how much that fed the anger he carried. Longer still to work his way through it and come out the other side—if he even was.
Maybe that was why his parents didn’t tell him about John’s addiction until last night—how close it came to taking everything from him. He and his daddy had only just started rebuilding from the wreckage between them, and this new truth was near to knocking the whole thing sideways.
So yeah, Cole got it. Sort of.
His jaw ached from grinding his teeth, and the hammer damn near slipped out of his hand, missed smashing the other one by an inch.
He let out a string of curses and dropped the hammer, running both hands through his hair like he could get a grip on more than just the mess in front of him. That old anger still burned hot—same as it did when he was a kid. Felt like fire under the skin, hard to hold and harder to put out.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t followed in his daddy’s footsteps. Fighting fire felt too much like what he’d been doing his whole life inside himself.
Cole spent years hearing folks whisper how they couldn’t believe he was the son of such a good man.
The kid getting suspended for pulling fire alarms, vandalizing half the town, shoplifting at the general store, drinking before he could drive, and chasing skirts—or slipping ‘em off any girl who’d let him.
It was a hell of a long way from where he stood today as a man who’d built himself a damn good business, never missed a payment, and could be counted on to lend a hand whenever the mayor cooked up some fool town shindig. But deep down, he was still the same ornery cuss he’d always been.
And maybe that was what kept the rage going.
The sun had burned through the morning haze, turning the treetops gold, and he quit what he was doing to walk his property, hoping it’d clear his head before he had to go back and open The Hammered Nail for the Sunday after-church crowd and all the tourists who flooded their little town this time of year.
Thirty minutes in, and he gave up, heading back to the restaurant sooner than he’d like.
He pounded up the back steps to his place above it to throw on his running gear.
Since he couldn’t shake that damn buzzing in his head, he figured to try beating the hell out of himself on a long run, even if he couldn’t stand the actual running part.
It was what it did for him afterward that made all that misery worth it.
Seven miles down and a cold shower later, he felt halfway human again, if not exactly calm. Coming down to the bar, he ran his hand along the banister he’d fixed up himself, checking his work without even thinking about it while he listened for voices coming from the kitchen.
The Nail used to be a sad-sack saloon whose owner had run it into the ground after inheriting it from his grandfather, who’d—rumor had it—won the thing in a poker game decades back. It had lasted longer than expected as a haunt for derelicts before its doors closed when Cole was a teenager.
After high school, when Cole was bouncing from one dead-end job to another, those boarded-up windows caught his eye more than once. For ten years, he’d walk by and cook up bigger and bigger schemes for what he could do with the place until his eyes had grown too big for his stomach.
Once he scaled back on the ideas, realizing he didn’t have to think so outside the box, he’d stewed on the idea of a bar and grill for a year before he approached his cousin Terra to go in on buying the place.
Walking through the wall of heat created by the kitchen like some sort of humid curtain, he emerged behind the bar to survey the atmosphere they’d curated, that sense of pride filling his chest like a balloon.
He’d done most of the renovation himself.
Busting his hide for contractors right out of high school had its perks.
There was an extra measure of satisfaction knowing that this was the result of his literal blood, sweat, and tears, especially when a lot of the space was already occupied only forty minutes after opening for the day.
He sidled up beside his cousin Terra, who was busy pouring a Belgian beer they had on tap for the month. “How’s it going?”
She didn’t glance up. “Steady. I figure we’ll get slammed soon. Lunch rush.”
It was a standard report, nothing surprising for a weekend. The tourists always came through for the trails and waterfalls—big draw every year. The falls really were something to see, and the cool mist was about the only mercy this late-summer heat offered.
“Need help?” he offered.
“I got it, Cole.”
Terra didn’t ask for or receive help unless she really needed it.
Pushing forty, raising two boys on her own, she was built tough as nails.
Didn’t mean she didn’t have a heart buried under all that steel, but she kept it tucked away.
He respected that about her. It made her a damn good partner to run a business with.
Since she’d given her answer, he moved on, making the rounds. Folks expected smiles, handshakes, a little small talk. Not his strong suit, but owning a business meant he had to play along.
“Cole, that was such a nice ceremony for your daddy yesterday,” Sylvia Dayberry said, leaning forward to snag a fry off her husband’s plate. Walt just smiled like a man used to losing battles.
Cole’s gut tightened. He forced a nod. “It was.”
“He sure deserves it.” Her hand went to his forearm, giving it a light squeeze.
He nodded again, swallowing a surge of heat crawling up his throat.
She meant it. Everybody loved his daddy.
The man had poured himself out for this town—ran calls at the firehouse, patched roofs for widows, organized clean-ups, hauled lumber for the community center.
Hell, he even checked on neighbors just because he could.
But the new secret Cole carried about him was a bitter taste he couldn’t spit out.
He drifted, doing the rounds on autopilot, until—
“Cole, just the man I was hopin’ to see.”
He caught his grimace before it broke loose and turned.
Henry Wetzel was waving him down.
“Henry,” he said mildly, glad that at least Edith wasn’t with him.
“The girls were telling me y’all had a special visitor at the house yesterday after the ceremony.”
Apparently, Edith not being there didn't matter.
Cole took a slow breath, bracing his hands on his hips. “That’s right. Jocelyn Murphy came all this way to honor Pop.”
Henry shifted but pressed on. “How long is she staying?”
Cole sucked his teeth, let the silence drag a beat. “Don’t know. Why?”
Henry’s gaze darted around, his face souring. Age sat heavy on him, sagging his lids over those small, dark eyes, though he was somewhere around his pop’s age. “Well… she isn’t exactly a welcome sight.”
Cole resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but only just. “Sounds like a personal problem, Henry.”
Henry leaned in, shoving his plate aside. “We’re just worried what it means for the festival.”
There it was. Cole’s hand went for Henry’s empty glass, more for something to do than anything. “Why would it mean anything?”
“Well, you know how the ladies get.” He waved a pudgy hand like female feelings were gnats in the air. “The festival matters—heritage, tourism, all that.”
Cole’s jaw ticked. “Tourists don’t give a damn about Jocelyn bein’ here.” Locals, though… They’d eat themselves alive if she so much as breathed wrong.
Henry winced as if a phantom of his wife had slapped him. “Now, listen. You know who her mama was, right?"
Cole leaned heavily on a long-suffering sigh, jaw shifting forward.
Henry was undeterred. "She was from the wrong side of the tracks, as they say.
Lots of family scandal. You know Bonnie's mama and daddy got married just because she was pregnant, and then he up and left when Bonnie was barely a baby?
And her grandaddy was the town drunkard.
Apple don't fall too far from that tree. " His brows bounced with the words.
A slow, mean burn settled in Cole's gut—sparked by that pile of judgment he hadn’t invited. "Didn't sign up for the biography."
Henry held up both hands. "Alright, alright. I know your mama’s close with her, and your daddy, too. I figure they probably won’t be too happy to hear about any schemin'. But we all know how you feel about… things. Maybe you can find a way to, I don’t know, encourage her to move along?”
Cole’s whole body clenched. Henry had pressed the right button there, and that just pissed him off more. “What makes you think I could do any damn thing?”
“Because she’s young, she’s pretty, and you are—” He gestured at Cole.
“Young and pretty?” he supplied, tone flat. The last thing he needed was to spend his time trying to convince Jocelyn Murphy of anything.
Henry grinned. “Exactly.”
Cole squinted. “Don’t you reckon me trying to charm her would backfire?” He lifted a brow. “Curse of being too good-looking.”
Henry’s grin flattened, his brows following suit until they folded into a deep furrow.
“Best let it be,” Cole said, spotting his mama stepping through the door. Should’ve figured she’d show. She always gave him a little space when he was heated but never too much that anyone could forget about it.
“Cole—” Henry started.
“We’ll talk later,” Cole cut him off, already moving.
“There’s my boy,” his mama said, and he bent to kiss her cheek.
“Hey, Ma.”